Random Updates, the Sale is Coming

     It's funny to me what is super important at one time and less important as time goes on. I have been bad at keeping up with blog reading. Like, really bad. As in, I think I haven't read any blog posts in 3-4 weeks. I have, again, been very busy, in some ways that I have always been busy, and in some new ways. I check my posts once in a while to see if people are reading my blog. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. And I am OK with it if they are not. The post about the really excellent weather weekend and our time in the park has gotten relatively few views. But it's not hobby related, it's not scandalous. It's not a tutorial. There are people that seem to enjoy the glimpses into my life, which is all they are, very few people actually know a whole lot about me, but the more popular posts are hobby related. Which makes sense, this is a hobby blog for the most part. And I will get caught up on my blog reading, maybe even this weekend, as I said, I have been busy. 

    Every morning I get up and meditate (I bet that's something you didn't know about me), and I do some other things for myself. Wait, that bears repeating; I do other things for myself. That sentence right there is why I have not had time to read blog posts and part of why I have not been writing a whole lot of posts. Long time readers know that I have pretty much always put myself last. Self care, anything that was just for me, those were way at the bottom of the list. Those were if I had time. Lol, what does that even mean? There really is never enough time. And while I have meditating off and on over the years, I have recently made it a priority to start my day with it. Do you know what happens when you put yourself first? You don't feel selfish, at least I don't, you feel really great. Helping everyone else then becomes even easier, and the day weirdly seems longer. Or maybe that is because I really love my job this year. It's hard to say. What is easy to say is I am in a good place mentally. Unlike last year when, right around this time, I started teaching full time. While I do love teaching, I did not like what ended up happening. (quick recap: I didn't get the support I needed, was completely taken advantage of, and I had actual health issues from it). This year I am working with high needs kids and I am valued, supported, and in fact, still teaching. Not as the teacher, but paras who work with high needs kids end up doing a lot of 1:1 teaching. Even on the tougher days I have small moments of frustration, but they are so small as to be almost non-existent. It's really wonderful how good you feel when you take time to take care of yourself and you love your job. 

     Ethan asked me, the other night, how I could be so into my job. How could I go back to the really hard stuff that I have gotten past with Travis. I have a lot of reasons. One being, I am really good at it. I learned a lot to help Travis and now he doesn't need all that much help. So it's good to use the skills that I worked so hard to learn. I can also give them (the kids) back at the end of the school day. I am not immersed in all the really hard stuff 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. One of the biggest things I always think about is, if someone had worked as hard as I do to help Travis, could he have been a few steps further than he is. I can't ever know that, but I do wonder, and I will work hard to help these kids be the best they can be and as independent as possible. 

     Other things that have been happening, or sometimes not happening, are related to doll work. I do still make dolls, but I don't make dolls at the same pace I did for the last bunch of years. I'm tired. I like not working 60+ hours a week. Though I do still try to put in at least 10-12 hours a week on dolls. That doesn't always happen, sometimes I need a bit more of a break, but I do try. I also have decided I likely am not making any more of the miniature things anymore. Those are the things I have offered at my live sales for the past few years. Things like bareback pads, or dog vests, pet sets, saddlebags, and whatever other small accessories, I might make. Which means the things I am offering this time around might be the last of them. Though maybe I might decide to make some things, but if I do it won't be on any sort of regular schedule, and likely not a ton of each item. We'll see though. I reserve the right to change my mind. 

    I have a busy week ahead of me. I need to do a bunch of posts related to the live sale. I also need to add the claim codes to several pictures, schedule the pictures for the sale, make the schedule post so people know when to look at the page, lots to do. But I will get there, I am making progress. For anyone that hasn't seen my daily posts on Instagram and my Facebook studio page, the sale is this coming Friday, November 25th, at 3:00pm ET, on my studio page on Facebook. I know not everyone is on Facebook but I still have never found another platform that will work for the live portion of the sale. So it stays on Facebook. I hope to "see" you there!

Miniatures Club

 

     Well, I goofed. I had a couple of people cancel their miniatures club subscription, several months ago, I failed to take note of it, and I sent their October packages anyway. One of them told me about it, the other didn't. It's entirely my fault, I really should be keeping records of who has sent their monthly payment and who has not. Lesson learned, I am now keeping a record. I goofed. 

