Isley the Free-Choice Vesuvia..Sort Of

So this is Isley, whose head is a slightly modded Granado Venus. Her body is one I bought from Gus, though "bought" is kind of the wrong word for something that was basically a gift-with-postage. The Free Choice Vesuvia used to be MissAlly's, and after she passed away (much too soon) Gus inherited her very large stash of dolls and has been gradually dispersing them since then. He very kindly strung her for me, but I wanted to blush her tail, and somehow the tail hook had gotten lost and Gus made do by looping the string through the tail tip, which is super if you never ever want to take the tail off again, and I am sure that is exactly how he felt after he had strung it together. The problem is that both the leg holes are much smaller than usual, AND the top hole is sort of a tiny slot, so getting into the "tail compartment" is..well, a pain in the ass. First here is me making a little hook for the tail tip:

Then this is how I think the tail is supposed to be anchored. You have to put the tail on before anything else, because you can't see what you are doing when the legs are on. Even with the legs off, there is a lot of groping around in there with a crochet hook trying to grab the elastic:

You put on that little ring and then, with great difficulty, tie a knot to keep it on inside the body. Make the knot small because it has to be stuffed into that narrow slot. The elastic loop is roughly 50 cm long when open, but a lot depends on the stretchiness of the elastic and how wide it is. You can pretty much bet that you will get the length wrong the first time you do it--you can't make it too tight or the tail will curl up strangely, and too loose will make the tail droop sadly. The pieces are numbered, though: "1" is the first one that touches the body;this for no reason, is 2, just so you can see where the numbers are:

Finally, I had sprayed and painted the tail pieces, sprayed them again, and then got them strung together after a lot of struggle, then managed to get her head on (she was strung very tightly)... and then this:

"Where does this piece go?"

Luckily, I had put that hook in the tip, so I was able to just take the tail tip off and put it in the right place on the tail, and hook the tip back on. Here she is all together but her Scorpion Heels (which I can't find at the moment, they may be in that pile of stuff in the back).

Dressed up and out for a walk outside:

OK tail blushing (since it chips, I didn't do anything fancy):

I'm so happy to have her! I love how different she looks from Claudia:

I was also impressed at how well she fit on the Soom body! Oddly enough, she has a lot of clothes because I have bought and made Selket (my original FC Vesuvia) all kinds of clothing, and Selket is happy to share. I just need to find those Scorpion Heels.