beccastareyes

So, I collect dolls. And one of these days, I need to do a guide to my haul. I also customize dolls, and am getting slowly better* at it.

I prefer cheaper dolls rather than some of the nicer dolls my friends have -- the most expensive thing in my collection are a couple of American Girl Dolls, all of which were purchased second-hand**. Plus, I want something I can mess around with -- I'm not really a collector as much as a crafter and still mentally a little girl about dolls. I'm also a bit of a sheep -- witness being dragged into the Monster High fandom because all my doll friends were cooing over them. At first it was just a 'hey, unusually-colored or sculpted cheap dolls***'. Now I own a Frankie and kind of want the others. And, hey, $20 is not bad for impulse buys.

( Monster High customization )

So, doll-collecting friends -- help for things that are roughly MH scale, cheap but look closer to human?

( And a bit more on American Girls and customization )

Thoughts?

--
* I am slightly embarrassed by the Calla I made my friend mirisa_ardruna -- since she was my first custom, I could do so much better now. For one, I could give the right hair and eye colors, and not just glue wefts on to make bangs.

** Plus AGs are huggable -- they have cloth bodies, even if they also have vinyl heads and limbs.

*** It's one reason why Cleo de Nile doesn't excite me much. Yay, a vaguely-Egyptian looking doll who is supposed to be a mummy and occasionally has bandages worked into her clothing. Good for customization, but not too interesting in a line where all the other dolls are supposed to be cute monsters.

**** And get flack, since I decided I wanted a Josefina-mold doll, and the only ones with blue eyes were retired. Eh, my money -- besides, 'normal' people buy these things for kids to play with.

(5) In before someone notes that Kaya and Josefina wouldn't consider themselves USAian, and Felicity's era was actually fighting over that. (Though even the loyalist colonists probably had some identity as Virginian or Bostonian or whatever, even if they didn't want to sever ties with Britain.) And Kirsten's first book start out in Sweden, while Addy's starts in an area that's currently seceding from the USA. Not to mention they made a doll of Molly's friend, Emily, who was a British girl living with Molly's family because Germany was bombing the tar out of Britain. So the criterion for 'American' in 'American Girl' seems to be 'lived in some part of the region now called the United States of America'.

To Do: Week of March 28 to 3 April
-- Various 'beginning of month' errands, such as dropping off rent, checking for bills, etc.
-- Discussing with my landlady the possibility of subletting my apartment if I leave before next year's lease is up.
-- Saturday groceries, Sunday cleaning, the usual.

-- Update my work website and make it non-ugly and current. Possibly add stuff, but I'll settle for current.
-- Draft at least one email introducing me to someone who might get me a job.
-- Redo the graphs on my solar occultation paper so I can hand it off to the adviser for a look-over
-- Take the stellar occultation model I'm working on and see if I can apply it to data.

-- Finish as many 31days_exchange prompts as I can before the 1st.
-- Post the ones I have finished.
-- Write something either for no_true_pair or work my Big Bang fic. (Or both.)
-- Color my MAX and CMRAeX (or are we CAX now?) pictures.

-- Locate where I put my leftover sport-weight yarn.
-- Related: clean out the yarn bin.
-- Work on ag_over_18 swap stuff and try to get at least one vest started.

-- Read through my pile o' manga.
-- Post some book reviews of stuff I've read recently.

Don't ask me why, but it does. Maybe because tonight I have two pieces of art to finish before I'm allowing myself to sign on to RPGs and such*. So I'll probably be on Skype for company.

Also, for my doll-collecting/customizing friends: I learned today that trying to take off the lipstick on a Lagoona Monster High doll requires care or you end up staining a lot of the face vinyl with a slight pink tinge. (It doesn't look that bad, since it ended up mostly in the cheek/nose/chin area where a (red-blooded) person might be a bit pinker anyway, but worth noting.)

* Except SLT. Why can't I quit you?

I'm treating a sinus... thing* right now, so I get to wake up with a sore throat every day as nasty stuff in my head finally drains off. It's still screwing me up, so I also am still getting the sinus headaches. As a result, I'm cranky, and I overslept today.

Add in that I had to hang around the apartment to move the anime club archives on Saturday -- which also involved me hauling a car-load of stuff up half a flight of stairs.

And it doesn't help that I've got a million things to do before I start NaNoWriMo -- well, three pictures and finishing my Halloween costume. Which involved me swearing at the sewing machine when I tried to finish seams last night. Decided it wasn't worth my sanity to practice this now. It also makes me want a serger like burning, since that finishes seams on its own. (But might induce more sewing-realted insanity.)

On the other hand, I'm learning a lot more about sewing. Like how to properly press a seam and sew in a zipper. And using interfacing.

If I didn't have work stuff every day, I'd take a day off to clean stuff and work on projects. And to recover sanity. It's tempting to do so anyway -- show up for a meeting and go back home.

* My sinuses are clogged, but so far it's just mucus and not anything bacteria/viral. Which meant I was told to switch to an expectorant and given a steroidal nasal spray that's supposed to help the holes in my head expand enough to let things drain.

I have a bit of a case of the winter blahs. Compounded by the fact I finally tracked down a problem in my work that meant that the data I had been presenting for a year was processed wrong. At least it was a case of 'the effect still exists, but has a different magnitude', rather than 'it doesn't exist. And occasional headaches.

Good things: ag_over_18 started a weekly voice chat for crafters. There's a focus on 'making doll stuff', since it is a doll-collecting community, but it gives me a chance to work on crafts with people keeping me company. And voice chats do seem to help with moodiness when I can't get out to people, and doing sewing while I talk makes me feel like I'm being productive. Maybe this is a sign I need to take up the Sunday afternoon Feminist Stitch and Bitches the Cornell Women's Resource Center puts on. I already tend to bring crafts to informal stuff the department does, when I'm not taking notes or eating -- the lunch talks and the weekly grad student seminar/journal club. Having something to do with my hands that doesn't take up much brain space away from listening helps -- I bring these things to anime club, too. (One point in favor of dubs is that it's easier to work while watching.)

