5 posts tagged “shopping”
Back in January, I wrote a monster post about some dolls I have and some dolls I wanted and some other things; now I can write a follow-up, since I've been expanding my doll collection lately. (This will have to do as a post topic; I haven't been making much lately, really.)
I finally did get Pullip Veritas in May, for my birthday. She came from Hobby Link Japan, a great shop -- I totally recommend them. Much less expensive than on eBay, and because it was Golden Week and they were low on stock, I was able to joke about getting "the last Veritas in Japan!" (This is not actually the case; they restocked a few weeks later.) She's much prettier in person.
(HLJ is a perfect place to buy any of the kinds of things you'll see in this post -- including Re-Ment miniatures by the case box!)
I had some personal issues in May, and to cheer myself up, I wound up buying this:
I believe Light and Misa come with their respective notebooks (of doom), but L just comes with some extra hands (which, as the photos show, allow him to examine things and pose in some of his characteristic positions). The dolls are capable of assuming almost any pose that a real human might be able to. Here's a detail version of one of those shots....
It turns out that I have some old (bought in 2005) Re-Ment miniatures that are exactly the same type of cake that L is depicted eating. Serendipity! If I ever take him out of the box, there will be cake photos.
At any rate, two dolls in one month! Who can live at that speed? My next acquisition just arrived the other day, though I found her on eBay when I had a 10%-off coupon, and she came with free Pullip shoes, too... a really good bargain. She's another one you may recognize from January's big doll post:
She also has special eye chips, nicer (IMO) than the standard ones that my original Blythe had (I didn't care for the pink or amber-brown). I think these are special shades of blue, violet, green, and brown.
The trouble -- concern at the prospect of becoming a creepy old lady doll collector. I try to keep it cool. ;)
I wrote a post here the other day, but I haven't posted it yet, because I have been working (by which I mean, "not working") on some images for it. Here is an entirely different, inappropriately long post for you. Which took hours to write.
The following is Full of Win:
It's a collection of punch-out cards, all of which have red flocking on them (that's velvety stuff). Every single one looks like it was produced at some point between about 1950 and 1965. There are envelopes in the middle, which are printed and themed to go with the cards, but you have to assemble the envelopes. At only $5, I think it's a really good addition to my ephemera collection. (My mom is in her early 50s. When she saw the book, she exclaimed that it was just like the Valentines that were given out among her classmates in elementary school in the early 1950s, so it definitely gets the retro seal of approval.)
Through a combination of circumstances that would be wearisome to describe, I have wound up thinking of buying myself some dolls. I used to collect dolls and some action figures in a casual manner. I bought a blonde 1972 Blythe before they became popular again (or, rather, at the cutting edge of that trend), but my girl needed some work and I wound up selling her to a Japanese collector a few years later because I didn't feel like doing things like rerooting her and finding a new leg for her and etc, and I figured that being paid $1200 for the pleasure of letting someone else do it would be ideal.
Anyway, when I sold my original Blythe, I also had a doll from the first issue of Rosie Red, who is very pretty. (I still have her, but a lot of my stuff is packed willy-nilly in boxes, and I have no idea where she is.) That doll is now worth upwards of $400, and I've considered selling her and buying Rosie Red Encore/Again, basically the same doll for a lot less money. However, I can't remember if I ever opened the box, and I have no idea what her condition will be when I find her. (The Rosie Red photo is taken from this Flickr page.)
I quit following Blythe for a while, because my heart was won over by a similar, slightly less-expensive doll named Pullip. I think it had something to do with a few of the earlier releases of Pullip having stars in their eyes! So, I got my first (so far only) Pullip about two years ago: Greggia. (The photo below is from this Flickr page.)
There have been a few dolls in the interim that I would have purchased (like Papin and Assa and Paja and Savon and a couple of the related Dal dolls, like Sooni and Fiori), but recently I fell hard for another Pullip that I wanted to add to my collection: Veritas. She's supposed to be "a Venetian explorer," but really she looks like Pirate Pullip Mark II, or perhaps more accurately Restoration Pullip; the first pirate Pullip was Rovam, who was more fantasy and less historical-looking.
Now, of course, since Pullip Veritas was the thing at the top of my Christmas list, with little stars and hearts around it and a note that said, "Everything else is optional but this is the thing I really want; I don't even need anything else!" -- of course, that being the case, Veritas was the one thing on my Christmas list that I didn't get. I got a promise to purchase it in January, but I'm pretty sure the person who made the promise (who was overly generous to me at Xmas anyway) can't actually afford to blow $100 on a doll right now.
