May Day May Day—yoo hoo!

Friday, May 1 

is the opening day of the 

Dolly Diva Design Boutique!

    How fun is that!!! I have a whole plan planned it is as follows:

        Although I will be keeping a doll or two or six for myself, all the other dollies will be looking for new adventures and new horizons. They will be wanting to take their wardrobes with them, of course.

     Okay, here's what you do if you are looking for something in particular and want to get in touch with me other ways than writing to the blog. You can send me an email at 'ladymacregor at gmail dot com'. However, I only go there once or twice a day so please be patient. Of course you can leave a message in the comment section at the bottom of this post but that's pretty public. Just write to me at the email above and I'll get it. I'm also on several doll lists. However, if you write to the blog and ask that your comment be kept private, I'll do exactly that. 

      

(By the way, I need a replacement body for Madra. I will trade a reasonable trade for anyone who has one, we eat our own shipping costs.) 

Here follows a list of stuff I have my hands on right now:

    • Kentucky Derby Gene dressed in a green silk outfit w/ hat, gloves, purse, stockings and field glasses.

    •  2 horses w/saddles, saddle blankets, and so on, 1 trophy, 1 rose blanket, 1 bouquet (maybe two but not sure yet) of roses.

    •  Gene's racing silks, cap and boots.   

    •  Lots of paper things like cards with the horses in the races listed, etc. that are miniaturized copies of the real things!

    •  All my Trents except one­—the one in a tux—so he’ll have to go to other “studios” to find work! One of him has, wait for it, "flocking" hair!

    •  Ms. Gene, is tied down in her hatbox unscathed, though the hatbox was well and truly trashed by UPS on its way to me from the convention (which I couldn’t attend!)  {:(  I have made a sort of repair job with scotch tape. Anyone with patience and skill could repair it nicely and neatly should they so desire. It is only apart at the seams.  I don’t have the time to do the repairs myself. There will be no charge for the hatbox except if it is a couple bucks more for the shipping.

The Dallas Gene painted by Brian Bulkley 

• The Dallas Gene gift doll with a short, curly Gina Lolobrigida type "do" in a slinky white mermaid dress with red lined cloak (below), MIB only opened to look at and never seeing the light of day since Dallas 2006. 


 I am graduat-ing now from the 16ish" ladies to the American Model Goth, 2012 version. I've finally found The One. She is the perfect size for what I want to do—which I have explained a little while ago on this blog—which is to miniaturize my concert gowns.    
     Here’s where you come in! To do all of the stuff I really want to do dollwise and otherwise, I need the space I currently have filled with all manner of dolly stuff I no longer can't or don't want to use. You get to see if there's something you want, get it/her/him and play with same so that the ladies who live here now don't pine away in their boxes—or make such an infernal racket with their demands I can't think—which will free me to do all my other stuff not to mention the space to do it in, but I will be sewing for those few dolls I have left and making patterns and like that. One big slightly worn concert dress can make many mini-dresses. See where I’m going with this?
      Now that you know how I plan to spend the second half  of my life—means living to age 154—you see why I am forced to make more room available while enjoying myself in the process. 
     Okay. Done. Stay tuned. I’m off to the doll mines! See you Friday, May 1 anytime after 9:00 a.m. Pacific Standard Time?I will be setting up a non-google site for myself—have the site but haven't developed it or anything. That's my next project. So for now, working through "Dolls For Sale", "Dress Making for Dolls", the old "HLAYG", or other sites. Just look me up on those sites and contact me there.

     See you soon!

Okay, y'all! Are you ready for 

DDD Boutique Opening Day?...

     The countdown is counting down! I am ready but sorta scared! It's like opening night—without knowing how the tickets are going! ;D What if nobody comes? Well, just like The Theatah, the show must go on, right? Once, when the orchestra went on strike—before my union AGMA, more of which later, was allied with the musicians' union (see? they call people that play instruments you can see "musicians" but those of us who have to rely on our own internal instruments, i.e. singers are called just that: "singers" but hey, that must be better than just plain musicians, no? Yeah!!)—Don Giovanni was performed with just two pianos as accompaniment. I was still in the "auxiliary" chorus (i.e. unpaid) and our services weren't needed in this small-chorus opera...so I just went to the rehearsals to watch. 

   

Sherrill Milnes

     Side note: the Don was played by Sherrill Milnes, a very virile and handsome baritone—which you can see for yourself—and of whom you will hear more at a later date, i.e., in another post, with another picture. Hee hee. At one point, escaping an angry father of one of his conquests, he swung across the stage on a chandelier from a balcony (part of the set) to a waiting carriage and escaped. Very exciting that, even without an orchestra!

     Okay, back to the subject at hand: Dolly Diva Design actual truly real Opening Day—and wonder of wonders, on time!!! One hitch. I don't really have any pictures to show you. Yet. I have to hit up the resident male (husband of all trades) to do the photographic duties. I will have to tell you, what I have unearthed so far is not a large selection. I probably would be better off waiting till a major trove has been unearthed in storage. However, I have been promising now for actual YEARS, y'know? Yes, of course you do! So I thought, just this once, [back of hand to furrowed brow] I should come through with a real live kept promise. 

       So it's here. It's now...well, day after tomorrow, anyway—I have Spanish class and Writers Group tonight in which I'm presenting a slew of me "pomes." Yeah. I'm into poetry too. I've never had just one subject of interest and pursuit. And just you wait till my novel comes out...and wait and wait and ... 

     So okay! Enough for now. I've got works to do, y'know? I will see you on opening day???

Confession Time: 

Wherein I Tell of 

My Former Life upon 

the Wicked Stage...

