Lily by the Kiwi

What up gang its been a BILLION years since I've posted. 

I've been in college and have had mental health issues like mad. WHOOP! But I still love my dolls and instagram is such a hard-to-look-at platform. So here I am.

 

The weather was GORGEOUS today and I just got back from a high school graduation party for one of my younger sibling's friends. I've talked to the same 8 people (my immediate family and my college roommates) for a year and a half, so I went just to have some novelty and socializing. There was yummy pizza and cookies, and I chatted with my old 8th grade english teacher and my elementary school librarian.

 

My family went off to another person's graduation party and I stayed home, one party is plenty for me. But the light was so nice outside, and the shadows were so bright, that I was suddnly struck by the urge to take doll pics again. Well, the urge is always there, but the energy and brainpower isn't. I'm on new meds now so I hope that this wanting-to-do-things streak will keep up.

 

Here's Lily in my favorite outfit for her under our big kiwi... tree? bush? Its a whole bunch of vines climbing up this pole by our deck, and it was pretty scrawny the first 3 years we had it, but now its branched out into this huge vine monster waving many arms and tendrils in the air. I love it.

Hope any of you still out there are enjoying the weather in your area. Monday is supposed to be 90. YEW!

Gwen

Kaya in the ferns

Howdy fellas! It's been a fat minute since I've posted, but worry not, I'm still interested in dolls. I've just been mostly working on maintaining my instagram since it doesn't ruin the quality of my photos.

This picture of Kaya, for example, I worked hard on focusing and making clear and crisp for your viewing pleasure, but dumb ol blogger had to go and make it grainy. I mean, It could just be my computer, but these were clean when I uploaded them but got grainy as soon as I added them to the post.

Now I know a lot of you aren't on here anymore, but if any of you doll bloggers are still out there, I'd love for you to tell me how to fix this stupid ass problem. I want the work I put into my photos to be reflected on the screen.

Also, aren't these boots cute?! They're from Kit's gardening outfit. Not too fond of the rest of the outfit but these boots? Damn I love em.

These pictures were taken out by a lovely mossy boulder in my yard. Most things are still too dead from winter for acceptable photos, but lucky for us, moss and ferns stay green year round.

I may have posted about this previously, but Kaya belongs to my cousin Barrett, who's house is being remodeled. I get to use her dolls while she gets her room put together. Kaya is easily my favorite in her collection. I've photographed her before by some different ferns further back on the property, wearing pieces from Isabelle's collection. Pastels look nicer on brown skin, I think.

That being said, I'm not too fond of this outfit. The light blue turtleneck might have been a mistake. But the boots and yellow Our Generation jacket really make me happy.

Welp, Kaya had a fun time out fiddling around in the ferns, and I had a good time taking pictures.

Hope anyone reading this has a good day!

Signing off,

Gwen

I MADE A THING

Good day, friends! Recently I attempted sewing, and I must say it was a success. I have said previously that I don't know how to use a sewing machine, but my grandma got me one for Christmas and I have figured out how to use it fairly well. 

I made a few shirts a couple months ago, and then this Twenty One Pilots shirt yesterday night, and it turned out the best of all of them. 

I hemmed the sleeves and neck and bottom and everything, something I usually avoid doing. That went okay, except for some stitches got too close together.

And I used VELCRO! I used to just tape the backs shut because I was too lazy to go find the velcro.

If I get good at this, I'd make an etsy shop. You know, the hypothetical one I mentioned a few months ago- My dolls need a store like Hot Topic or something. I've never been into a hot topic, but I hear it's like fandom gear and band shirts.

But on top of that, we also need punk clothes and hipster clothes and clothes that don't conform to either "girl" styles or "boy" styles and, I don't know, dinosaur costumes. Everything not normal.
But I don't know how to sew.This should be easier to achieve now that I am learning to sew.

