Little Sista - The Middie Blythe

A photo of the first Middie sized Blythe has been leaked...and suprisingly she's super super cute!

Until I saw this I was not especially interested in her. Her non-bendy legs and lack of a proper 4 colour eye mech were a bit of a put off and to be truthful I thought her face would be leaning more toward the expressionless Petite, rather than the Neos. I've always thought the Petite faces were kind of odd looking with their startled bunny eyes surrounded by a bristle of lashes (sorry Petite lovers!) and have never been tempted by them (even though I have some cute patterns that would be fun to make up), but the Middie with her Blythe-like features and adorable head tilt is kind of irresistable, even to a hard hearted and cynical Neo-only collector like me.

Kudos to you Hasbro/Takara/CWC/Junko or whoever dreamed the Middie up. She's more than we could have hoped for :)

The rumours....weren't true

For a while now the Blythe community has been buzzing about the release of Simply Vanilla and Simply Chocolate this month, hoping and praying that Chocolate will be the fabled dark skinned Blythe.

Well sorry folks, but she's not. She's another creamy skinned caucasian type Blythe.

Actually I feel a bit sorry for this girl, as imo, she's really kinda cute. Not drop dead gorgeous "Oh I must have her" cute, but cute all the same. I wonder if the disappointment that she wasn't black will affect her sales?

Meanwhile, the illustrations of Vanilla look amazing and I'm very interested to see what she looks like in person. I don't have a really light haired Blythe yet...And I do like bangs!

She is mine!!!

And for once, that does not relate to a new Blythe. Yep, I bit the bullet, outlaid rather a lot of money and bought the bike I've been covetting for the last few weeks. For people really into bike riding my bike is bottom end, but seeing as all of my previous ones have come from Kmart, it's a BIG step up, both in quality and erm...price. I still feel horribly guilty about it, so girl/s and sundries are going to have to go up for sale to alleviate my conscience.

I have to say though, that it was definitely worth it. I've been riding all over the place in relative comfort and just enjoying the weather. I am far from the fit, skinny exercise loving type, so I'm going to take full advantage of my bike-riding enthusiasm while it lasts. It is early spring here right now, and just amazingly pleasant (apart from the swooping magpies!), and I just haven't felt the urge to sit inside and sew. Which is why the shop has gone temporarily quiet. Also, poor Miss B has had a horrible toothache, which has led to her needing a bit of extra coddling (and very expensive and traumatic trips to the dentist). The dentist visit was much more terrible for me than for her I think. She was so terrified that they gave her happy gas, meanwhile I had to sit in the room and watch the entire procedure without the benefit of any sedation. I think I could have used some too! On Friday she has to go in for a root canal and I am just dreading it. Apart from it just being insane that a 9 year old should require such a thing on a baby tooth that had been treated by that same dentist 6 months earlier, it's shockingly expensive. To make things worse we discovered that to our horror our health insurance (for which we pay almost $300 a month) will not cover it. Damn you to hell MBF!!!! You are a bunch of thieving crooks! I am more than a little cranky about that.

So to that end, I need to rifle through some Blythe bits and bobs that I'm not using and give Ash a little spa and a photoshoot to prepare her for sale and put a little money back in the kitty. And now I will go and bake some cupcakes, just because I feel like it.

Mohair and wool reroots

I'm in the throes of tracking down a supplier of wool/mohair for Poe's reroot, and thought I might share some of the info that I've gleaned for anyone looking to do the same. There's a lot to take into account!

A natural fibre reroot has a lot going for it - it can be curly or straight, in a natural colour or dyed any colour of the rainbow, full or thin, long or short and even heat styled (straightend or curled) just like you would style your own hair. The reason why I'm keen to use this technique on Poe is for it's camoflaging properties - curly hair tends to hid the scalpline to a much greater degree than saran and unlike saran does not need to fill every hole of the scalp. I am hoping the technique I plan on using will make the reroot go quicker...but I do need to use 10"+ locks.

A search on etsy or ebay will turn up a wealth of choices to wade through. Beware though - any fibre described as roving or batting is not suitable to reroot a Blythe (even if it's tagged as doll hair, which they sometimes are). It's made of tiny tiny pieces and will disintergrate rather than separate when you try to make the plugs. Here's the lowdown on the different hair types as researched by me.

Mohair

- Mohair is the fibre from an Angora goat.
- Curly or wavy in it's natural state and lustrous.
- It lends itself to both big and poofy styles and does
straightened and whispy equally well.
- It comes in a range of natural colours and is greatly prized by reborn artists and personally, it's for this reason that I believe it's so damned expensive.

The gorgeous mohair prepared for Reborns is usally washed, dyed and combed and looks like this. This is the good stuff!