...and all the adventures thereon and therefrom, etc. etc. etc.
     I have mentioned before that I want to make miniature of costumes and concert gowns I have worn in performances for dolls I have gathered for that purpose. I have not, however, written in much detail about that particular part of my life so I thought I would do so at this point in the enterprise! Just to keep your attention, here follow some highlights.
     I have spoken to Luciano Pavaroti. I have walked in front of Placido Domingo and said "Excuse me!" as he smiled at me—be still, my heart. I have stood backstage waiting to go on—beside José Carreras who was observing the action. Yep, all three of the Three Tenors!
      I have used the dressing room formerly occupied by Maria Callas, the famous soprano, at the Ópera de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
      But the coup d'étage with which I am most happy? I made my operatic debut as Alisa in the Seattle Opera production in 1972 of Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti the companion to the other woman in the show, who was playing Lucia (the star, natch) Beverly Sills singing about six measures of duet with her at the end of her first aria.
      I got to do two more shows with her along the way—La traviata, playing Annina, her maid, tucking her into bed in the last scene of the show—just before she got up to sing her last high note of joy before dying and collapsing in a graceful heap on the floor while her Alfredo, whose name escapes me and I can't put my hand on the program at the moment, stands by helplessly until she falls then rushes to her clasping her now lifeless body to his chest and the curtain comes down—also in Seattle. The last time I worked with Ms. Sills was as the slave girl Myrtale in Thaïs, Ms. Sills playing the lead rôle—of course—as Thaïs, a courtesan who becomes a nun in the last act.
      My most exciting performance? I performed the role of Lady Macbeth in Giuseppe Verdi's version of Shake-speare's wonderful play in Mexico at Bellas Artes, their incredible opera house with the Tiffany glass fire curtain—breath-taking. The last of the two performances was broadcast on national TV, but I didn't wonder if they made a recording till very long after the fact—too late to find out, because earth-quakes, etc. They had not appeared to be preparing to record so I just assumed not and let it go.
      The only time anything was videoed I was in where one might recognize me, they shot me when I began my bit but panned past me to the star couple making their entrance—the subject of my three or four lines before I finished them.
     I was singing in Russian, the opera being War and Peace by Prokofiev, which I don't know how to write in Russian!
     However, here it is from Wikipedia: Война и мир (Voyna i mir).
  Singing Russian is one thing—it's a lovely  language to sing!—speaking it is quite another. It's difficult to learn for people who use the latin alphabet and grow up speaking English and hearing (also speaking a little) Spanish as I did.
      In addition to the Russian, I've sung in English and Spanish of course, as well as ten more languages—including Sanskrit (Satyagraha—an opera about Gandhi) which, like Russian (plus Czech and Hun-garian), I learned strictly by ear.
      French is probably the language I like best to sing in because it fits my mouth really well. I've sung the most in German, because I've done 27 complete Ring cycles in addition to other opera performances in German.
      Need I mention Italian? If you listened to the Three Tenors linked above, you heard the language in which opera (an Italian word meaning "work" as in a work of art) was first written. After all, they invented it!
      Now that I have completely gone off the dollies as subject and into the broad expanse of my musical life, I will explain how these two subjects are tied together into Dolly Diva Designs...but maybe the blog name makes the connection self-explanatory?
      As I mentioned, I did all those Wagner Rings, about 14 in German and 13 in English, plus perfor-mances of  the individual Ring operas: Die Walküre (Seattle Opera, 5; San Francisco Opera, 5; and Portland Opera [OR], 5) and Götterdämmerung (San Diego, 5). In case not, here is the connection.
     As a singer, I have also done concerts on stage, but also on radio but of course, I didn't have to worry about dresses for the radio only audiences! However, some of my concert appearances were recorded and broadcast later.  
     Nevertheless, I have a bunch of concert dresses to miniaturize, plus my original valkyrie outfit—when they retired the production, Seattle Opera costume department gave me my costume—so I have the original materials to use for a mini version! Is that cool or what!
     I have rambled on quite enough. Please forgive me. But at least now you know why I am calling this blog "Dolly Diva Designs"—no?

Hi peoples! News of sorts here:

     I am going to open up the "store" portion of DDD (that would be Dolly Diva Design from henceforth and forever-more when it appears within these pages) with not months and months of delay but, even if there is one, it will be merely one or two weeks at the most. I have had, this time, a perfectly legit excuse. (See February 28th post for an explanation). I find clearing out space is difficult when I am in perfect physical condition. With this knee-to-beyond-the-toes cast on the right leg, it is difficult in the extreme. However, tomorrow, I will be freed of this encumbrance! Is that wonderful? Oh, so very!! 

     I have been making great progress—just much more slowly than I had hoped. Clumping about on the encased appendage for the last seven weeks has been both awkward and tiring, so I couldn't work as easily as I would have been able to do in an able-bodied condition. Heh!

     However, I do find that when I am resting from my labors, I am still thinking of all the things there are to do...and coming up with what seem to me—before actually being able to test my theories—perfectly splendid ideas about what to do with many of the dolly items I am "unearthing" in this process. 

     I also have another "pusher" behind me. It seems that we are to have our kitchen cabinets replaced—all of them, starting the 5th of May—not my idea but I'll leave it at that.

     That lights an even brighter fire under me. If any of you all have gone through such an experience you will understand that statement! It seems a bit daunting to me to say the least, but I am promising that I will have something up on this blog before I do the prep for the kitchen cabinet thing. I'm thinking it will be something important like the ... WAIT! What am I thinking???!!! 

     Sorry. I won't spoil the surprise. You will have to read the official announcement—with pictures remember?—when it appears here as well as on the doll mailing lists. 

     So stand by all. I've promised not to promise anymore but just deliver! Will I? Won't I? The suspense? Building yet?