     So the October packages went out, including of course all of the international subscriptions, and everyone in the US at least should have gotten their items at this point. So I can share. Tier 2, which is one miniature in January, April, July, and October. October was this little trunk. Technically 1:12 scale it can still be used for 1:9 scale, since luggage comes in so many sizes. 

    Tier 3 of the miniatures club, which is either a handmade miniature, 2 miniatures, or an extra cool (more expensive) miniature shipped in January, April, July, and October, was a box of Ritz crackers, including a bunch of crackers! I love Ritz crackers (almost as much as Club crackers!) though I have not been able to eat them in years. Having some miniature ones is fun. 

    Tier 4 is the FOMO level of the club. That is where you get both/all of the offerings for that particular month. 

     Interested in joining the miniatures club? You can join on my ko-fi page. The ko-fi account is basically just a bit of donation for the blog, but I wanted to add bonuses, and I am especially glad of it because I have not been able to post more than once a week in a while. 

     Thank you to everyone who has "bought me a coffee", joined the miniatures club, or even just reads my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you!

Weekend Fun

    We have had a lot of really gorgeous, really unseasonably warm weather this November. I love it, but I know it won't last. This is New England and Winter is coming. Winter is always coming. But last weekend it felt like Spring. We decided to go out to the park to walk, hike, and Ethan brought one of his RC cars. I didn't know that this thing could drive through the woods, on these sometimes very bumpy or hilly trails. But it did. Most of the time. 

     I thought it might get stuck in the deep leaves, but it did a fine job. Travis of course never has an issue with any type of terrain. I'm pretty sure he's part mountain goat and could probably walk easily up an almost vertical slope.

     The park has a wide variety of things to do, including a disk golf course. I haven't been out to that park in a while and I didn't know that they had added disk golf, not that I play, but Crystal does so I at least know about it. Maybe some day I will try it. 

     There were LOTS of dogs in the park, which is unsurprising since there is a very large doggy playpen (in the photo below) where the dogs can run loose and play, without anyone needing to worry about them running off. There are also sometimes horses in the park, which you can also see in this photo. They were always really far away, but it was nice to know that they were there. 

     It was really nice to be able to get out and go and hike in the woods and wander around in the park in T-shirts in November. This weekend was pretty much just as nice, though yesterday it was super windy for a lot of the day. The warm, but not hot, weather makes me really happy. I know that layers and always being cold are coming. After today the highest daytime high is in the 40's. I know it is also just going to get colder and colder. So I made sure to thoroughly enjoy the unexpected nice weather while we had it. 

    As a reminder, I am holding another live sale on Friday, November 25th. I did a post yesterday with a lot more details about it. It will be at 3:00pm ET on my Facebook studio page. I don't have quite as many options as I have had in the past, but I do have a good variety of items. I hope to see you there!

The Live Sale is Coming!

      I have not held a live sale in quite a while! I think the last one was actually my last Black Friday sale. But in March I was teaching and just did not have the time or space in my brain to think about a live sale, or to make the stuff needed to make it worth anyone coming to it. When the school year ended I thought I would have more time and space in my head. Maybe August would work? Nope. It turns out I was super burnt out and didn't do a whole lot of doll work in the summer. There are times when I am really inspired and there are times when I am exhausted. This year has been a time of exhaustion. 

     But for sure, I am holding a live sale on Black Friday this year. For anyone that doesn't know what that is, it is the day after the US Thanksgiving. Though I know half the planet has some sort of Black Friday thing, not sure if they are all on the same day or not (and yes, 50%-60% of the countries in the world "celebrate" some sort of Black Friday according to Google). But moving on... Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving and this year is November 25th. I am going with a semi-live format again (I'll explain that below) starting at 3:00 pm ET. 

