Only one of the above bits o' eyecandy have I purchased. Sigh. The internet is so soothing. Since the move last August I have a freshly sparked interest in pretty little things for the house. A girl can always shop, can't she?

Pottery Barn's Apothecary Bath Collection. Mrwowr.

Sweet Dream Tae (Tae!)... four sisters Yo! Omg, tiny Megu.

Um... *#&$*&^Q@#%♥!!!♥!!!♥!!!

:P

Also, I bought my first item for dollies last week at the VolksUSA february fair: cutest shoes of all time. I've been waiting for anyone to do little vicky-boots 4-evar.

Saturday my brother invited us over to Meathenge Labs for a little crawfish mayhem. The critters were shipped in live from Lousiana (he'll post about the vender soon I'm sure).

Volks has posted a sentimental history of super dollfie, contests and games, and a nearly complete sketch of their events for the year! This includes TWO US Dolpas for June and November. View: Super Dollfie 10th Anniversary Events Schedule

Dolpa3 in NYC.
June 7th - 8th 2008
Fashion Institute of Technology NYC, NY

In conjunction with FDQ. Registration will be through the Volks site, when they post it. It looks like Volks is beta-testing a new store interface on the Japanese side. Neat!

Also: greatest thing about the writer's strike? It sent us scurrying for downloadable content on the internet. Yay for BBC programming! Mr. Kallisti has been on a quest to get me mostly Eastenders (I died a little when they cancelled the series on BBC America), every available costume drama and mystery thriller airing. We just transfer it over via wifi on the TiVo and blammo! Plays like TEEVEE.

New favorite show EVAR: Phoo Action

From the genius who brought you Tank Girl and Gorillaz, Jamie Hewlett. Whitey with the red hair back there is wearing Buddha's magic underpants!

(gosh it is hard to get around to posting even when I'm in the moooooood! bizzy, bizzy!)

I've never had such a deep winter slumber. We had a marvelously wet and early spring, the above was taken in February. A miniature daffodil hill sprung up in the middle of the garden. While only a few flowers bloomed, there are dozens of the plants in an ancient raised bed surrounded by a stone circle. We've since weeded and now wait to see if any more blooms will happen or whether we'll need to unearth the bulbs come fall to put the daffy back in the daffodil.

We've started an absinthe garden and sprinkled the earth will drifts of california wildflower seeds. The herb bed I planted in the old stone pond has exploded, yay!

Apologies to those near and far for the silence. My inbox is a wasteland and I'll be touching base with all of you soon.

*stretch!*

P.S. Oh, see the new site design? I'm still sweeping up, more to come!

Stay tuned!

My winter has been all about low profile. We've had a rough and wonderful year, hard to take it all in. But now I'm hibernating in what little downtime I have. Work has been non-stop, so the quiet moments are like tiny baby birds that are easily squashed! I'm busy though, just not online much. Lots of writing and research, it gives me some awesome pleasure. Rainy days with small dogs and kitties and books and needlework. One is never too young to be grandmotherly.

And I uploaded a bunch of our pictures from the trip to London last June. Click thumbnails to be magically wisked away to Flickr!

Favorite:

Needless to say we are preparing fun postage for the severed head gallery. Woot!

I don't have them very often. Are my drag queen roots showing???

Aside from that, we've gone into production on a new website at work, which has me MIA for a while. That's why I'm looking at, uh... shoes. Hahahaha!

Kiss!

I'm looking forward to having another shot at the Salopette A&P outfit... but even if I don't win (the chance to buy) one, I still have this. ♥

I'm in love with the the Goth-Slavic-Bohemian winter look. Very different! I hope they have this stuff at LA Dolpa. And that reminds me... I'm so excited for Dolpa! Volks spoiled us with all those tea parties last year, I've gone into withdrawal. It is a good thing though, I would have been completely punished as this year we've been so busy/harassed.

I'm usually super good at picking out sculpts, but I don't know who this is (clicky here)! I'm in love with her face-up and lips. The only thing I can think of is one of the Rozen Maiden twins?

My grandmother! Kate Overstreet (Prince O'Brien) circa... erm, mid 1920's.

