DollsArtCats

My East Coast friends are sweltering in 100F temps today (and some with no power in Virginia). It's not bad here with fans, and a wet washcloth now and then. We finally got some rain so the flowers are blooming. Here's some from last year I found on an old disk: And here for no reason, a flaming pink silly wig on Noodles, who looks cute, (if not very oracle-like), in it.

Back in 2005, when we were all young.

We went to a local mall this evening because we had to be out for a home showing, and because the mall had food and air conditioning. It's a pretty boring mall, but it does have Marshall's in it. The regular Marshall's has the usual cheap underwear and floppy acrylic ladies' wear and shapeless purses, but attached to it is this surreal place where some semi-independent division takes the parent company's money and buys the weirdest stuff imaginable from all over the globe. This section of the store is popular because it has chairs for sale, and people sit in them in defiance of signs because the underpaid staff simply ignores the customers. So people sit, and chat, and play with their phones, and wander around exclaiming over the items on display. "Is that a book?" "No, it's a box, it has feet." "Hey, Lawn Ornament Moses!" (standing next to a half bicycle, half birdcage in antique iron) (I should have taken a photo of Moses, ...

A while back I bought a loose Jessica head, and had her on a Soom body, which looked good for size and fit but not for resin match, and then the Cuprit head I acquired took that Soom body. Then I was able to find an inexpensive used Senior Iplehouse Doll body and put the Jessica head on it; though she was designed to go on the Elder iplehouse Doll body. Here's a comparison of the two bodies (Headless Girl has heel feet, that is why the Invisible Motorcycle stance): http://gypsyreggae.com/Dolls_7_2012/eidSiD.jpg I think Jessica actually looks better on the smaller body. I also learned how to string an SID body, because when I was trying to tighten it up, my hand slipped, I punched myself in the nose and the SID body slid to the floor and became several mysterious parts. I struggled for a long time with one knee piece until I looked at it closely and it said "D.I.S", so I turned it over and then it fit perfectly into the thigh.

Stripey brought in a mouse last night around 1 AM. We turned on the lights, found the tongs and spent the next 20 minutes all racing around the room in our underwear, picking things up and leaping in the air when the mouse came at us. Eventually the mouse and Stripey headed out to the back door, and we turned off the light and went to bed. I have no idea what happened to the mouse, but I am sure Stripey thought it was great fun. I am sort of tired today.

JennyNemesis let me borrow her Iplehouse Tedros photos for picture refs for the cover I am working on. He's a handsome fellow and he holds very still. I was suprised to find how large and far apart his eyes are compared to humans, though--I had to do some adjusting and scaling--eyes and forehead smaller, jaw larger; but you can still see the resemblance to the original doll. By the way, I will be posting stuff on the PerkinsPixels blog that is just art. This blog is still for photos and dollie stuff, and yes, some art.

Vilena's Sales Page Anya Kozlova has finished up a new porcelain ball jointed doll, and she is for sale. She is 2,500.00-- and before you say this is expensive, she is all hand-made, and you would pay the same for a Volks Limited doll cast in resin. The porcelain won't yellow, unlike the resin. Also, Martina Bychkova's dolls run around $10,000 and up, and don't have Vilena's sunny temperament. If I had a glass case (and a house to put it in) I would be very tempted myself; but I think we are buying a table saw next, which is more practical than the lovely Vilena. She is small compared to my dolls, she would sit comfortably in my palm.

Madlore is an artist, ball-jointed doll collector, and I think, historical costuming buff who lives in Moscow. I happened to find a link to her deviant art pages on Den of Angels and I am glad I did--I especially like her pen-and-ink portraits. She also likes the novels of Lois McMaster Bujold and Rossetti (I am guessing this from how much her Soom Dia, Angrboda, looks like one of his models). Madlore is awesome. Oh, and she has two cats, too. :D Her deviant art page (with cat photos): http://madlore.deviantart.com/

Cecil is a Soom Sphaler that belongs to Xtal on Den of Angels. He is my second favorite Sphaler, after my own Zinnober. Cecil also is perfectly painted--xtal is an artist who does watercolor paintings, and I think with Cecil she created what "should have been" the default Sphaler at Soom. He's just beautiful. Photos copyright xtal, 2012

Canada is way ahead of us.

A link to JPL's trailer (awesomely awesome): http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=146903741 I think the rocket part will give them the most trouble, since a slight bend or a little instability will make the whole thing tumble, but I will hope for the best! The little painting above is another small one, again around 14 inches long and done in water-mixable oils. I like them a lot--they dry faster than regular oils but stay more blendable than acrylics.