     I have mentioned my live sale a few times in the past several months, but didn't really pinpoint any details. So here we go. I am holding a semi-live sale on Friday, November 25, 2022 at 3:00 pm (eastern time) on my Facebook STUDIO page. Not my personal page. What do I mean by semi-live? It means that starting at 3:00pm I will have photos of items I have for sale going up on my studio page. Once the photos are live you can claim the items. To do that, all you do is comment with the claim code, which will be on the photo (you can check out photos from last year on the studio page if you are not sure what I mean). For the first 5 minutes that a photo is posted you may only claim one item from that particular group. If after 5 minutes items in that group (that photo) are still available, you may claim a second. This keeps it a bit more fair and allows everyone the chance to get something they are looking for. I will be publishing all of the photos (without claim codes) of each of the groups, in a blog post, when I am ready for that (meaning, when I am done making stuff). I will also publish a schedule of events with exact times that the different groups will go live. In this way, you do not need to have the fastest internet. If a thing is going live at 3:05, that is 3:05 (or the equivalent time in your time zone) for everyone. The way to get things is refresh quickly and often when it is about the time your wanted items come up. 

      OK, so I said how the claims work, but I didn't explain what semi-live means. Well, it means I will go live where you get to watch me talk to myself and read things off the screen, likely sing the alphabet as I make claim bags for people and sort stuff, and where there may potentially be trivia questions that you can answer. You do not have to watch the actual live portion to claim anything. You can just claim it on the photo when the thing comes up. The way you will know that you got it is I will love (heart) your comment. Which I will also say on the live who got what. After the sale I need everyone who claimed an item or items to message me on my STUDIO page, not my personal page, with their email address and the country they live in. Even if you are positive I have this information. That way I have an easy to follow list, in one place, and I know which shipping to apply to everyone when I do invoices. Nice and easy. I also really need everyone to pay through the invoice, that way it saves me a TON of time when I am doing shipping labels. Clicking "print label" is a lot easier than going into another program and typing in someone's information, or even copying it and so on. 

     Since I feel like I have slacked on telling people about my sale just a bit, I have decided it would be a good idea to advertise heavily in the next couple of weeks. Which means that I made 16 unique (different picture) Instagram ads, which will cross post to my Facebook studio page. Apparently there is a way to schedule your Instagram posts, but really, I have no desire to try to figure that out, since that apparently has to be done through Facebook, and makes no sense to me. At all. So I went old-school and I put a ton of reminders in my phone. So now I get reminded every day (it was at 6:00 pm, and I just changed them all to 3:00 pm) to post an ad on Instagram. Yes, doing it this way means I need to take about 30 seconds out of my day, every day, to copy the info from the ad from the day before and post a new photo. I can handle that. And I don't have to try to learn yet another new thing. 

     So that is about it, you have the basic idea for what a semi-live sale is, when it will be (date and time) and where you need to be to see the stuff or see the live, or both. In case you missed any of it, Friday November 25, 2022 at 3:00 pm eastern time on my Facebook studio page. Oh! One other fun thing before I end this post; I have a tone of miniatures, all kinds, and I decided I am going to have lots and lots of mystery packages! There will be two sizes this year! I am going to have the mystery boxes AND mystery envelopes. The envelopes will likely be (but not definitely) food items and drinks (I have so many!) and the mystery boxes will be a variety of mostly new items I have never offered for sale or in past boxes. Plus a few extra small things (like food and so on) that I have had available for years. I don't have an exact plan for how many of each type I will have yet, but I do have A LOT of miniatures and I do like blind bags/boxes!
 

Sort of a tutorial

     The reason that the title of this post is "sort of a tutorial" is because it sort of is. I am going to show you how I turn a small Yvonne (the 6" ones) into a youth doll. I have some photos, I'll tell you how I did it, but I am not going into exhaustive detail. I have no other photos and I don't plan on getting more. If you want to try this and mostly understand what I mean, but have a question, I will likely answer it. If you want me to explain everything again you'll have to get ready for disappointment. I tried to get photos that show pretty well what I am talking about and I have personally had success with these methods. I also have not actually shown in a long while so have not personally put one of these remade dolls through a live show, though I have played around with them and put them on horses for some photos and not had anything fall apart. So that all being said, let's get into it!

     The first thing that happens to any doll I work on is the body work. Every single doll gets at least some. Yvonne type dolls are great riders, but they do need a bit of work. Turning a little Yvonne into a youth doll is only a bit of extra work. A lot of people have found that the dolls don't hold together very well. It's true, and it keeps them from being a really excellent small adult or youth doll. Hopefully these fixes will be an easy enough way to make yourself one of these smaller dolls. 