Here, have some pretty pictures of flowers I pressed:

I have acquired another plush dragon! Problem is, I'm not sure on the names. I tried food names, but they don't seem to work. I was trying to think up fancy names, but I'm not a fancy person. Perhaps inanimate objects? Compact Disc! Toothbrush Bristle! Hand Sanitizer! No. No. This is silly. Perhaps math terms. Parabola. Sinusoid. Asymptote. Cosecant. Yeah, those work a little better.

Anyway, this is the new guy. He doesn't have wings or an extra head. His name is Asymptote. In a tangent or cotangent graph (and a few other things that I forgot), the line can go up (or down) FOREVER! IT JUST WONT STOP! It could go in the Y (Or X, but i'm mostly concerned with Y right now) direction for infinity. But it will never make it past a certain line. That line is the asymptote.

Think about it this way: Walk halfway to your front door. And then half of that. And half of that. And half of that. And half of that. And half of that. You're getting closer and closer to the door but you'll never make it, no matter how long you keep going halfway there. The door is the asymptote.

HERE I'LL SHOW YOU ON DESMOS:

Here's a tangent. y=tan (1.5 x)

Look how after the curve it goes almost straight up, but never touches the line x=1.

What if we scrolled up a bit farther? What if we zoomed in?

It looks like it touches in the first picture, but that's just cause the line is too thick. The second picture is zoomed in and you can see it still doesn't touch x=1

That aside, the other dragon, the one with wings and two heads, is now named sinusoid an parabola.

Parabola. y=x^2

Sinusoid. y=sin (x)

Go here, to Desmos to play with graphs.

When the sun sets, it turns the tops of the trees orange. It looks like they're on fire!

Owls!

We have owls in our woods, guys! There are two barred owls and they are thinking about making a nest here, as far as we can tell. we can hear them hooting hooo-ho-hoo-hooooo. Or perhaps who cooks for you? My dad took this picture and the one below it.

Rylan is the star of the show

Good day, friends!

Good day, enimies!

Good day, random passers-by!

Today I present to you a photoshoot with Rylan, as practice using the reflector and flash.

"Brendon Urie is my Man Crush Monday," says Donald.

Im getting better at speaking to people, I think.
For English I had to memorize a poem and present it in front of the class.
So I memorized The Jabberwocky over Christmas break, and loved it, prancing around the house reciting it, trying to find the best way to say it so it wasn't monotone or boring. I acted it out a little bit too. The interesting thing was, I was excited about reciting The Jabberwocky in front of everyone. (I'm sure most of you already know how much I loathe talking to people, so you know why this is a strange occurrence.)

Hootenanny worm wart oil enhancing melancholyizer

Hey there folks.

Ive managed to crawl out from my homework and books and tv shows and music to come say hi.

Hi.

Andie and Rylan also say hi. I took these before Halloween was even here, and now Halloween is gone. Im super great at keeping track of things. The leaves were kind of squishy from the rain so Andie had to do a dance to get them to crunch properly.

Copy and paste

Artists and authors and scientists and mathematicians,
eaters of breakfast cereals, watchers of rain, criers of tears and shedders of blood
I welcome you all to Copy And Paste, in which I spew onto the screen the recent goings-on of my mind. Despite the magnificent introduction to this post, it is no where near as fancy or profound as you may have expected. Nay, I reckon it'll be pretty odd. It's just bits and pieces from my Notes app.
But the oddness is is what you're here for, isn't it?
HERE WE GOOOO!

Shout out to the kids who kept nose-picking well into the 4th grade and developed that "if I cover my nose with one hand I can pick freely with the other" technique.
Shout out to the kids who have since discovered that doesn't really work.

mildly exciting things to do on an otherwise boring day

Ive lost all sense of organization I've ever had, as you may have noticed. I have all of these half baked ideas squished into posts laid out poorly and interrupting each other. That's kind of how I think, I suppose. Good luck following this one. I started out just taking pictures for a photostory, thinking "oh, I'll  do the words later." and a couple days after that I decided that attention bust be brought to the Japanese maple in my back yard, and a few other times I just went out with the camera after school and took pictures without any purpose.

