It's been five years but let's post here again.

 I felt like a couple of things were missing in my life. One was old fashioned blogger-style blogging, and one was Keisha in my MAC collection. 

So, well, it's been five years, but let's catch up.

I've said it a few times, but I don't have these dolls to collect, so I'm a little bit picky about what I do decide to take. And by that, I mean that I want to buy dolls in really bad shape. I don't want to take a nice doll that a collector would want, because I want to have them to tell stories with and make clothes for. It doesn't really matter to me if I have all of Megan's accessories from the 2002 magazine.

So, anyway, I found a Keisha with some chopped up, ripped-out hair, over on Ebay. She's in the mail and on the way to me. While I was doing other things, I also got some wigs. I don't know if they'll fit, because instead of ordering wigs at an appropriate place and time, I ordered them at work, in the bathroom.

It's been five years, so a quick note: I've gone up in the world of entry-level sewing-related jobs. I now work _sales_ and get _commission_ and _health insurance_ and _OVERTIME_.  Turns out the major differences between working part time for the big box fabric store (which we call Green Store over on my other blog) and working for a small business that sells exclusively sewing machines is kind of a lot.

But I still want to come up with characters, and stories, and another world. And I want to make clothes for that world. I spent a long time building a world with my friend a long time ago, and I have been building one for the past few years, and it's time to start another world. As much as a tiny band that accidentally makes it big is fun, and time traveling androids just want to go to high school in the 90's is fun, maybe I can do another one.

You've been in a daydream so long that the dream has eclipsed the day.

So, I got a couple of wigs. One was a Monique Denise in carrot. Many years ago, I decided that the Monique Denise was the proper wig if I was going to rewig my Alison doll. Now, I really want that Alison to keep her thin little remainder of her hair. As a kid, I pulled all that hair out with love. I pulled out all her hair because I was a kid who brushed it, and who left her doll on the floor, and who tangled up the hair, and who harshly brushed it back out impatiently. All of that is part of what she is, like how all her limbs are loose and she can't stand up. However, there's a nice girl on the team who has a fun face sculpt, but who has some really awful saran hair that I hate. So my Megan has a new wig in the works. 

The other wig is for Riley, who was once the wigged Saran version of Alison. This saran hair that was used late in the life of this brand was genuinely awful. I cut all this Alison's hair off, and put on a different wig, but it's not really suiting the doll, and the story needs something else. So, Riley the name is staying. The rest, not so much. 

I'm going to see how this Keisha looks when she gets here. Hopefully, that'll scratch my "gotta buy stuff" itch that I've got going on, but who knows. Maybe I'll make another bad decision.

 

For doll tax, here's Helena right now, lying on my bed. I don't remember where she was before, but she now has a bra and some pantyhose (handmade) and then a very cheap BJD outfit that I got off ebay for $9. Her wig's been dyed a little bit darker, and she has some great and slash or terribly jointed hands. Great because they're wonderful looking and I can do so much with them. Terrible because, no matter how carefully I put her into her cigar box that I store her, she comes out with a minimum of one dislocated finger joint.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally owned up to having her for years and never making her an outfit. I feel like I like her so much better when she's got some simple clothes covering up her knees and elbows. She looks a little lot like Rick Astley, but I can live with that.

There is a map in my room, on the wall of my room
And I've got big, big plans
But I can see them slipping through, almost feel them slipping through
The palms of my sweaty hands....
...You say "I hate you," and you mean it
and "I love you" sounds fake
It's taken me so long to figure that out
I used to love the taste. I would do anything for it
Now I'd do anything to get the taste out of my mouth
And you seem so confident, but I hear you crying in your sleeping bag
But you were broken bad yourself, and you were mad as hell
You felt if you had done anything, with anyone else
it would have worked out so well
But you are an artist, and your mind won't work the way you want it to.
One day you'll be washing yourself with hand soap in a public bathroom
and you'll be thinking
How did I get here?
Where the hell am I?

She sees these visions. She feels emotion. She says I cannot go. She sees my plane in the ocean. And "What about your friends? Don't you love them enough to stay?" I say, "If I don't leave now, then I will never get away. Let me be a blue raft on a blue see. I'll blend right in."

If you're someone who set up alerts on this blog, please comment. Hello. Nice to see y'all. Welcome to the current home of at 30- or 40- year-old's Magic Attic Club Alternative Universe, population me and several inanimate objects.

