Hm, I've disappeared off of blogging again... ^^; It's really hard to do every day for some reason. It's not like I'm not on the computer all the time (sadly) - I guess sometimes I just forget to have anything to say. I also haven't had a lot of time to post photos to flickr, even tho I've still been taking them, but if you go there now, you can see my photos of my Rei out with cherry blossoms. It was truly wonderful weather all week last week. Sadly it went back to being cold and rainy for this week, but I feel happy because I did ride my bike into work one day last week, which gave me lots of time to take photos along the Charles River bike path area. Most of my photos are in color, but I really liked the sepia effect on this one. Something about Rei seems to work well in monochrome. I wonder if that is because I don't really like her blue hair...? (d'oh!) I still plan on rewigging her in black some day, but it's gotta wait a bit, as dolly funds are low...
Yuiko is wearing what I am calling a "goddess" outfit. It's probably an old Barbie outfit. I found it recently while clearing out the attic. I didn't have as many Barbie toys as I remember (or they didn't survive the recent damage to the attic) and most were not in good condition. This one was wrapped up special inside of the Barbie box. I think that saved it, as otherwise it would probably have been quite dirty. It needed a pretty serious airing out, but otherwise looks pristine. I don't remember it at all, so I wonder where it came from?
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Goddess of Spring
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Pirate Angharad
This is my newest girl, Angharad. She was a Veritas that I put in a new wig and made ears for. The ears are a little silly, but I'm happy with the way they came out. :P
All of my Pullips are fairy tale characters, and Angharad has ears because she is Puss-in-Boots. This is her story:
Some time ago, Angharad turned down a marriage proposal from a Prince. She was probably right to do so, because the rejected Prince had an enchantment placed on her in punishment. She had to find a way to get a commoner married into royalty in order to break the enchantment. Difficult, but not impossible, right? But of course that was only the condition to break the enchantment - the enchantment itself turned her into a cat! The Prince didn't think much of cats, and figured there was no smaller or lower creature than a cat, and there was no way a cat could help a commoner marry into royalty. Clearly the Prince was not very bright, in addition to being snobby and not very nice, because everyone knows that cats get their way with everything!
Angharad found herself in the household of a very poor and very old and sick miller. When the poor man passed away, he left the eldest son his mill and the middle son his donkey, which were all of
the significant things he had in the world. To the youngest son, he had nothing to leave but his cat. His youngest son bemoaned his fate, as not only did he have nothing to feed himself with, he had gained another mouth to feed!
Still, he was a kind boy, and promised the cat he would not leave
her to starve. Hearing this, the cat suddenly spoke up and said, "If you can give me a pair of boots, I will make your fortune for you!" The boy was much surprised, but fortunately he was clever with a needle. Begging some scraps from the local tannery, he made the cat some fine boots. So she set off to make him rich. Every day she caught some lovely game and presented it to the King as a gift from her master. After some time, the King asked to meet her master. The boy was ready to panic, but Angharad still had a plan. She told him to bathe in the river the next morning and all would be well. He did so, and at that moment, the King passed by. Angharad cried out that her master was drowning and had been set upon by thieves! The King
"rescued" the Miller's son and gave him some clothes of his own to borrow.
The King - and the King's daughter! - both took a fancy to the boy, who was really quite handsome and charming. After he had stayed for some time, the King asked if they could visit the boy's home, as Angharad had assured the King the boy was a wealthy Count. Again the boy was ready to panic, but Angharad promised all would be well. She knew of a nearby castle that had been taken over by an ogre. After craftily defeating the ogre, she told the King it belonged to the boy. The King, impressed by the boy's wealth - and the entreaties of his daughter! - decided the two should be married.