Ran across cousin Andy's repository of family pictures, and there are a bunch I'd never seen. My grandmother's family hails from just south of San Jose, in Hollister. They were fruit farmers... all those vintage california fruit crate labels? Casa de Fruta? Neighbors anyway. Yeah, that was us ^_^

I found these after the photoshoot I did the other day, honest! I was tickled to see this one of my uncle in a sailor suit and my great aunt Edith sporting it up in what even then was an old-fashioned bathing costume.

You can see a gallery of the Prince/Overstreet family on flickr!

I like to share.

When it rains (on the high seas), it pours (on the high seas). Everybody's got their summer sailors on. Ondine has dragged Lysander off to the sea side for his health. Miss Ardelphia is helping, of course.

The scenery is not google-sourced, I might add! An actual shot I took of the Brighton Pier last summer. (kisses to Alex--we miss you!) Please ignore the fall garden in the rest of 'em. Masking is laborious, and I'm not frugal enough to refrain from showing all 2837434 pictures of my pretties. Including Butter, of course, who was cavorting in the background throughout.

Anyway, some new pix of Astræa and Miette in the garden. Not good for showing off Miette's new face-up, or anything other than my sucking at the chiaroscuro with a camera :p But you can see Astræa's new dress that I somehow whipped up between hell & high water this summer. It is made out of three different scraps of embroidered edwardian batiste, over tea dyed seersucker. I luvs it.

And here, my lovelies, are my first plants planted.

We get coastal fog and are much breezier than most of California, but our yard is on a sun facing hillside and gets the full blast all day. So I'm going full-on mediterranean. Not intentional at first, originally just a matter of taste, until I started reading up on it and how all the hot, dry, low water plants (aside from native) that I've chosen are common med varieties. Just starting with the fragrant shrubs that I can eat: lavender, rosemary, with oregano and thyme in the tiny herb patch we're putting in what was once an oval pond!  About ten by three feet, there are still traces of blue paint. This was entirely covered over with dirt when we arrived, only much scraping has revealed it. I put in a little bird bath in the corner. We hadn't even gotten the lavender and rosemary in the ground before the bees and butterflies were fluttering. This garden is amazing. So many birds. We have four hummingbirds that hang out at our feeder, Mr. Kallisti (and Biscuit) can tell them all apart!

Yeah, so I'm a famous plant killer. One of the reasons I really need shrubs etc that thrive well naturally. I'm going to try to baby them to get them started. I love the smells already! Gah! It is a start anyhow, we'll be getting more top soil to pretty up the surfaces soon. Our nursery was out. Meh!?!?

And on that note, I'm cooking pasta with fresh garden vegetables given to us as a welcome to the neighborhood prezzie from one of our lovely neighbors.  We're the only couple under 85 on our block, and most of them have been here since just after WWII.  It is really lovely up here! Sigh...

Wowie, something new-NEW out of the Volks arsenal. Original Fashion Dollfie, Masami (light skinned) & Tomoko (dark, and darker than their normal "tan"!). New dollfie based on the EB Slim bodies, same as Who's That Girl. So they'll have the fashion line-up of the WTG behind them to boot.

I love them! The face-mold looks similar to the romantic Century Models, sweet yet still sassy. Perhaps their trying a different tactic from their fashion Century Models? I don't think they ever appealed much this side of the pond.

Edit: It appears that this is a collaboration with a TV show or... ? If anyone can translate the page above better than I, please inform!

On a side note, I have been slowly working on fixing the glitches with my blog, and have been doing some housecleaning with the categories. Trying to trim them down a bit,and replace too specific categories with tags. You can use the search function or the "tag cloud" list to find specific things like "dollfie" or "unoa" and I've tried to add my doll names in a consistent manner, so you can search on "St. Trinian" and come up with all the posts I've ever made about her. Neat!

I don't usually work piecemeal with the site, but with current time constraints I update a style tag here, some brokey js there. Bleh. I'm still getting settled into the new house. But I've managed to have some quality dolly hobby time, just not documented. Yet. Bwahahaha!