DollsArtCats

After tonight we will be at the mercy of the Comcast guy, who is supposed to come Tuesday and dig out the end of the cable from the basement closet, and move it to where the computers are supposed to be, and then configure it so we actually get the Internet again.

We decided we had to make an emergency visit to the Aquascape place, to see if the little koi in our pond needed food, and what to do about the algae, and if the pump had a filter, and what sort of water they needed. Everyone at the new house has been very mysterious about the fish. The former owner just assured us that "Jeremy" would know what to do with the fish without saying who or where this person was, and then flitted off before we could ask. There is still a lot of her stuff around the house, even after she came back to claim Thursday's collection of things. (I found a lot of china and battered silverplate this morning, including a celtic knotwork Lenox dish that I partly want and partly have no use for, since I don't usually serve my cranberry sauce in a Lenox dish and it does not match my only other Lenox piece, a Christmas mug.) So we thought we would go ask a professional about the fish, and drove to a former motel that now has ponds, fish, and fish su...

Yesterday we went and signed many, many papers at the title company. In return for a cashier's check of a couple of thousand dollars to cover odds and ends, we received the keys to the house. And of course we went straight over to see what it looked like, since the owner had still been shovelling out Tuesday under an enormous amount of junk. And there was still some stuff in the house--we started a box of items to give to the realtor because the former owner may want the sentimental stuff and the closet full of clothes in the basement. For good measure we are putting in the plaque with the Bible quotes and the plastic grape wreath and the stained glass cross. We expected to have the koi pond, though now we are a bit puzzled about it's care and maintenance, and if the goldfish have to be fed or whether all the weeds in there are supposed to be there. There is another fountain in front I don't really want, but it's a mystery as to how it is wired in there, and the o...

Lee the Cute here is a Juri '07 A (Juris are the Christmas gift heads, Nanuri are the summer gift heads); and I just saw a photo of the new Fairyland Nanuri heads--the A girl is much like a Sleeping Chloe with big elf ears, and the B boy is definitely a cousin of Lee's: They are cute, if you like sleeping/dreaming dolls; and since they do have a small opening it's possible there is an eyewell in there for modding. To get one you need to order 700.00 or more USD from Fairyland, which is like one 65 cm Feeple and some shoes, at the rate the prices are going up. Here are the details on the Fairyland site: 2012 Nanuri Heads Event Lee is still dragging around here waiting for Bird to arrive, so he won't be the lonely man out in all my doll crew. (I somehow managed to keep the number of boys and girls about even, as long as no one is too picky about height/odd animal parts.) Bird, aka Soom Tremo, might ship next week. I keep checking my Order Status every few hours.

(I don't have any lighting photos of my own, so you will have to make do with the fractal above (made with an old program called Tiera-Zon). Wallpaper size is here: Night Forest Fractal 1200x900 And here is the lightning video; it takes a few seconds to load, (press the start button) and all the action is in the first 5 or six seconds of running time--it's such a high speed movie that the return strike just sits there for the full 33 seconds: 33 second lightning strike

I love mermaids, and Soom has just put up a teaser for a cute little mermaid, in my favorite Soom purple, with little ears. The price is still unknown as Soom sets the price according to their cost, and not some set "this size is this price" metric, but I suspect she will be around 370.00 USD for the basic mermaid. My problem is that while I adore the little tail, I would rather have the little legs and make her a soft fabric tail, because Soom makes really nice mini bodies--the posing and jointing are excellent. While the little tail is adorable, it is pretty much just a crystal prop from what I can see. And it is not like there is any shortage of mermaids here already--I find them everywhere I go, even the Kane County Fair: On my bookshelf: At Cantigny: And on my hard drive! So I am not sure I need another mermaid, even a cute little one. With adorable fin ears. Here I will leave you with the best 1 minute 48 second mermaid song I know, by Flight of the Conchor...

I'm not really a fan of carnival rides, but this bungee bouncer looked like a lot of fun. The Kane County Fair had some pretty strange and wonderful things to do if you were tired of looking at animals, and under 30. Here is the "Freak Out": And why you won't find me on the Freak Out, though I would fit fine: If you just want to sit, there is Swine Racing Or Duck Racing: Or swinging with the Pharaoh (no, thanks).