Due to the order that the pictures uploaded in, it looks like we're starting out with the maple tree. I'll just pretend that taking pictures of trees counts as one of the mildly exciting things to do on an otherwise boring day so we have a bit of a theme going here. Maybe we can be organized! Fake it till you make it, I guess.

Blueberry with t-rex arms

I have no clever things to say in mind or any intention of making a coherent post whatsoever. I am terribly bored and even more tired, but by brain says "NOO! no sleepy. we post now. yees." So I'm like "Ok, brain, we can post. What do you want to write about?"
Brain: Win arguments in head. Yes. very clever. Ohohohohohho we go take pictures of squirrels now?
Me:  no, i don't think we'll do that. But we can take pictures of squirrels when it gets light out.
Brain: ok. squirrels good. Want cookie? You want cookie NOW!
Me: the cookies aren't even good
Brain: U WANT NOW.

that was interesting. That is how most conversations with Dumb Brain go.
Here, I drew a picture of Dumb Brain.

I can't seem to get rid of him.

Plums, and senorita elephant bum

Yesterday I was admiring the plum tree in our backyard that is growing very heavy with ripe fruit. They fit in your palm and are wonderfully sweet and juicy, but their skin tastes like tomatoes. Upon eating way more than I should have, I thought "OOH! MIRACLE OF NATURE! LET'S GO GET THAT ONE DOLL WHO IS A FOREST SPIRIT AND DO A SHOOT!"

#61

So I bought #61 a while back on the Jills Steals and Deals thingamabob. It took both my mom and brother standing over my shoulder saying "wow that IS a great deal!" To convince dad that $78 was a fabulous price not to be passed up.

And now I'm wondering if she should be a normal person or a forest spirit.

Here's a squirrell. He was watching me very intently.

It's 80 degrees and I have gone insane

It's May. In Washington. And it's 80 degrees outside. What is wrong with that? Washington seasons go: wet (late September- early June), and damp (July-early September) It should not be this hot nor the plants this droopy in May. 

I don't like being hot. Heat makes me angry. (For that matter, I don't like bright sunshine either- it makes taking decent pictures difficult.) Rylan is the same way. She doesn't like the heat, but even less than that she likes her grouchy housemates lazing around inside like steamy sweaty slugs with a cantankerous streak.

(that was her terminology. Rylan is BFFs with the dictionary, and cantankerous is her new favorite word.)

In the garden with Kaya

Hey everyone! I took Kaya out for a photoshoot today. I think I'm finally out of my funk; I finished my homework, did a photoshoot, cleaned my room a tiny bit, and even made dinner! It's amazing the things that you can do when you aren't hiding in bed hating people (don't worry- there's still plenty of that) and scrolling through Pinterest so satisfy your out of whack sense of humor. Shall we get on to the pictures?

Kaya is such a pretty girl. Dosen't she have the cutest nose?

Colors

I was thinking about the colors of my room yesterday and thought that they needed to be shown to you. Andie helped me.

Blues and grays are so calming to me.

It wasn't really helping- mostly testing which of my blankets is the softest.

As I was fiddling with her hair, I noticed it smelled sort of like my cat... who has been dead for three years.

I realized it was from a sheet I had used as a background a couple weeks back that has sat around in the closet since before Otis died.

I do not like the smell of cat.

To fix this, Andie had her hair rinsed in the sink. But it still smelled and I did not want to use shampoo. So instead, I made cinnamon apple tea and soaked her hair in that. I don't know why I'm less afraid of tea than I am of shampoo, but there it is.

It turned out rather well, actually. The water made her hair soft and the cat smell has been replaced with cinnamon smell.