     The first thing you want to do is take your doll apart. You are going to be dremeling and trust me, it is just easier with the doll apart, since it is likely to fall apart as you work. 

     You want to dremel off the boobs, dremel the inner thighs flat, and dremel off a bit in the armpits (not shown) this way the arms stay down a little bit better because the sleeve fabric has a place to go instead of just pushing the arm out. I also cut off the necks because I add a bendy neck. 

      One of the biggest complaints I have seen, and that I myself have had, is the upper body falling off the rest of the torso. It was super loose and there didn't seem to be a way to keep it on while still allowing the body to move as it was made to. Never fear, sometimes an easy fix is all that is needed. Cut a TINY piece of medical tape (the squishy kind like 3M, not the fabric stuff that is the more typical) and wrap it partway around the peg that holds the upper body on. You may have to fiddle with this a bit because it is definitely easy to have too much tape on there. 

    OK, the leg fix. The legs on these dolls do not fit well, they fall off of every single one I have gotten, and it is incredibly frustrating. Not to mention that once the doll is dressed it is potentially harder to get the legs back on. So I have another easy fix, though it's not the easiest to do. Take a small, flat headed straight pin (these are satin pins I believe) and very carefully stab it through the upper portion of the legs. This is not super easy to do. I use pliers, take my time with it, and am prepared to bend a lot of pins before I get it in correctly. 

     Once you have the pin in bend it down on the pointy end, as close as you possibly can to the leg. You don't want the head to be sticking out much. Trim off some of the excess from the pointy end and squash both ends closer to the leg with your pliers. 

    After that it just comes down to popping the legs back on, putting the rest of the body back together, and getting the doll dressed. Yes, it is easier said than done and does take some finessing to get everything together, and it is still possible for things to fall apart, but these fixes help keep things together. And it makes it possible to have a smaller adult Yvonne or a pretty nice youth doll option other than the Breyer youth dolls. I hope you found this sort of tutorial helpful!
 

Salem Night Faire

      Friday afternoon, right after I got out of school, I went and picked Elecktra up. Almost as soon as Travis got home we headed out. It was finally time to go to the Salem Night Faire! Now it didn't start until 5:00, but Salem isn't next door. Normally, it takes a little under 2 hours to get there. But not when your drive takes you through Boston right around the time that rush hour is starting. But it wasn't a bad drive, we didn't have to deal with too much traffic, the GPS took us along the coast so Elecktra got to see the ocean, which apparently she has only seen maybe twice (now I feel like a slacker!). So it was nice. We got to the Salem Pioneer Village a couple of minutes after 6:00 and started circling the parking lot, trying to see if a spot would open up. Eventually I gave up and drove to Salem University, which is where the overflow parking was. But could not figure out where we were supposed to park. So we went back to the Pioneer Village... circled some more, and eventually asked Waze to tell us where parking was. It sent us back to Salem University and I finally saw the parking garage (yup, I totally missed it the first time in). So we parked, walked the half mile back to the Pioneer Village and finally got to Night Faire. We ended up arriving right around 7:00.

     It was awesome!

     There were tons of vendors, including my friend AJ who is the entire reason I knew about the Salem Night Faire and decided we needed to go. There were also many characters, who were also basically living art pieces and fortune tellers. I had some vague concerns before we went that Travis might be a bit nervous because of all the "spooky" characters (some of them are quite spooky) but he thought they were excellent. I think they all have names, but I don't know what they are. 

    One of the spookiest (and most popular) characters, was this guy. Travis and I called him "tall spooky" for obvious reasons. We did not get a fortune, but we did go back to see this guy many times. He was Travis's favorite!

     We stayed at the faire until about 9:00 and then decided that even with our layers we were pretty cold. I also had a long drive ahead of me. If you have never been to The Salem Night Faire, and are anywhere within a reasonable distance of Salem, MA, or will be there near the end of October sometime, I definitely recommend going. It was a fantastic experience!

