Yesterday we broke the temperature records for warmest January 30th ever - over 15 Celsius - and today it's back to the deep freeze and it looks like a blizzard with almost white-out conditions outside my window.  Crazy weather!  I wish all that rain the last few days had come down as snow. Now that would have looked spectacular!!

Yesterday I was looking for some older doll photos and came across some cute ones of Cinnamon as a crocus fairy which had never been posted. All those crocuses made me think of spring, and I just had to put together a photo page with the pictures. It was a problem inserting a new thumbnail into the main Favourite Photos page, as Weebly keeps changing things, so formats are always changing. Things posted using the old ways stay the same, but newer things added later appear with the newer formats and spacing - and that looks odd.   I did try to fix some, but didn't have time to address all of them. Some day I'll need to address the inconsistent sizes and spacing of the thumbnails on that page.

I also made a page with Byuri and her snowy totem poles. All the snow from that shoot is now gone, as are the snowmen - melted into oblivion.

I thought it would be a good idea to make a Tutorial page to show al the steps in making the Victorian gowns I made last summer. I had posted my progress in a thread on DoA and it's consistently one of my most visited threads there, so I figured I'd just copy everything into a Tutorial page for my own website as well.

My two new dolls - Lonnie and Kassia - need introduction pages as well, but I haven't taken enough photos of Lonnie yet, and Kassia is going to get a new faceup, so I'll wait for hers until after she's redone.

It's the last day of the month, and there's so many things to do today. I would have liked to have had the two Renaissance gowns done this month, but there's no way that's possible anymore. Now I'm hoping by the end of the coming weekend. However, there's two other jobs that just came up, which I need to address as soon as possible. First there's a tutorial I promised BJDCollectasy, and secondly some photos I need to take for the Springbok puzzle people, and that's going to take considerable setting up. Throw in a specialist appointment, and we'll see what actually gets done.

Well, the trim is finally on all the sleeves, and after pressing, they will be ready to baste onto the bodice. I ended up using two trims I've had for over twenty years - finally a use for them - trims in colours to accent the colours in the metallic brocade.  

I tried the wine satin bodice over the under-dress, but it looks like the under-dress bodice fabric may be a bit thicker than my usual under-dresses, so the over-bodice isn't quite wide enough at the side seams. I don't have enough of the wine satin fabric to start all over and cut out new bodices, so I'll just have to add inserts under the arms along the side seams. 

My sewing is going slowly because I'm also trying to work on photos from our two road trips from 2012. I really, really, really want both albums done before we go on another trip this summer. I've been working for sometime on our fall trip, which was to the US Southwest via Yellowstone, but there's an awful lot of photos. We'd never been there in fall before, and neither had we ever been to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The Spring trip also started through Yellowstone as we went to the Pacific and headed up the coast to Vancouver, and I gave in to temptation and started that album last week too. Working on photos from both trips simultaneously was a bit odd since the trips were so completely different - one with bright blue skies every day, in the hot, bare red landscape of the southwest, and the other in constant snow, rain or fog, to the rain-forests and rugged shoreline along the Pacific coast, where we rarely ever had any sun the entire four weeks of the trip.  Switching from hot and dry to cold and wet...

So I thought I'd share a few photos...first from the Southwest....

There's still 5 days worth of photos to process and add to the album, and then I'm done!!!

And now for the spring trip....

I've only worked through the first four photography days so far and there's three and a half whole weeks worth to go. Sigh. This one is going to take a while yet.

We had some more snow last night - which is supposed to turn to freezing rain, then regular rain for the next two days - so I thought I'd take Nami out for a photo before the snow lost it's "freshness". It's too bad it's raining now, because the snow is so wet that it's perfect for building snow forts and snowmen and having some great dolly fun.   Oh well, maybe next time.

How many times have you gone to the fabric store for "just one little thing", only to be distracted by the sales, and have all kinds of extras follow you home?  I'm sure all you seamstresses out there can relate.  Well, I needed (well, more like "wanted") another spool of white thread, so off to Fabricland we went, and of course there were all kinds of great sales. Their selection of Chinese brocades was really cheap - only $8 a meter - and since I'm always thinking ahead, I chose two; a nice brown for fairy bodices, and a dark blue with silver embroidery as a possible Queen of the Night main fabric. Then I found another possibility for my Queen of the Night - a sheer navy blue with sparkly black florals - and got it too, and then found an amazing turquoise brocade on the discount shelves for a mere $5 a meter. So I ended up spending ten times what I would have if I'd just kept my blinders on and gone straight for the thread.

