Mood:
a-okNow Playing: 'Airplane !' - from the VHS family holdings, but we have it on DVD, too.
Sorry, sorry. I had every intention of keeping up last week, but it was frantic. Dearest Son had numerous appointments, Beloved Hubby was sort of down. I had the messiest house ever from the previous week's migraine and tummy troubles, and I don't think I've really stopped for a minute since.
No time for dolls at all. About all I've been able to do is de-lace half a damaged teddy from a yard-sale 'Free' box, and sew half the snap back on the vintage Barbie 'Day At The Fair' blouse I got from the junk shop last week. Then it was back to work or whoever needed me. I'm not gonna tell you how big Mt. Clean Laundry got this time. It's too humiliating.
Bought a lot of old doll magazines from eBay, my first purchase off there in months. Just couldn't resist - eighteen magazines for $8., shipped. And it was a bonanza ! Old National Doll World and National Doll World Yearbooks, a few Doll Design issues, and a Dollmaking one. All from the late 70s and early 80s. You know. Back when no doll company made dolls for adults - and there was no eBay or internet to help you find the doll you couldn't forget from your childhood or the antique that would become the diamond of your collection.
It was an amazing experience, leafing through these old magazines. Stories of how that one doll got into this person's home - today she'd just charge it to her credit card after a BIN off eBay, but then she had to hunt doll shows, write endless doll shops, and build up a 'butter and egg money' nest-egg when/if she did find it. Endless patterns - often six or more in each magazine, for dolls claimed from a child's neglectful care, for dolls that were popular just ten years ago. No belly-wear, just nice clothes made simple, without dripping lace or dangling Swarovski crystals. Directions on how to make dolls from scraps and discards...imagine that.
It made me think of what we gained online, and what we've lost. There's darn few doll magazines left, so why share a pattern you've created when you can sell it on eBay ? Yes, it's easier to find what you want, especially when there's so many manufacturers tailoring their product to what they believe we want, but...there's not much to create a lifelong memory from in online megastores and credit cards. Why fix anything when it's available brand-new in a box somewhere as near as your mailbox next week ?
Believe me, I don't want to not have email and eBay anymore. But it seems as though we don't have to be happy with what we have when there's always more coming down the pike. I doubt the folks who wrote these pulp-paper articles were always happy, either. Yet, I look at slick Haute Doll and all I see is 'Buy More' and "You MUST own this if you call yourself a (Designer's Name) fan !" Make Tyler a dress from socks ? From (gasp !) DOLLAR TREE socks ?!! I think that'd make some of the Haute crowd faint.
One creative idea fosters another. Or another twelve. And those ideas often return to the original idea and inspire anew. I just don't see anything inspiring lately. Except this old lot of newspaper-type doll magazines. I felt as though I were...coming home, somehow. That my ideas weren't so radical. They were around 20 years ago, just not now.
It's a lot easier and less time-consuming to just buy stuff. I used to wonder, when I was a kid, what the Chinese folk who made all these Garfield erasers thought of them. Another trinket for overseas. Each culture has its own silly knick-knacks and tchotchkes. But sometimes now, I wonder what the Philippine girl making Matt O'Neill blouses thinks of us at the end of the day.