My art is making me pretty happy. I need to do more of it -- that and promote the exchanges I'm in* (and work on the exchange pages I have to include all my characters). I'm also feeling inspired to start writing something on my comic, so I have it done and put to bed. That and singing helps with the winter blues.

Not the headaches though. I don't know if they are caused by sinus congestion or what, but I'm really getting sick of them, because I can't focus until the painkillers kick in.

* Hint: if you have original characters (gaming characters, comics/writing projects -- heck, at least one person has old OCs from fandoms), and can draw reliably enough to produce a picture once or twice a month, ask me about this. The power of art trades compels you!

I sometimes wonder if I should practice my science blogging skills by writing up the weekly colloquiums that my department holds, or at least the ones I don't fall asleep in. So far, it's been a good semester, despite both presentations being on interstellar dust. Then again, the first presenter was a researcher from our department with a good speaking style so he can make something like 'crap in space'* interesting. The second guy also had a good send-up and it was partially interesting to me since he was using some of the same techniques that I use for Saturn's rings on the Interstellar Medium.

* This is my friend Cece's nickname for the Interstellar Medium back in undergrad. We had a whole semester talking about it, thanks to Nebraska offering three astronomy courses, all of which an astro-focused person needed to take. Well, technically four, but the fourth was removed from the coursebook my freshman year after they realized that no one could teach it, and that had been the case for years. So everyone took 'Stellar Atmospheres and Interiors', 'Galactic Astronomy' and 'Physics of the Interstellar Medium' after they did the 'Astronomy for Majors' and 'Astronomy Lab'. It wasn't that bad, since you can get a lot of basic astronomy out of what's going on, and meant that I've had more repetitions of radiative transfer than any sane human being really wants.

So, anyone want to hear about what I learned about Crap in Space? It's interesting, I promise.

Writing is going well. I got back some concrit on the Cordelia/Aral story, and want to take a looksee at the story for editing. I'm also breaking a normal habit. Normally, I write drabbles in a universe first before I try to do full-length fiction. Well, except for Yuletide, where I don't get a choice, or when I crazily sign up for a ficathon. But, now I'm trying to write my first Firefly story, when I haven't ever written for that fandom before. Mostly because it came out of the Random Fanfic Prompt Generator I wrote. It's weird.

(Speaking of Bujold, the latest book came out on Tuesday. I need to go to the bookstore and pick it up.)

Also drawing. I have two exchange pictures due, then I promise I'll start work on those meme pictures. I haven't forgotten. Expect an art dump soon.

I'm a bit annoyed with Ravelry, which is a social networking site for knitters and crocheters. Most of the pages cannot be seen except if you are logged in, so if you found out someone has made, say, Wobbuffett mittens, you can't share it with a person who is not a member.

Also annoyed with the Slayers fandom, mostly because as soon as the raws go up, discussion of the new episodes starts. I don't generally watch raws because... well, I won't follow the plot, since my Japanese knowledge is limited to greetings and asking where the train station is, plus a lot of stuff you pick up from fandom*. And Slayers isn't quite as out there for me to be able to not care what the plot is.

* There is something wrong with the universe when I can say 'Stop! My butt hurts!', but can't ask where the bathroom is. Oh, fandom. Why must you be... well... fandom.

I'm worried that as soon as there's an actual translation, people will be moving on. (I don't know what the fansub status is, since fannish etiquette demands that since the anime is licensed and the licensing company has asked subbers to stop distribution, that fansubbing stop. The odds that this actually happens is slim to nil, given the 'Need it now!' attitude of most fans**.)

** Not gonna lie -- including me. I know this is an entitlement issue, and that I'm lucky that the things I like will be translated and licensed at all, and that I don't have to hunt down bootleg VHSs at cons, or ask for copies from the Creepy Guy at my high school. But... well, other people will be talking about it without me.

So, I have two finished exchange pieces and the hat I promised to make for Live Long and Marry, a fandom-related fundraising event to fight California's Proposition 8. (Something to make same-sex marriage illegal, and to annul all the existing same-sex marriages). The exchange pictures were just my normal exchange things.

( Here's the hat! )

( Exchange picture 1! )

( Exchange picture 2! )

http://www.wwkipday.com/

So, I found this* -- apparently June 14 is World-Wide Knit in Public Day. (Crocheters (hookers? ^_^) and other portable fabric crafts welcome). So, expect me to head out to the Ithaca Commons with a lawn chair, a bottle of water, a big ol' bag of yarn and the afghan I want to finish for my sister.

It's weird how I consider crochet as one of my geeky hobbies, despite the fact it (and cooking) are one of the most traditional, in-gender-role things that I do. (The, again, I'm one of those people who's made Harry Potter House Scarves and FMA slippers for her friends... so maybe crochet is a geeky hobby.)

* Thanks to the CrochetCrochet comm on LJ.

Because they take forever and it's hard to see progress. I started my second afghan three days ago, and I've done 4 rows (2 inches). On an afghan that is going to be 48". Yeah.

At least the pattern is simple enough that I can do it while I watch TV*. I ought to start bringing it to lunch seminars. Though I'm not sure how well that will go over.

* I think I impressed a few people in anime club by working on Sara's scarf while I watched subtitled anime in a darkened room -- the pattern was simple enough I could work by touch without needing to see what I was doing.

(I am also in love with this icon I made. Not sure why.)