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!

Well, folks, never say anything for sure...

You know the part where I said I'd be finished with the doll room at the end of May? Ha! How about bronchitis and coughing my brains out for the entire month. So there you are. Nothing is for certain, is it? Phooey. I was loaded for bear but couldn't shoot even a mouse. Fortunately, there are no mice in the hice...uh, I mean, there is no mouse in the house. 

But I am now recovered (enough, even, to sing a solo in church this Sunday) so check here to see what happens next. I'm not stating any statements or promising any promises from now on. 

I've been trying to put this thing together for...let's see, how long now...would you believe five years? Whoa! A way long time, no? Something always happens. I suppose I should think that maybe it isn't meant to be but that's not the way my mind works. Especially if I actually really truly want to do it. 

There is one outfit I'm especially anxious to miniaturize for Miss Goth. Soon I will celebrate my fifteenth wedding anniversary. For that interesting occasion fifteen years ago, I made my own dress with matching headdress! Miss G. even has a wig that matches my wedding hairdo. Too bad I don't have a face that matches hers!

Sorry, this was just supposed to be telling you all about the interruptions in my plans....again! Sigh. So therefore I'll stop this installment of the Saga of Dolly Diva Designs and hope to see you next time with some new news. 

Hello, folks!

Sadly, it appears that my little laptop (Toshiba w/Windows 7 Home version) has bitten the dust on a permanent basis. It happened about 3 months ago but I was able to get it up and running by sacrificing everything on it! This time, being a learner (albeit a slow one), I put all my saving sort of things in a Dropbox so it didn't get lost. But sure enough, the Toshiba crashed again and this time refuses to respond at all. So now to make the decision: do I buy another Windows machine or return to my (much more expensive) first love—a Mac? I think it will be the Mac, expensive but more reliable. Besides I have three old G4s I can use as storage hard drives. They don't do Airport so I can't tie into the house wireless system without elaborate cables run from my computer area over hill and dale to my husband's server. Thus, I need a newer model. But I love Macs and have had them since my first in 1989 (gasp) until I had to have the wireless thing. Now, I will have my Macs and wireless too! In the meantime, I'm using the husband's machine. 

However, let's escape from the land of computer horrors to more interesting dolly-type things...

I am finally ready to put the doll room together. Are you amazed, readers mine? Well, you should be. It's, like, we needed another house to put our books in but we have finally got most of what we really don't need out of here and what we're keeping into the garage. A car? A car is supposed to fit in there? Who knew! Just kidding. This is California so we don't worry so much about cars in garages, at least not in our neighborhood! It's just a convenient, oversized junk room at our house which also happens to have a washer and dryer in it. But a car....? Not a chance! 

So far the books are in cardboard boxes but we envision shelves, to be much like our own personal library. Unfortunately, we will not be able to afford a librarian, though we probably would need two or even three! We both like books, you see, and I have several interests, dolls and vintage fashions (30s and 40s mostly), sewing, costume design, and like that. Then there are all the books on history and writing and art and music. That doesn't count the scores of scores (music, that is) which must find a home somewhere near enough to the piano so that I don't have to drive 10 miles to get what I need to learn for a gig, should one arise. All of the subjects require books, books, books and more books. I LOVE THEM. So does the husband and of course on different subjects so we don't share each other's books that much... You get the picture?

Oh wait. I did promise dolly talk. So I will invite anyone who wants to start a topic, ask me a question about the supposed boutique which has been promised for a couple of eons but which has yet to begin, or just talk about a pet project of your own, to make use of the comments section. I will be monitoring submissions so that we won't be inundated with spamish sorts of stuff and can stick to that in which we are truly interested, 'kay?

As for my own dolly stuff, I have told you that I am interested in making miniatures of my concert gowns. But I also have several Lutterloh sets from the late 30s and 40s which I want to try to make for my dolls. If I am successful, I will make copies of the patterns I use for the dolls and put them up for sale in the sewing section of the proposed boutique. I probably won't make more than one or two copies of the outfits themselves, as in sewing them—one for my doll of choice, the Tonner American Model Goth 2011, and one or two others  for Gene or Tyler to put in the boutique. 

What will go in the boutique first will be my excess Genes, Madras, and I think I'll even let my Violets go—at least one or two. Also, most of the clothes that came from Ashton Drake and a lot of the Integrity stuff as well will go into the boutique. I am more interested in my own designs, vintage stuff, and copies of my gowns than I am the original clothing that came on the dolls. I know they are lovely but one only has so much space one's life and abode, no? 

So my doll friends, do leave a note about what particular interest you have in these fashionable dolly divas...clothes, sewing, vintage stuff, design, what? I think a lot of us just still like to play with dolls. I know that's part of it for me. I didn't have dolls or toys much in evidence when I was a kid...too much bouncing about from pillar to post. Now I'd like to make up for that so when the larger ladies came to be, Gene et alia and then the American Model, I have stopped my searching and am ready to begin playing! And playing and playing and playing! 

The reason for the boutique is to share that play with other superannuated kids like me. If not now, when, eh?

Hope to hear from you all soon, okay?

Well, happy New Year...

Well, happy New Year...

only a few months late!

I've been busy, okay? May 6, I'm doing a "concertina" with my music buddy, Margaret Martin Kvamme, organist supreme (left). So I've been practicing and rehearsing to get in shape...again. It will be at the Presbyterian Church because, duh, they have an organ! It's only 45 minutes long and will take place after church. (picture by Roger Kelley Photography)

I love working with MMK. So when she suggested we do this, of course I agreed.

Also, we are moving to a smaller house (less housework, capische?) so I've been trying to figure out what to take -- very little -- and what to leave -- everything else! Books, music and dolls (which includes sewing) go. And the cat, of course. Gums (short for Montgomery) could not be done without. But nearly everything else is on its way to Recycleville. Or Freecycleville, should anyone care to come pick stuff up.

I'm not even sure the piano is going. I've had it since I was 15 years old and it has moved from Cincinnati where it was built to Panamá (City of) in the Republic thereof to our second and third houses in the Zone, from thence it sailed to New Orleans, then trucked up to Seattle to the folks' house, then up to Queen Anne to my apartment where it lived for 30 years. When I got married, it moved yet again to San José and now I must decide if its old bones can deal with another truck ride and a drier climate and survive with its soundboard in one piece. Doubtful. But how to say goodbye to such a faithful old friend? Ah, well. I'll think about that later.

I did make this little afternoon dress for Ms. Gene Marshall (a swap item) from a lilac silk and cotton blend blouse of my mother's that I have kept all these years because it was such a pretty color. I paired it with the print of black, white and lilac tiny flowers with olive green leaves for a bolero, hat, and purse. The hat is made reversible with a crown of print and brim of lilac on one side and vice versa. Then I took a piece of the print and frayed the edges, gathered it down the middle to make the rosette. To cover up the raw edges in the center of the rosette, I sewed on one of the buttons from the blouse, a lovely lilac real mother of pearl button and then put a little iridescent bead over each of the four holes in the button. It looks like a cockade, don't you think? I sewed a little pin-back on it to pin up the brim to the crown. Since the hat is reversible, it can be turned to have the print cap and plain brim showing with the print side pinned up but I think just the mother of pearl button or maybe three of them overlapping would be better to decorate the pin. I should have thought of it then, not now!

My husband usually does the photo part of this blog but he was busy and couldn't take this photo before I had to mail off the outfit. Can you tell? Heh! I think so! Compare it to the one above, which WAS taken by my sweetie. Pretty obvious why I should have gotten him to take this one! 

It be late, so I will say good night and see you a little later.