On the day of the wedding, the boy said to Angharad, "I thank you Puss, for all you have done. It was more than worth a pair of boots! If there is anything further I can do for you, you have only to ask." Angharad said she wanted only a slice of their wedding cake and her freedom. Surprised by this, but more than willing to comply, the boy-turned-Prince handed over a slice of cake. No sooner had Angharad tasted some then she turned into a lovely girl - although a girl with a pair of cat ears! Angharad thanked the Prince and explained that she had been under a rather odd enchantment and helping a poor boy marry a Princess was the condition for turning back to human. (The ears remaining was unexpected, but Angharad rather liked them after all...) Angharad then set off and had many adventures of her own. Most lately she has been Captain of a Pirate ship!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Restoration Project
Ok, I'm falling a bit behind on my blog posts again. The weather's been wonderful, I'm on a deadline at work, and I'm busy with a couple of projects at home. All of this is not enough to keep me offline completely, I've just not been keeping up with everything...
This is one of my projects. I have some old cloth dolls that are very badly damaged that I am trying to restore. This one is probably one of the worst for wear, but I'm hoping I can help her. She is a doll I had as a child, and tho I was not one for dolls back then, I liked that she was a brunette with blue eyes - just like me. So I took all her stuffing out and am trying to wash and probably bleach the stains out of her. I may need to redo her hair completely, I'm not sure. I'm moderately terrified to wash her face, because I'm afraid of the colors on the thread running, but I don't really have any choice, I don't think, unless someone out there has a brilliant idea for cleaning her otherwise?
(dry cleaners don't really like to dry clean dolls, apparently... The pieces are too small to go thru the machines well...)
Thursday, April 17, 2008
More Shana!
I found this melon pan flavor pocky yesterday. There seem to be a lot of new Pocky flavors lately. I don't know if that is a reflection of Glico adding new flavors, or if it's just that the store I'm buying from is importing more new flavors...
Someday I will take a picture of Shana with an actual melon pan, but in the meantime, I couldn't resist this picture!
The pocky itself is sort of good, and sort of strange. It does taste quite a bit like melon pan, but that's not a particularly strong flavor, even in the original, so it's somehow almost more salty than sweet as pocky. I haven't had melon pan in a while, and I only know of one place around here that makes it, so I am not sure if the slightly salty taste belongs with the original, or if it's just there because of the pocky... I am guessing the overall flavor is meant to be like the slightly crunchy outside of the bread, but it's a little odd as pocky, because of course it is VERY crunchy. As pocky goes, it's probably not my favorite, but it does make a nice change of pace...
Shana is known to be very particular about her melon pan, so maybe she looks grumpy because the pocky doesn't meet with her approval?
Monday, April 14, 2008
Flame-Hair, Burning-Eye Shana!
Sorry for the lack of posts there for a bit! Flickr was annoying me with the whole video thing. I don't know if it is actually coincidental or not (seems unlikely) but since they added video, it has been much slower for me to load, and the little widget I used to grab the code for posting on the web wasn't working. So I didn't feel like dealing with it until it straightened itself out. I'm still getting slightly slow loading, but at least the widget works again. So, in honor of that, I'm going to post these photos I've been meaning to post for a while. The flickr problems were only one thing holding me back here. The other thing is that I went a little photo-crazy, and it seemed like a bit of a project to post so I was procrastinating on it a bit.
I was pretty excited to get my Shana. Her crazy red-hair is just awesome! It's a little translucent and a little sparkley. No mix-and-match possibilities, but who cares? It's too cool to worry about stuff like that! My only regret is in not having black-haired Shana too. So far she's been too expensive for me to make the leap into buying. I was hoping someone would be selling her at Anime Boston - good for impulse-buying, if not for best price - but no dice there.
I'm not really a big fan of Shana the anime, etc. I didn't even know it existed until the Pinky was announced! I decided to try watching the anime as a result of the Pinky. I'm almost finished with the first season, I guess. I'm not blown away by it. The mix of creepy and school romance is not quite working for me. It's not that I oppose mixing genres - in fact, I generally like it! - but if you are going to shift tone frequently, it needs to be done well, and I'm not sure I think Shana succeeds. It felt, almost, to me anyway, like they were going to go in one direction, and then changed their mind completely. I like the "cute" part better than the "creepy" part too, I am sorry to admit. So I think it's getting better as it goes on, but I still am left a bit flat by it. Still, Shana is kind of a cute character.