My two Renaissance gowns are coming along slowly. I can't do the front over-skirt trim until I have the over-bodice done, and I can't do that until the sleeves are done. The sleeves have been a considerable amount of work - lots of layers, many of which needed to be hand-basted first.  Then deciding they were going to be too long, so having to pick apart the first sample one and then trim down all the rest. Today I have to choose the trims, and hopefully they will be ready to start embellishing with embroidery and beads. That's my favourite part.

We had a bit of snow the other day, that by this time tomorrow will be all gone, and I thought I should take advantage of it for some snow pictures. But what to shoot?  There's only a handful of dolls dressed appropriately for out in the snow, and they already all made snowmen last year. 

So, I wondered what kind of snowmen Byuri, as a little Pacific Northwest Indian girl, would make. I soon had my answer. 

She made totem poles out of snow!

Yesterday I took some time to play around with some of my doll's looks. It seemed clear Kassia was not happy being a princess, and the only other outfit I had her size was Isar's Elven Archer, so they did a switcheroo. I also tried adjusting her eyes a little so she wasn't so far away in dreamland. The new look does suit her a little better - especially the cute fly-away red wig - but it's still not quite right. She is a lovely sculpt, and I do have other BJDs that look very sad - just not any by Iplehouse - so I just need to find something that really suits her. I'm going to keep trying for awhile yet before I give up and sell her.

I'm continuing to work on my two new Italian Renaissance gowns for Iplehouse EIDs. I'm making progress, but nothing much that's worth photographing. Hours worth of hand-hemming the velour overskirts - EID costumes certainly take a LOT of fabric!! Yesterday I cut out all the bodice and sleeve parts. The beautiful metallic brocade I'm using for the underdress and sleeves unravels way too easily, so I've had to use Fray Stop around all the cut edges. Fray Stop is even stronger than Fray Check - as are the fumes.

The bodices of the under-dresses are now sewn and ready for skirts and embellishment. I won't be adding all the rows of trims to the bottom of the underskirt this time. These two gowns will be simpler and more historically accurate-looking than my previous Renaissance gowns.  I say "accurate-looking" because I'm faking most of the layers, as it would otherwise be a total pain to put on. Not to mention very bulky. The underdress is also sleeve-less this time, as I'm adding the completely finished sleeves to the over-dress. 

I've decided to make another costume for my Carina. I like to alternate between commissions and something new, and it's been such a long time since I'd made anything that size, and Carina looked so beautiful in the Spring Goddess ensemble, that I have to make something more for her. When I was going through one of my "Velour" boxes, looking for the right fabrics for the Spring Goddess costume, I came across a beautiful piece of embossed magenta velour, which I though would make a beautiful "historical" gown - probably Italian Renaissance inspired. So this morning I had to find fabrics to go with it. 

Each time I go looking for fabric, I get to revisit everything in that particular box. Years ago I saw how my sister looked for fabrics in a box - she'd turn the closed box upside-down, lift the main box up, leaving all the fabrics inside neatly piled up in the lid. Then she'd proceed to put everything back into the box. It's a great way to neatly see everything in a box without making a huge mess, and handling all the different fabrics each time helps with inspiration too - so many of the fabrics were purchased with specific costumes in mind. I went through several boxes: "Satins and Linings", "Warm Metallics", and "Warm Brocades". There were metallics and brocades for Elizabethan costumes, many beautiful brocades for Renaissance dresses, and several large pieces bought specifically for Rococo gowns. Buying fabric is like "buying a dream" - a vision of some spectacular costume to be made. The real test is to actually use the fabric to make what it was intended for, or harder still, use it for something else.

So, these fabrics are what I ended up choosing: the embossed magenta velour, a satin almost the exact same color, a lovely metallic brocade for the underskirt and sleeves, and a soft white satin for the sleeve puffs. Trims and embellishments will be chosen later.

Finally managed to take all my doll family photos this evening. What a job!  

These are all my dolls as of December 31st 2012. The back two rows are on a riser, which means the dolls in row three are actually the same height as almost everyone in row two - except Nelly on the far right.

Thankfully Jan volunteered to bring everyone downstairs to the studio and stayed around to help with the posing. All I had to bring down was my camera and one doll. Now I'm exhausted, and need to go rest and watch some TV. Tomorrow I will make a Favourite Photos album to show all the different family groups.