The problem is that I've spent so much time plotting my purchase and sending telepathic "please arrive early" signals to my paycheck that I've had ample opportunity to look at other doll stuff, and found myself falling back in love with a few of the newest Blythes. So now I could quite easily spend my entire next paycheck on dolls (I didn't say I would, just that I could).
The specific doll that has caught my eye is Welcome Winter; she just came out very recently. I realize that she looks a lot like Pullip Greggia, actually: essentially neutral country print dress, pale jacket and head scarf, light brown hair. Her hair is ashier than Greggia's. I love that she wears a rabbit pendant, and then the same rabbit charm is at the end of the string that you pull to change her eyes (usually it's just a ring or, maybe, a tab... 72 Blythe had a ring but I think some of the newer ones might not). She has special, non-standard eye chips: two different shades of brown instead of a pink and an orangy golden brown. Before someone who has actually seen a photo of me gets around to saying it: yeah, when you display her blue eyes, she looks as much like me as a Blythe is likely to ever look. Maybe my hair isn't that dark. (The photo below is from this Flickr page.)
I have been looking around, though; I also love the following, and could be happy with any of them... in spite of their lack of a rabbit pull-string charm:
- Dainty Biscuit is very Victorian Princess (and not particularly hime-loli, I think), with long, wavy, light pink hair. To match her dress -- like you do. (Well, when I had pink hair -- darker pink than that -- I tended to have to match my clothes and lipstick to it!) She also has special eye colors, like purple! (Dainty Biscuit Flickr Pool.)
- Enchanted Petal has a dress that actually looks like it could have been decorated with candy sprinkles, and has light aqua-colored hair. She also has special eye colors. (Enchanted Petal Flickr Pool.)
- Pullip Prunella is one of the very newest Pullips; she is a special collaboration with h.Naoto, a Japanese street fashion brand (IE, very "alternative") and comes with a small human-size h.Naoto tote bag. Dal Hangry is also part of this line. These were hard-to-get in pre-order but for the moment people seem to be selling them for reasonable prices (more like a Neo-Blythe than a Pullip, but not too high).
- Pullip Blanche -- I don't like her outfit, but I do like her face paint and wig, and the wigs are interchangeable, so it seems like this might be one to buy naked on eBay at some point.
- There's a whole line of inexpensive re-releases of 1972 Blythe by Ashton-Drake, and there are several I'd like from that line (Medieval Mood, Lounging Lovely, etc).
- I could go on forever.
The worst thing is that I want a BJD really badly, have for around 5 years, probably an Elfdoll Lishe (here's a brunette Lishe and a blonde Lishe), and I was going to save up for that because it's like $600 and I really shouldn't buy it to begin with, and my plans are in ruins! I also need bookshelves! Egad!
I've left the role of Alice Cherry Blossom: Ballerina out of all of this; basically, I was going to buy her, instead of the Pullip doll, until I realized she's only five inches tall. Yeah, for $300, which was a stretch for me to begin with... when I thought she was more like 9 inches. She's cute but she's not that cute (that's like $60/inch!). Deciding not to buy her was what made me start to think about picking up Welcome Winter or one of the others.
Of course, the crafty application of all this is that I can customize them practically infinitely, and if you don't believe me, look around the Flickr groups I linked. When I had my 72 Blythe I didn't make clothes for her, but I did dress her in Skipper clothes and tote her around with me for a while. Now I've upped my game with some Re-Ment miniatures and so forth, and am working on getting or making or customizing some tiny furniture.
(The other doll thing I am super-bad at: I tend not to give them individual names. My Pullip Greggia is Greggia, which I pronounce "GREH-jee-ah", my Blythe was always Blythe, Rosie Red Blythe is Rosie Red, etc. Everyone else's dolls seem to be named things like Molly and Wren. If I ever got that BJD I'd probably just call it Lishe.)
All that aside: we are getting the sub-zero temps that have been sweeping across the Midwest this week. I just got a weather advisory in my browser that suggests that I cover any exposed skin before going outside. I tried to put the dog's sweater on her before I took her out this morning, and she was having none of it, trust me.
Finally, a few interesting (totally girly and appropriate for this post) art links:
Macoto Takahashi: Ultra-shoujo manga style, and I mean retro-shoujo. In 2001 I bought a little cardboard sliding-drawer organizer box at a NYC shop called Air Market that sold imported Japanese stuff; it had one of her illustrations printed on it. I also got some rub-on transfers of her art there at the same time (I gave one packet to a friend). I had no idea what the artist's name was until now.