    I haven't been to Salem in over 20 years, and I have never been to the Pioneer Village. I think I will need to plan another trip in the Spring. There is a lot to see in Salem, lots of history, and Elecktra has never been to the Pirate Museum! We definitely need to fix that.

This week in dolls…

      Guess how many dolls I made this week??? Did you answer zero? Then you would be correct. Guess how many times I took out the doll stuff to work on it? Did you say zero again? It's like you know me! So yeah, this week I didn't work on dolls at all. Not even one time. On Monday I picked Elecktra up and brought her to do her laundry, while I was out doing my laundry. We had laundry races to see who could get theirs in the fastest. I won with my incredibly unfair advantage of having done thousands of loads of laundry. But it was silly and fun. We did some other errands, I pointed out the cost of meat and Elecktra almost passed out in the grocery store (not really, but food shopping is scary and sickening), and that was most of Monday. Tuesday I am sure I did something after school. I know it wasn't doll work. 

     Oh wait, back up. Monday night I finished the online portion of my restraint training. It was somewhere around 3 hours of videos and quizzes (stuff about Massachusetts restraint laws, some stuff that should be common sense but apparently isn't, and so on) and then Tuesday I had day one of my training. Wow, was that ever physical stuff! 6 hours, most of it getting down on the floor, up from to floor, going step by step through the restraints, then switching with our partners so they could do the same to us. So yeah, weird stuff. But I know how to safely restrain someone if it is absolutely necessary. I can do it without hurting them or myself. I know what it feels like (it's actually secure and pretty comfortable, at least when you are not already really calm). We asked tons of questions about different scenarios. So now we also have a much better idea on when physical restraint might be necessary. And what to do if we have to do it. 

 

    I don't ever want to have to do it. The second day was only 3 hours, but at least half of it, or maybe more like 2/3 of it, was physical stuff again. More practice with our partners so we could have a refresher, and we were tested on all the holds. And actually, that was happening during the practice, so it was not super scary, super formal testing. Just the instructor walking around making sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing. I can't say that I wanted to go to the training, but it was informative, and now I know more of what to do if a student gets very upset and is dangerous to themselves or others. Having the knowledge is good. 

    The very next day there was a kid in the cafeteria who was incredibly mad at one of the cafeteria workers and came in screaming and swearing at them. All I did was step in front of my student and watch the upset kid. I was not the only one in there, not even the only one in there who had just been to training, but it was good to know that I knew what to do if things escalated. Though really, I didn't need an almost real-life test the very next day! Other than that Thursday was uneventful. It was an unusual day and all the adults in the room got to talk a bit more than usual (one of the students was out and we are all very efficient, so it worked). Today started with only one student in the class, one very very late bus, and I volunteered to go work in focus. I worked with one of the students I knew peripherally from the summer program and then the student I worked with in the summer. Hands down, I prefer IAP. Though I was really happy to be of help and lighten the load a bit in that class. They have a lot of students and not enough staff. Which is a fairly common theme. 

     So that was pretty much my week. I think it was Thursday when I came home that I really did seriously consider working on dolls. And then I watched Encanto instead. I am pretty sure I must have done something at some point other than just that (the movie isn't THAT long) but I have no idea what it was. Today, of course, Travis and I went out for coffee and to visit our friend in her shop. We also have a whole lot of Halloween stuff coming up and I am pretty excited. 

    While I did not get any doll work done this week, partially because I just did not feel like it, I did get in my latest batch of custom stickers from Moo. I was running sort of low on the last bunch and decided I needed some new designs. I still don't really know if people even like the stickers, but it is super common these days for artists and businesses to send stickers with an order. And it makes me happy to do it. Plus I get to share some of my performance photos that way, which is also fun for me. Oh! I remember what else I did yesterday. I got all the packages for the miniatures club all packed up, weighed, and one step closer to ready to ship. I usually end up waiting until the last minute and then I don't ship them until super late in the month. Well, I haven't shipped them yet, likely will wait until sometime next week, but I got a nice head start on that job. And I am pretty pleased about it. Next week I will likely be able to talk myself into work on dolls again. And I will have a bit more to report on them then. Not a lot of it will be interesting, I am working on a batch of hunt seat dolls, but some dolls are better than no dolls.