And the other side of the street:

Here we have Guest Cat Mille, with her personal assistant Karl. Mille still enjoys print media, possibly because it is hard to sit on the new ultra thin monitors. (Photo credit Janet Kofoed)

We went to the Kane County Fair today. It was a lot smaller and less of a big deal than I expected, since we are on the edge of such a rural part of the country. But they did have the 4-H club and the kid's animals on display, and that was always my favorite part of any fair. And the cows were the best! They get lots of grooming before they go into the show ring. This was my favorite cow-and-owner pair: There was also a mechanical bull to ride: There were pigs, which are never too great to visit--they smell and they are just too much like people to be pleasant; There were rabbits,and horses, (which we skipped as being not exotic enough), and there were chickens: And there were...tigers? I thought the cages didn't look too strong, but the tigers looked well-fed and the weather was too hot for pouncing on humans. There were sheep: And a very patient sheepdog, waiting for his owner to come back, possibly with ice cream.

I bought a box of raspberries and there in the bottom was a small, dead honeybee. I guess when they say "organic", they mean it. Rather than waste the bee, I put it on a towel and took some close-ups of it, because how often can you flip a bee over to take a photo of the underside? I also learned that their abdomens are not solid, but have overlapping sections, like armor. That was a surprise, and they have long, reddish tongues. I knew they were furry from when I was a little kid and tried to pet one. The fur is soft, but bees don't like to be petted. Large Detail Photo Here

I have had (and sold) a lot of dolls--for one thing, you can usually sell a doll for what you paid for it, assuming that you bought a reasonable one to start with, and took care of it, and it's from a popular line of dolls. Since I was buying dolls off Ebay, I often got ones that were not perfect. Either I managed to fix them, or I would sell them again. This Shushu never had her neck mechanism work correctly, despite being restrung several times. I probably should have hot-glued her neck, but then I needed money and since she also had a "sleeping face" I sold her. (In the end this did not save me money as I eventually bought another Shushu.) Perhaps I am a "doll renter" at heart. I also had a discontinued Iplehouse SooRi and while I did not like the YID bodies at all, I did like his face. He lives in New Zealand now.

Fairyland has finally released pictures of the new 60 cm bodies , and yes, there will be Lishe heads as well as Chloe (Chloe always looks a bit cross-eyed to me.) The bodies look good--they are scaled-up versions of my Minifee Shushu's body and seem very posable. It also looks like they may sell them a la carte, which would be nice too. I don't need any boy bodies--I found the old Delf artist-painted body for Vittorio in the above photo in Texas, and though the artist thought I would take off her painting (it's a little chipped here and there), I liked it far too much to mess with it. He could use more clothes than just leopard undies, though. The El sculpt, which was supposed to be Lishe's brother, is also in the mix for the new bodies. I had an El once, and although he was perfectly nice, I never felt he was special enough to justify keeping him-- he looks cooler in photos than he does in real life, or at least mine did. Someone else was very happy to buy him fro...

I finally bought an orchid. I have been resisting for years, because I am pretty sure I don't really like orchids, it's just some genetic quirk, like the yarn. And once you get one, it uses some kind of mind control to make you buy more. (Much like dolls). However, this was a cheap one, only 10.00 instead of the usual 25, and the label assures me it is "easy to grow". Since I have no problem getting any kind of weird tropical thing to grow in the house, I'm guessing the orchid will do ok. I'm just waiting for the mind control to begin. My brother-in-law, who lives in Houston, wrote a note saying that one of his orchids has bloomed, and oh, by the way, the oak tree fell into the master bedroom in the last storm... but the plants were ok.

Fairyland , who is the official site of the Cerberus Productions sculpting team (the name always makes me laugh, yes, they have a lot of heads but none of them were dogs) is set to re-release some of the sculpts that they and Luts have been hassling over. They haven't released a list of which ones yet, there is just an announcement that they will soon start making them again, and 60 cm bodies to match. I could use two more "real" Delf bodies to go under the Delf heads I have, but I think that I will need to see them first--everything gets redesigned when they get reissued. Here are two other Lishe heads I had: The one on the left is an older type 1 from 2005, and the one on the right is from 2010. You can see how much narrower and smaller the Luts 2010 recast is, especially around the jaw. It's not quite a fair comparison since Amethyst, the doll on the right, is a modded Dreaming Lishe. (She's had her eyes opened with an exacto knife, not by me). I did se...