Annika Wester: Sort of a cross between Jeffrey Fulvimari and Edward Gorey. Her official portfolio doesn't have a ton of stuff, so also check out this Annika Wester page and this Annika Wester interview (where they also bring up Edward Gorey; glad it's not just me).
My fiance is terrible at saving money to buy Christmas presents for people; therefore, he is running a sale. The "Chukthula" print in this set was featured on Juxtapoz's website in the last few months. His work has been published by Oni Press and IDW.
Some of the prints are also available individually; they are printed on thick, glossy paper. Visit his Etsy account to browse or purchase. He also has originals available, which are not on Etsy, and takes commissions for artwork, too.
Oh, dear. So now my fiance, who I have depended on to be the Hauler of Stuff throughout our relationship but particularly since our car accident (he wasn't very injured, and healed quickly), has hurt his back.
Worse, he has no idea how! It's been bothering him mildly on and off for the last week. He drove 90 minutes each way on Thanksgiving Day, sitting in an uncomfortable folding chair most of the day in the interim, then on Saturday and Sunday, he exhibited at a convention where he also sat all day on uncomfortable chairs.
He takes stuff into the con, too, but the thing I can think of that is most likely to have injured him is his Tub O' Original Art For Sale, which is so heavy that I can't even attempt to pick it up without pain. (It's several hundred sheets of bristol board, around 12x15ish.) Don't know, though. There was no moment where he did something and then thought, "I shouldn't have done that."
He has lots of good drugs from the doctor, two days off work, and a heating pad that I lent him after his appointment this morning.
On top of all this, as mentioned in my last psot, my dog has been sick this past week. Not too horribly sick, but she had a bladder infection and a yeasty ear infection. She's still being treated for both. $400 so far; I took responsiblity for half of it. *groan*
I found the missing library book I mentioned in that post. It was right where it should have been, in my stack of library books on the part of the bookshelf that I reserve for them, only I couldn't see it. It was between two larger books. I was looking at the spines, and the book I sought was pushed back a little, so the spines of the larger books met around it! You could only see that it was there by looking at the stack from a different angle.
Button Angst
And now, to the title of the post!
The other night, as a Present To Me, I ordered this purple cashmere v-neck cardigan and the matching tank that you can see in the picture. They were on sale ($60 total), and I like to be warm in the winter. It isn't here yet.
I've heard some bad things about this year's Target cashmere (like, "it's thin and itchy"), so we'll see. Last year's was great. Eucalan wash -- I use the lavender version -- helps soften most protein-fiber clothing, and you can also use a bit of diluted hair conditioner on cashmere to soften it further, as long as you can stand the conditioner being against your skin.
It seems as though the buttons will color-match, but they look whitish in some of the photos, and it's difficult to tell whether they match or not. They might have picked up a flash reflection, or they might just be light-colored buttons.
I love the intaglio/lens/cabochon buttons made by Winky and Dutch, which are a picture under a clear dome set into a metal backing and which the company itself seemingly only sells to merchants. Some time ago a friend's cousin added an entire set of their pin-up girl buttons to a sweater she had de-and-re-constructed for herself.*
It looked really cool, but the buttons themselves are pricey, as buttons go, and not all that easy to find. I'm more likely to buy something in person than to mail order it. For example, somewhere -- still in the mess of boxes from my last move -- indifferently packed by the worst movers ever, and not labelled -- I have W&D barettes, the "Sad Puppy" design in a hair-pin setting, from a shop I used to go to. Their other jewelry is not too difficult to find.
So, I noticed that ReproDepot has been having a sale on the W&D buttons, which they sell at a decent price to begin with, most of them in two sizes. It seems like they might be trying to sell through their remaining stock. The selection has decreased over the last few years; they used to carry many more "sets" than they do, IIRC, and a lot more single-button designs.
The problem is that my sweater, assuming I even want to replace the buttons on it, has five buttons. I don't like either of the Sci-Fi collections enough to buy one; I wanted the Robot or Tourism collection. No robots to be seen, and they only have a few of the Tourism buttons, one of which doesn't really match the others.
I was going to get London/Tokyo/Hollywood/Miami, all of which have blue skies, but the only other one available is Brooklyn Bridge, which doesn't. Pegasus would have been OK as the fifth match, but it was unavailable in the smaller size, about 1/3" or so, that I needed. This is the size for "shirt" buttons. There is a larger size, more like 3/4", which would work for stuff like chunky handknit sweaters. I have at least one or two of each, but not enough to work for this project.