Until a month ago, Culvers would always put the entree under the ice cream flavor. My favorite was "Mint Chip Walleye".

This little lady was sitting with her owner at one of the booths at the Downer's Grove craft fair, and I don't think I have ever seen prettier coloring on a dog; she's a Miniature Australian Shepherd. She was very good but distracted, so she's slightly motion blurred. This is the farmer's market on Main. Usually it is down by the train station, but the Rotary Club had set up Ribfest down there, so everything was displaced, including this goose.

Because there is a For Sale sign now in front of this place, the Servicemaster Carpet cleaning guys came in their patented truck, and cleaned the basement carpet. Thinking of the house I am hoping to buy, I asked about white plush carpet, and what they would recommend for pug pee. "Toss the carpet" was the answer. They were also not sure cleaning the carpet was all this house needed. "You've got some big cracks here." In fact the cracks have gotten larger, or I have started to notice them more, but it's true that in the winter I could open the side door downstairs, and now the corner of the house is resting on the doorframe, so the door won't open, and the vertical corner moulding is splintering and bowing outward. People are coming tomorrow to view the house, and while we have it clean, I have no more boxes to hide dolls in. There are no closets anyway, just like in New Jersey; and Stella, the newest arrival, has been sitting on a doll chair on ...

http://www.antiquelilac.com/1/post/2011/08/cuprit-head-up-for-sale.html I was looking at Cuprit heads on Google, trying to decide what to do about Winter's eyelashes (and overlooking the whole headcap thing, it's now in PayPal's resolution system and there is nothing to do about it but wait) when I saw Carissa's face--but oh so well dressed! She used to belong to M.B. Lilac, which is to me as exciting as any movie star. I'm sure being here is quite a comedown after being a Celtic Queen, but interestingly, I've always thought of Carissa as Irish. I'm guessing I must have seen a picture of her before on Den of Angels and subconsciously remembered it. Check out M.B. Lilac's gorgeous photos and costumes here: http://www.antiquelilac.com/favourite-photos-2012.html

K sent me a text from Philly: OH MAH GAWD ITS HOT OUT. The landlady here shows no sign of wanting to fix the central AC, which is making prospective buyers and renters flee quickly. Upstairs, (now mostly empty), it's hovering around 100F. We went out to eat with the excuse that we were keeping the kitchen clean for viewers, and when we came back in the evening I looked for the grey cat and he was sitting down at the side of the back yard, looking like a small velvet jar, watching fireflies. J walked down to see him and stopped, turned around and walked back, whistling for the cat; who stood up and strolled up the lawn and then up the stairs to the back door. What I couldn't see, (and J could) was a large skunk that had been sitting with him, just under the bushes. The cat didn't seemed alarmed at all; maybe he thought the skunk was just another cat. When we move out, there will be a skunk den in the back of the yard, bees in the shed over the rabbit warren, and birds i...

Tygati in Oregon painted her for me. J'adore! Photo c. 2012 by Tygati, also

Soom Coquina "Stella", who is most likely getting the princess blonde wig instead. Here is the "more better" wig: And the much more better wig:

HerrZog has painted another Vesuvia--I love this one's Egyptian look and the perfect way it fits the character's "backstory" of being both Roman and Egyptian. Every now and then I have to go check HerrZog's flickr and see what new marvels have appeared:(a tanned Minifee Chloe, among other things!) HerrZog's Flickr A long time ago I read a book with the same title, and since it was written in 1951 you can guess how long ago it was. At the time I was so amazed at how the heroine, Julia, was not willing to sit around and have things happen to her, as was standard in the romantic fiction of the time. She was indeed Julia the Valorous. The setting seemed wonderfully exotic, too, and the book was responsible for several years of my taking Latin classes and reading about Roman culture. So I am glad to see she has such a beautiful namesake!

My Dad is a rocket scientist, and he has written a book, or rather a book on a cd. He is retired now, and looked around and got a little alarmed by the fact that nobody under the age of 60 seemed to have any hands-on experience with small rockets. This is partly because of the decline of the space program, and science training in general, but I think maybe also because blowing things up in one's backyard is frowned upon these days. (When he was 6, he somehow acquired some dynamite and blew the garage door off, proving three things--one, he had some rudimentary idea of safety in that he wasn't injured; two, he was an infant genius of things combustible, and three, it was a simpler time, when blasting dynamite was probably available at the local hardware store.) So,in deference to the fact that probably the purchaser of the book will not have access to a machine shop, or a test stand to make roaring noises and the occasional explosion, there are animations at the beginning...

