My project for the past month or so has been finishing up (more or less) the 1:24 Maine Cottage that I started in the fall of 2020. (It had a long hiatus from early 2022 to early 2024.) The base is a Melissa and Doug portable cottage that I'd been eyeing intermittently since the early 2000s. It showed up at the Savers on Boston Post Road for $4, missing one of its dormer roofs (since replaced by Dad's cutting me a new piece). Since I'd just been to artist-colony Ogunquit, my plan at the time was to paint it blue-gray and make it an artist's retreat. This winter, I ended up picking a n ..read more

While I was tidying the cabinet where I keep fashion dolls, I posed the entire gang for a family portrait. Back row, L to R. Kid Kore Kelsey with titian hair. Fully intended to be my only original-flava Kelsey ever, since IMHO she's the best Kelsey. Kid Kore "Legends of Ancient Lands" blond gladiator, now named Sylvester, with the widest hips ever. I'm not looking forward to fitting pants on him; maybe he'd like to wear kilts. Manbun Ken, a.k.a. Kenzo.  Kid Kore "Chief White Eagle" in his Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt, called Brodie by most friends outside his tribe. His hips are not ..read more

While I'm managing not to get around to a photoshoot for the Kid Kore Jodi I found for $1 at the Alameda Point Antique Faire, I've been experiencing feelings similar to the dismay of Teatime Tangents at the Dolly Insider questions being a one-year series that ended with 2023. Admittedly, my answers after a while get boring and predictable: I collect mostly 1990s clone dolls, particularly Kid Kore; I sew and do light customization; yay me. So I grabbed a couple questions that made me pause to think. 35. What doll would you like to see re-released? If Mattel were to do a Mod TNT head mold on a p ..read more

  They're a bit of a ragtag crew at the moment. Kenzo is both thrilled and intimidated not to be the only adult male in the community.  I'd been thinking about Kid Kore men for several months, mostly on the subject of "no." The reason for "no" was that I was intending to rebody Kenzo... only finding a body that's skinny and pale enough turns out to be a challenge.  By December 26, Sylvester, who is the blond gladiator 1280 from Legends of Ancient Lands, had been on eBay for weeks with a 99-cent starting big and no takers. The end of the year is the logical time for selle ..read more

Last year, when Target had these wooden trees in the impulse bins at the front of the store, I bought a single quarter tree, as I felt I could not justify the expense and space of buying four to make a whole tree. The tree has haunted me since, as it's too small for more than a little seating in 1:24 but too big for 1:48. This afternoon I pulled out the 1:24-ish furniture bin to see if I wanted to do a coffeehouse or something, and I found my little porcelain furniture sets. These have been around since I was a tot, and Mom had sent them to me back around 2019, to make them my problem. So th ..read more

 I'm too lazy to take photos of the doll shoes I bought on Saturday, so I'm going to emulate Teatime Tangents and Toys' use of interview questions from The Dolly Insider's backlog of Friday questions. It's cooler than anything else in my head right now! (I removed questions where my answer is a repeat of "not my branch of collecting.") #1: Which doll do you wish you ordered when it was released? It would have been a purchase rather than an order, but I wish I'd known about the Simply Fresh dolls (collab between The Fresh Dolls and Family Dollar) when they were new, so I could have gotten ..read more

  The population feels like it grew fast, but it's still only 7 dolls. Simply Fresh Kylie, now on her MTM body, is what touched off this wave of doll collecting. I still like the idea of the Fresh Dolls/Family Dollar collab, but I keep making changes to the actual doll. Kylie's face is very much in line with the mainline Fresh Dolls faces, though. Delilah, now Kylie's mother because her new short wig makes her look older, was indulgence in a Dollar Tree Beauty to celebrate the new jointed knees. Only the original head remains of Cinderelsa, because her concept ($2 at a thrift store) was c ..read more

  My teens got an unexpected addition late in the year with the arrival of Remco Babysitters Club "Kristy." She was in an eBay lot with unhelpful photos and limited description, but between the two dolls in it, at least one was definitely on my wish list as something, and the price with free shipping was great. Doing a body comparison with the two 10-inch girls reveals a lot of similarity. Lacy (Totsy) has bendier legs due to their internal wire, while Kristy (Remco) has regular click legs that don't click very well any more. Lacy has a more developed chest. Kristy's arms are set ..read more

  The Katie Krew did not start out to be a krew. When I first started thinking about getting back into dolls, I happened on a discussion of Creata's "clones" from the 1980s. Like a lot of fashion doll lines of the late 20th century, it's unclear how much the dolls were actual clones and how much they were simply fashion dolls doing their own thing. The rock 'n' roll Creata line, for instance, was probably a clone for Hasbro's Jem & the Holograms. But the Creata Flower Fairies? Much less clear. Really unclear on its clone origins is the 6-1/4" doll at front left, with dark curled hair ..read more

  The Sunflower Cottage is my Christmas house, for no better reason than that I impulsively furnished it from my stockpile last December and it then stayed on my desk through the holiday season. So this year... it's baaaaack! This is one of my favorite projects ever, because while it's simple and took basically an evening, it achieves very much what I want it to do. The inhabitant is the Tweakie Toy nurse. If you haven't seen Tweakie Toys before, they were a short-lived competitor to Fisher Price Little People. J. Chein made them for exactly one year in 1969, and my set was my favorite ..read more