Some searching took me to EQuilter, which has tons of cool stuff and seems to be the only other regular online merchant of these buttons. They have a larger selection (with a few more designs at the "previous page" link), but they only sell them in sets of three -- usually three of the same button, but sometimes three thematically linked buttons -- or in larger sets. They do have the robot set.
They charge, however, much more than ReproDepot does. The buttons I wanted are around $1.50-$2, depending on whether or not there's a sale, at ReproDepot. They break down to over $3 each at EQuilter, probably because they only sell the larger size (it seems). This is a lot more than I want to spend on potentially putting wacky buttons on a sweater (even $1.50 is possibly excessive, but I've wanted to do this for so many years that I was willing to go for it).
End result: I bought six Tokyo buttons from ReproDepot for about $1.50 each. The other one I really liked was London, but I didn't think that mix-and-match would work unless each button was different, which I couldn't manage with ReproDepot's current selection. Since the sweater is purple - if I use it on that - the Tokyo design both seemed like a better match for purple and more appropriate in terms of color scheme. (Purple and sky blue seems more "Japanese" than "British", right?) Obviously, I bought one extra button "just in case."
It being Christmas, and having already bought the sweater set, I had to completely ignore every other thing I want from ReproDepot. (At the last link, it's the Ayumi Uyama felt animal kits: I like the deer, rabbit, dog, and duck, in order of preference. The Minigurumi kits are all pretty adorable, too: they look like designs from a book I have, Mame Wanko, which is all about tiny fabric dogs and their accessories.)
A Mysterious Yarn-Related Project
The other crafty thing I ordered lately was Lang Mille Colori yarn in color number 68, a sort of earthtone mix. Mille Colori is a self-striping wool/acrylic blend. #68 is on color chart 2, at that link, the strip on the far right.
This is for a mystery project for which I wanted a relatively tough self-striping yarn, worsted or bulky, with non-garish colors and thin, rapidly-changing stripes.
I looked at a bunch of Berroco yarns: Keltic (stripe pattern too long and subtle), Jasper (composition made me worried it would pill, didn't see an appropriate color scheme, stripes also too subtle), and Foliage (the only color I liked for the project had been discontinued, plus I was worried that the spin was too loose/uneven -- it seems that Foliage is basically Berroco's version of Kureyon). I nearly chose Keltic's "Argyll" or "Tartan" colors; my friend memorably described most of the other colors as "week-old stale vomit" -- ouch. I considered Noro Kureyon (too uneven) and Big Kureyon (not the right colors for this project), and Rowan Tapestry (DK weight, too drapey).
I found Mille Colori in a weird, serendipitous way... it kept popping up in Google Image Searches, then also popped up when I did a search on "self-striping" and variations of the term at the site where I almost ordered some Keltic.
I hope people like this thing when I'm done with it, because I really have agonized over the yarn. If it goes right, it'll be a free pattern. If not, I will cry real tears of tears: I've been planning it for months, and I'm putting off another project to do it, and as I mentioned a few posts back, my last attempt went really wrong.
* The same girl, who supposedly didn't even particularly like me, gave me this great pair of black Doc Martens oxfords that I wear to this day. They were almost new, but she was moving and wanted to travel light, packing most of the stuff she was taking into her soft guitar case around the instrument itself. The shoes were too weighty and bulky for her to take. I still think of her gratefully every time I wear the things... and last I heard, she was doing OK.
First of all... the lack of posts around here is illusory; I've been working on filling in the archive with content from my old blog. I also wrote a FAQ, but haven't posted it publicly and wanted to look at it a lot more before I do. (Sometimes my sense of humor doesn't read well on the internet.)
Last night I actually went to the craft store and spent money, which is notable for two reasons. One is that I never have any money. The other is that I don't usually go anywhere alone, particularly since that car accident a few months back, and since nobody ever wants to go to the craft store with me, I haven't set foot in one in a while.
So, this was a trip to Jo-Ann Etc, where they're having a big sale. I went in armed with the usual 50% off coupon from the mailer. Nothing I bought was earth-shattering, but I thought people might like to come along with me for the ride anyway.
I was looking for this fabric, which I saw there a year ago, couldn't afford, and haven't been able to find in a store since. It's by Alexander Henry and it's called Star Sign. It is my number one fabric crush. One day I will get a yard or two of this fabric and make a tote bag or pillow or quilt or something, and then the madness will end. I'm not even into astrology; I just like the style of the illustrations. (I borrowed these photos from Cia's Palette, to avoid direct linking.)