Beautiful huh? And perfect for a Blythe. Sadly, it is usually sold in bundles of about 1/2 an ounce - from what I've read you need about 2 ounces for a Blythe reroot. All that painstaking work comes at a price - a bundle this size (4-6inches long) will cost anywhere from $18 - $30 and as you can imagine the longer the locks, the higher the price. Mohair this length can only be used with the knot method of rerooting and will result in a shortish head of hair falling somewhere between the shoulders and back. Keep in mind, that like curly hair on humans, the shorter it is, the poofier it will be. The prepared mohair is also available in longer lengths as well (although it's harder to find), so if you chose to go this way you can also use lock and loop if you wish.

Pros
Absolutely gorgeous and shiny.
All the hard work is done.
For some reason this kind of mohair tends not to be the frizzy kind (which I'm not a fan of) so you'll get a nice wavey result and not a clown-like afro.
No waste
Can get longer length - more choice of rooting techniques

Cons
Price - you pay for someone else to do all the hard work for you.
That's really the only con - it's a beautiful product if you can afford it.


A cheaper way to buy mohair is to get it washed and dyed, but uncombed. It looks like this (ie. a big ole mess!).



Pros

Cheaper
Often dyed in fantasy colours (if that's what floats your boat)
Easy to find - more common than the longer combed locks and therefore a great choice of sellers.
Comes in larger quantities

Cons

Less predictable result
This kind tends to be much curlier and not as shiny
More waste - much much more waste
More work - much much more work
This kind of mohair is usually a shorter lenghth - fewer rooting methods
Might be vegie matter in there to contend with (ie. bits of grass etc)
Daunting, to say the least!

Alpaca

- Alpaca comes from...well an alpaca, obviously.
- It's very fine and straight and comes in a lovely range of natural colours - lovely blondes and luscious chocolates. You can also find it dyed, although for some reason this isn't as common.
- Great for if you want a natural fibre, but don't want curly.

Reroots done with this look like thick human hair (only Blythe-scale if you know what I mean). Kenners look out-of-this-world amazing with alpaca reroots. This is what the good stuff looks like - all washed and combed and ready for rerooting.



This particular one is one ounce and costs $27 (from mohairhouse on etsy - I've heard they are great!). To be honest, I haven't heard of people buying it all unprocessed and doing it themselves, although I suppose it must be possible. Here's what it looks like washed - very daunting to my eyes, even more so than the mohair as there are no defined locks.



Same pros and cons as the processed mohair vs the unprocessed really.

Wool

- Wensleydale and Cotswold wool come from now rare breeds of longhaired sheep.
- This kind of reroot is not as common as the mohair, but is gaining popularity.
- The locks can reach up to 12" long (more options for length and rooting techniques)and are very curly.
- Wool is much much cheaper than mohair and is usually bundled in larger quantities for spinners and fibre artists - around $4 - $8 dollars an ounce.

Wensleydale Locks

- Very fine hairs
- Silky with a pearly lustre (although is less shiny than the quality mohair).
- Has quite a tight curl.



Cotswold Locks

- More of an open curl than the Wensleydale
- Often used in Santa beards
- Has a nice little curl on the end, like the good quality mohair



This is the fibre that I'd like to try, if I could only track some down in the right length! I am beginning to wonder if I'm looking at the wrong time of year perhaps... Will keep you posted on my hunt for the perfect locks for poor baldy Poe.

Ah crumbs...

I AM a dolly hoarder, as it turns out. I was all set to say goodbye to Poe, but I can't bring myself to do it. I pulled her out of the drawer she was languishing in a few days ago and am now all re-inspired to see her restored to her gorgeous self again. Damn her and her sad little EBL face!!

I've decided that given the almost certainty that she'll have a scalp gap, a Wensleydale reroot might be more forgiving than the saran and have been trawling the internet looking for a supplier. I was considering using the red that I had on hand, but sadly it appears that it might have been a casualty of my ruthless cleanout (by accident) as I can't find it anywhere - just the plugs that I had prepared. Such a shame as the fibre was so silky and lustrous. I'm not entirely certain that the red would have suited her in any case. It's just too too red.



I'm just waiting to hear back from a supplier to see if they can dye me some in chocolate brown. I need long locks this time - at least 10" as I'm trying a new rooting technique so fingers crossed that they can help me out. In the meantime, I'm trying to get her scalp ready for the new hair. The glue that was used is just impossible to shift and is not in any way water soluable. I'm at the point now that I'll have to cut the glued hair from the back of the scalp and maybe even sand the excess off. As I suspected, that massive toffee-like clump of glue running down her partline was a right PITA and although I was evenually able to pull the hair plugs through the holes and work it off, the scalp is damaged. There's not a lot of into out there about fixing this problem either. The only useful info on the subject I managed to find suggested making a patch out of fabric and using modge podge to keep it in place on the underside. I'll keep you posted as to how it works out.