At first I was worried that this would fall into the "ideas that work well in theory but I should never try" pile, but I guess not. Another idea in that category is drilling holes in my doll's feet and filling them with sand so they're less top heavy. Do you think I should try that?

Yes, I am just posting pictures of my bedding. 

Oh hold on! here's some flower pics for you all. That's a relief.

Sweet peas

Dandelions.

Well, that was fun. 

Do you have any outrageous ideas?

I would like outrageous ideas, whether it's doll care/improvement or just things I should post.

Yes, really. Anything is helpful. You could have my dolls riding cows on the moon, for all I care.

P.S. I need to update the meet My Dolls page, and I'm not sure what Rylan's personality is. Do you have any more outrageous ideas for me?

Sunshine, green things, and reacquainting myself with the big camera.

There was a period of time when I discovered The Big Camera (As in not my iPhone).

 I loved experimenting with the manual focus and zoom, full of twisty dial fun! But when I posted the pictures they seemed fuzzy (At least on the mobile version, which is the only place I view blogs from). I figured that was because they were too small, so I stopped with the big camera and went back to my phone.

BUT TODAY THE BIG CAMERA HAS RETURNED.

And it is glorious. Because I edited them too.

SO. If the pictures are fuzzy to you, you can enlarge the pictures or something. 

Ugh too much sun on Lilly's face. And this fern frond decided to do a nice dance for us while I took pictures. So if you're wondering why Lilly's overexposed face is up here (shame on you, sun!) It's because the dancing fern wanted to partake in the post.

Trying to decide if this is cool or not. 

Input?

We have this wooden ladder that was going to be part of the slide, but we stuck the slide on the Monstrositoy (that's another story) and let the ladder on a nice big rock. So if you were curious about the glowing white book of confusingness, it's not glowing, white, or a book. It's that ladder and the sun just loves it.

It's pretty warm today in my backyard, perfect for stretching out and letting the sun shine down. Aahhh.

Looks at this! It's split down the middle- Lilly has more springy colors and vibrant leaves behind her, but Andie has muted colors and dead (or at least not budding yet) branches behind her. It's like one is the goddess of spring and the other is the goddess of fall.

The colors seem to go so well here!

Oh pretty Andie. I wasn't really sure about the vest at first, because being "fashionable" is more something Lilly would do. But I like it pretty well, especially when it comes out more red then purple. 

What do you think? Was the vest a good idea?

In these next 2 photos you can see the difference between the edited and not edited.

For this one I bumped up the vibrancy and temperature, I think. 

I love this so so so much I think I'll change Andie's picture to this on the meet my dolls page. (And put up the drawings. I kinda forgot to do that.)

Here's the original. It's sort of washed- out looking, huh?

Oh da feets. 

About Andie's boots: Since I had two pairs of the same boots from the My AG meet, I tried to customize them into awesomeness. If you'll remember, the first pair I painted with coffee. That was cool for the shoot, but they got sticky pretty fast. So I tried again with gouache paint and that might not have failed if I had used the right shade of brown. So I sanded off the old paint with a nail file and tried again with water color. I also cut the tops off. Don't ask me why I did that; I don't know.

Shooting into the sun was a rather silly idea in this spot- I am displeased with the lichen being the background, but the shadow was cool, so I kept it. 

Changed the angle for a greener background.

I like how Andie seems taller. It's probably just how I placed them, but she is supposed to be older. 

I'm wondering if Andie and Lilly have different skin tones, or if this is just an optical illusion. If they do, Andie has kind of an olive tone, and Lilly is more peach. It's funny how we compare colors to fruits.

Grrrrrr Lilly why are you out of focus?

ooooh shiny!

Well that was three pictures with no variation in angle or pose. A mark of laziness. I shall have to make a mental note of this. Good thing we're done.

Alrighty! That was fun! You bored now? Yeah, me too.
soooo have you heard of Izzy's poster contest? Should I enter one of these? Which one looks most poster-ish, or belongs on a doll's wall?

Ta ta for now!