Can you see and feel the cuteness? CAN YOU? At any rate, I struck out again this time. It doesn't seem like they've restocked any "hip" novelty prints (Alexander Henry, Michael Miller, etc) since last year, alas. It's a good thing I picked up "Mini Calaveras," below, at that time, in a pink colorway: I could only afford one yard of fabric, and I was looking for something to line a small purple bag with. "Mini Calaveras" has gold glitter accents just about everywhere that looks yellow in the scan. I didn't pick up the pink and white "Flora de los Muertos" faux-lace pattern, either, and I regret it.
I still haven't lined that bag, primarily because I now want to use the pink "Mini Calaveras" in a much more visible manner. It's so cool that it would be a shame to hide it. I think Alexander Henry is my favorite fabric designer.
But the subject of this post is supposed to be last night's trip, and all I'm saying is that they didn't have any of these fabric designs that I was looking for, so I left the fabric department and headed for patterns. Butterick patterns are on sale for 99 cents, but it happens that all the patterns that interest me right now are by Simplicity. I looked at a few pattern books for a while, then moved on to yarn. Well, I detoured in scrapbooking and beading, but wasn't really into looking at those supplies last night.
I have a serious lack of basic, plain, worsted-weight, solid-color yarn in my stash. There are amigurumi I've wanted to make and/or design, but I haven't been able to do anything about it due to the sheer scarcity of appropriate yarn at my disposal. I wanted to take advantage of the sale to remedy that. Unfortunately, I was completely unable to make up my mind, and running out of time, so I ended up with a skein of ecru Red Heart Soft and another of Mushroom brown Wool-Ease. Not very exciting at all, but appropriate for things like bunnies and deer and Totoros.
Knitting needles and crochet hooks are mostly 40% off, but a few were on clearance. The clearance needles were Jo-Ann's store-brand tubular plastic needles in very large sizes. They normally go for about $7-10, but are currently less than $2. They have #17, 19, and 35 for sure; not sure about 15 and 50. I've needed some #19 needles for a while, to knit a single small project, so I picked some up. I don't know how the quality is, but since I'll only be using them for a few hours, I'm not too concerned.
Sugar & Cream kitchen cotton was on sale for $1.79, so I picked up three balls. I've wanted to make some washcloths for a while, not because I enjoy washcloth knitting (dear god, NO), but because I like the finished product. When I finish these, I probably won't even post them here, because they're really not the sort of knitting you brag about much. My favorite pattern is the plain, diamond-shaped garter stitch one with a square of eyelets around the edge, because the first knitted washcloth I ever had - made by a relative - was in that pattern, and I think it has an elegant simplicity, as utilitarian household items go.
I bought this yarn because I have it in an unbleached shade, but the pattern is so mindless that I can't actually bring myself to use that color... YAWN. I made it in a purple/berry blend a couple of years ago, and that was tolerable because I at least got to see the color blend happening. Solid beige yarn requires something much more difficult, maybe a lace swatch.
Anyway, here are the colors I chose: Swimming Pool, Summer Splash, and Beach Ball Blue. They go together pretty nicely, and they will go with my bathroom gear. Erika at Red Shirt Knitting did some "garterlac" cloths with what looks like the first two.
The store was about to close, so I only had time to pop into the embroidery department to pick up a pattern I've wanted for a while: Clover's "Animals." Clover's patterns are made for their punch embroidery tool, but they're just heat-transfers like any other embroidery patterns, so you don't necessarily have to use them with the tool. I like Sublime Stitching's patterns as much as the rest of the kids do, but these Clover patterns are also very appealing, have a different, quirky line-drawing style, and are maybe not as hipster-trendy. They're identifiably craft products from Japan, with the cute style that implies, but you can probably actually buy them at your local store! (Or you can, indeed, buy them at SuperBuzzy.) This pattern retails for $3, so I used my 50% off coupon on it and got it for $1.50. Almost everything else was on sale!
No time, alas, to look at buttons and patches.
Total spent? About $15 for 5 balls of utilitarian yarn, a set of #19 needles, and an adorable embroidery pattern. This satisfied my desire to add a few little new things into the mix, without completely breaking the bank.
Here are the other embroidery patterns that I know of in Clover's line: Kitchen, Garden, and Flower. (All the Clover embroidery pattern pics are lifted from the Hancock Fabrics site.)
Have you gotten any craft bargains lately?