The MAC living room:

I'll do real intro posts for these girls sometime, but at the moment I've got some shots of them in their little room.
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I'm lucky enough to be getting my own crafting room (at the cost of extra rent$ but Current Me says, "whatever.") and the temptation to not make half of it into a dollhouse has been fought.

I've done a terrible job of 1) making them all everyday outfits, and 2) changing everyone out of their party outfits.
So Rose and Megan are still in their Christmas outfits, and Riley, Heather, and Alison are in their whatever clothes.
I'm sort of torn between loving and hating that I accidentally made a Magic Attic OC. I've been considering rebranding her as Jane, but my entire knowledge of Jane comes from one cover of a book that they apparently never actually put out copies of and written by an author who is un-googleable:

I also sort of felt that Chloe was supposed to be Jane, so I might merge the two if I ever get Chloe (she's at the bottom of my WTB list, though)

Anyway, that cover and that blurb from the catalogue can definitely influence how Riley's personality is going, but for now she's Riley.
When I was a kid and had just unwrapped Alison, I wanted to name her after my friend from preschool because they both looked sort of the same. She ended up going back to Alison, but that friend's last name was Riley, so we're going to stick that name on Riley and call it good.
(It's been so fucking long since I've written here that I don't remember if I ever explained it, but Riley was one of the 2002 model Alison's with rooted hair. That hair was a disaster so I shaved it and gave her a wig. I don't actually like this wig too much for her, so she has another in the mail to see how that works out. Right now she looks like Alison Minus Bangs and that's not what I'm going for. It also doesn't help that it's a 10-11 wig and she's an 11" head, which is apparently too big for a 10-11 wig. It's not glued down and sometimes it just moves places, so forgive that in the pictures.

So here's half the living room. Due to their legs splaying when they're sitting, these dolls aren't always the best for displaying while they're sitting, but I think it's cuter that way. Here Heather is trying to braid Rose's hair, but Alison keeps sticking her bare foot on the back of Rose's neck to see if she'll notice that it's not Heather's hand.
Not basing this off stuff I did as a kid or anything.
Megan's got her hand pretty close to Alison's foot and is probably ready to grab it if Ali starts trying to cause too much trouble. Megan's sort of the mediator of the group.

Outfit wise, Rose and Megan are still in their party dresses, but everyone else is back in more normal clothes.
The main problem about buying dolls without buying extra outfits is that everyone has to share Alison's collection of casual clothes and whatever outfits they were wearing when I got them (which wasn't much). Alison also pretty much always has to wear a hat due to her bald spots in the back.

And over in the corner, wearing Megan's jacket and some hand-knit tights is Helena. Due to her being 50cm/19+5/8", she can share the 18" furniture pretty well, and alternates between living with the xtra tall Monster High dolls and the MAC girls.

And in the other corner, we have Helena, Ann Estelle, and Riley with her guitar. Ann Estelle is a doll sculpted by Robert Tonner, who did all the Magic Attic dolls (except maybe my Megan's face? It's hard to find info about things that happened when I was in 6th grade and didn't care).
Now that I look at this image, the thing striking me the most is that I've been looking for that bottle of window cleaner all damn day.

Helena has pants!

My room is a wreck and I'd like you to excuse that.

For those of you who don't know BJDs, its pretty common to sculpt them more anatomically correctly than, say, a Barbie.
This was a problem for Helena, because

• Things Helena has: a crotch with defined labia
• Things Helena did not have: pants.

And that was a bit difficult to explain to people, so here's her skirt.

The scale's off, which matches her oversize hat, so I like it. It kind of reminds me of arm knitting, that big craze we've got going.
The waistband's a sort of 4x4 rib. It's really 4x4x8x4, repeated twice. I wanted smoother hips.
The body's got a bit of expansion to get a bit more flare, and then there's a bubblestitch hem because why not.

I haven't woven in the ends yet, and I may never do that.

You might also notice that Helena poses very strangely. She was literally the cheapest doll that I could find that wasn't a recast. Her joints are more hinges than true ball joints. They don't even have a peanut joint. They look like they have a floating peanut, but the joint is attached to one part of the arm.

Her hands and feet don't have balls on them, either, so they move laterally but can't go up and down.

All in all, Maddie and Gooliope are a lot more fun to pose than her. I'm considering buying a resinsoul body and putting her face on it, because her face is quite pretty.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the Duffys I'm working on.