OK, so nobody but me and JennyNemesis still own copies of 5, but I find it is quick for 90% of what I do for photos and it is loaded on this computer. If you are using CS9+, look smug and move along. As a side note, there are a million ways to do color adjustments in Pshop, this method only uses a few clicks and a mouse. First you take your photo: Photo copyright JennyNemesis 2012, btw. She wanted more of a reddish purple on his kimono. So I did Select/Adjust by Color. Click on the color you are interested in changing with the dropper. "Fuzziness" on the slider is just "how much acreage you want to change". In Photoshop 5, everything untouched has a red cast. I find this hard to see. (They changed this in later versions to "crawling ants" to show the edges in the preview. If you click "OK", THEN you get your crawling ants to see what you selected. If you need to make a spot selection bigger, then take the Magic wand and Right Click on the...

Deb in Texas got this alarming wig from Ebay--it is made of the most gorgeous mohair, but the side pieces just didn't hang right and a strip of the skin was always visible, plus it was just..odd. She sent it to me and I got out some scissors and started to investigate. Here was the problem--the extension on the sides were made by folding the skin in half, which made one side look good but the other side with a double wide strip showing: So I cut the strips on either side of the front of the wig off; took one strip, and cut that strip back open so it lay flat: Then I cut the flattened strip in half. Then I sewed one half to the left side of the front of the wig: Kalypso tries it on. Looking good so far. Then I added the other strip to the right side, and once again Kalypso was the tester: So now I know a good way to make mohair extensions look ok, and Kalypso has the HUGE purple wig that I think she will wear a lot--the hair is gorgeous! I would use a thimble the next...

She has eyes, she's on a body, and she's pretending to have a headcap--it's just a wad of gauze courtesy of the Animal Hospital (they gave Stripey a whole packet as a parting gift). Hopefully the headcap issue will be fixed soon, but in the meantime I even managed to give her a halfway decent face. She even looks cheerful! That surprised me. When a doll comes to me with some drama involved, I often end up not liking the doll, but I like her still and she seems ok with being here. She's the first smiley Cuprit I have ever seen.

I traded away my purple Migma head. It seemed like the sensible thing to do--Soom made two purple heads for every one purple body, and I assumed that mathematically I was never going to find Raisin her matching purple body at any price, so I found someone with a white Cuprit head-- that I already had the matching body and hooves for. It all sounded quite reasonable, until TWO DAYS later Soom announced they were offering purple bodies for sale a la carte (and this after cleaning out ALL my doll money for 2012). Then my trade for the Cuprit head has somehow descended into drama and strangeness, and I was really, really regretting sending Raisin off. And then an amazing thing happened--an EMT in Connecticut had a spare lavender Migma head, and took pity on me and sent it, for a very modest sum, over to me this weekend, knowing I was kicking myself for my (in hindsight) regrettable trade. So right now I know I need to fix her drooping left-side lashes that I stuck on a bit randoml...

I am sorting and cleaning before we move again, and I found these, a souvenir from a trip my father-in-law made to Egypt a while back. The money looks much older than the trip, faded and rather romantic. I have something even neater than these from Egypt. It's a postcard on soft, cottony paper; pale blue, advertising in English a perfumier in Cairo called Samy and Son. I have no idea if Samy's descendants are still selling perfumes--I found the card as a bookmark in an original 1918 edition of Sax Rohmer's Tales of Secret Egypt, though it was probably placed there at a much later date than the book was issued. I'd like to think Samy is still in business in some form, putting sandalwood and myrrh into delicate glass bottles.

Another photo from Friday night's car show. I shook hands today with Fritz Henderson; and I did not bring up the topic of the folly of having multi-function buttons to set the clock on the Saturn. I did wish I had brushed my hair before I met him. (My car does not have AC so I was driving with the windows down, which does weird things to my hair.)

This is Miss Peony, and she is an Angel of Dream Qi. I swore I would never buy another AoD after my first doll, but here I am with two of them. In my defense, Qi is adorable and has elf ears; and she was inexpensive, yet beautifully made, and poses well. A couple more pix from yesterday. I could have taken pictures all day at the lawn ornament place. And there was a live frog in a duck pond at the side of the ornament shop: And another one of the dogs at Waterfall Glen. This one refused to get wet.