Shana the Pinky came in a really cute box! I guess I think that because, like I said, the anime art is cute...
I couldn't resist buying a pencil board from the series at Anime Boston too, esp. when I saw it selling for $3.75 at one place and $10 at another! Pinky Shana seems a bit bewildered by the giant portrait of her... :P
I ended up with so many photos of Shana from this shoot largely because I was fooling around with trying to focus more on her sword than on her. I don't know if I came up with any really stellar results, but I hope you might enjoy some of the experimenting!
I also had to try a couple of ultra closeups on her cute grumpy face!
Monday, April 07, 2008
Strange Food
Sometimes the food aimed at kids can be really disturbing...
Despite the ridiculousness of printing barbie pictures on waffles, I would have passed these by easily were it not for the "limited edition" logo on them. That totally cracked me up! I mean, do we really need limited edition waffles? I know limited edition soda and candy is a big thing over in Japan (what with the special flavor kit kats - which I finally scored one of, btw, at a local grocery store. I am excited, just because I am curious to see what one tastes like. I got strawberry), but this seems less like that and more like baseball cards somehow. I think because the "limited edition" does not apply to the flavor, but to the pictures. And also, because there are 40 designs total (so the box says) but only 8 waffles per package. So, do you collect them all in a scrapbook that you keep in your freezer, do you think?
I do have to note that my waffles were very heavy on pictures of Theresa. I don't know who she is, but she converts to waffledom better than ol' Barbie does. Miss Barbie's golden hair and pale skin sort of just blend into the waffle. My "set" also included a bunch of logos, which are, as always, just the filler of any limited edition card set.
I'd love to link to some info on how these waffles are made, or why they thought it was a good idea to make them, but alas, I am not finding anything.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Lovely Yuiko
Did I run out of things to say already? ^^;
I've been totally swamped at work for most of last week until today. This doesn't mean I couldn't've found 5 minutes to post something, but working too hard turns my brain into uncreative mush and I tend to be unable to think about much.
But I certainly ought to post some photos of my lovely Yuiko. I finally found a few minutes to give her an obitsu and change her clothes, and it turns out that she is very photogenic! I only had like 20 minutes to do this photo shoot after work. I had been a grim day, and it was hard to take the photos without sitting or kneeling (I didn't want to get wet) but it was all worth it to me! You can see the rest of her photos from this session (and earlier photos) in her flickr set.
I started out really hating this wig, but I gotta admit that it is growing on me. It's not that I mind the blue, but it reminded me of Leda's (Nero's) stock wig, in terms of the short cut, and I just hated that wig. I expected to hate this one too, but the bowl cut actually suits her! I'm still thinking I will get her a new wig in the future, because a. I'd like to see how she looks with something else, esp. something in black and b. I still find myself sometimes thinking of her as Rei, which is a little annoying to me. I actually have a wig picked out, I'm just holding off because I've been spending money like crazy lately. Or I feel like it anyway... (and it's not all been irresponsible spending, some of it was just general "hey, life sure is expensive" stuff... >.<)
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Rabbit Rabbit
I'm a little late, but it's the first of the month, so Rabbit! My mom always had my brother and I say this on the first of the month, but as a kid, I never had any idea why. I think we only said it once tho, rather than twice. It was a long time before I met anyone else who had this tradition/superstition, but I guess if it rates a wikipedia explanation than it must be fairly common...
This bit is interesting, since I jused to like Jawbreaker - "The band Jawbreaker makes reference to the superstition in their song Jinx Removing."
I never picked that up tho...
At any rate, hope your month is lucky!