DollsArtCats

 I did this year's inventory (and I took photos too, but I need to resize them) and of course Sophie Cushion, Original Soom Beryl, is still the ruler of all the dolls. I do have 4 Beryls of various lineages, but Sophie is Queen. From left to right, Jeline, a Love Me or Die Beryl formerly owned by Lelahel (I keep thinking I should buy at least one Lelahel outfit that I see go by on Den of Angels, because I am sure Jeline misses her former owner's sewing skills); next is Lorina, a Beryl Haze of Phantasm (she was offered in purple as well, but I am happy with Lorina's pinky white), then Free Choice Beryl Zenobia, who needs her lashes curled and her eyebrows darkened; and of course Sophie Herself, the Original Beryl. (That was a dress I made for Jeline, and guess who stole it :D )

Daisy, Soom Agate; and her toes: And Artemisia, looking a lot like The Red Queen in Cat's outfit. No toaster stuff today--I had to re-read parts of some really great books by Lynda Williams for background for a new manuscript, and I ended up reading more than I intended because they are so good. I also accidentally uploaded a lot of my hard drive to FLickr's cloud by not paying attention to the uploading instructions, so now there are 6094 pictures floating on Flickr's cloud. Oh well.

Some of the older Soom heads that were on the old body are quite large--Cass, Galena and Cuprit are all pretty big. Beryl turns out to be just perfect. For this latest release of Beryl they did resculpt her Romantic head, but whichever head you get will look fine on the new body. A bigger headache will be restructuring the old hooves to fit on the new knees; they won't be able to swap legs because the stringing is so different in the hips between the old and new versions. Most of the height difference is in the extra leg piece, though the old body torso is slightly longer.

It went from ice on the pond yesterday morning, to having the suction cup on the window snowflake heat up enough to have it pop off the window-- and hit the floor with a bang and scatter little bits of crystal everywhere. It's above 60 degrees outside right now and the cat has spent most of the morning sitting on the back porch, watching birds and looking at the grass. I even opened a window and got a start on cleaning out the pond. I also discovered that ants love powdered sugar--J made some cookies last night and I thought that I had gotten up all the crumbs from the floor, but I was wrong, and this morning it looked like Disneyland on Memorial Day weekend. But the kitchen is very clean right now and the cookies were great--linzer cookies with bunnies: I also got the horns turned around the right way on Tara, and almost finished the dress for her--I think it may need an underskirt, though. Here's Herself: I also did some fan art for K, a portrait of Kili: and a sort of ...

Beachgirl's Beryl arrived today, partly disassembled and carefully wrapped in a box, with a complete outfit (that my other Beryl, Antimony, immediately stole). I feel sort of bad that I paid so little for her--she was in very good shape aside from some patterned fading from clothes. She was able to wear the first wig I popped on her and the eyes I had set aside for her, and I had no trouble sueding or restringing her (she had one continuous string and I like two strings on the tall dolls). Altogether she was one of the most cooperative dolls I have ever received...and I think she is so pretty. I need to find her some more pink clothes though--I put on an actual nightgown top thing I had in a drawer and the color is great on her: She is just standing there, by the way, with no stand and no fiddling!

Soom has just put up a teaser for a boy version of Amber--I have seen them done with the "classic Amber" and a boy body and they are cute! He has narrower eyes and it looks like more upright ears, which I like a lot. You can compare the teaser with this photo of the classic: I had this girl briefly, but discovered all over again that fantasy ears above a certain size are not for me, and sold her to someone who really, really wanted her... and who would not accidentally break off an ear during a photoshoot. (I was saved from this fate by the fact that Amber was on the couch when I was fooling with her dress, and faceplanted into a cushion.) So as a replacement for Amber, I finally broke down and bought.... This girl: Yes, Goldie herself. I'm sure she has a "real name" but Cat named her Goldie from the photos and the name is sticking--this is indeed Beachgirl's Golden Beryl. Beachgirl decided she had too many dolls (is that even possible?) and decided ...