sedens

One would hardly think that any dog as portly and low to the ground as Our Toshi would be such a successful hunter, but yesterday he got his first prey of the season. Argh. I had really been enjoying watching the young rabbits play around the house, but they've all cleared out since the carnage, and who can blame them? This brings Toshi's lifetime total up to four rabbits and two birds that I know of, and right now he's camped out on the back step, eyeballing a mother robin who's trying to convince one of her chicks to feed itself instead of pestering her. The chick is fully fledged and able to fly well enough to get to the top of the fence, so I don't think the robins are in any real danger, but still. As I said, argh.

( Click for fun with yarn. )

I didn't get his default wig, eyes, or sandals (if he had any; I'm not sure about that), but I love this wig and these eyes so much that I don't regret the originals one bit.

But first, this public announcement . . .

FINAL GRADES ARE DONE!

Well, at least until all the late work rolls in from the students who took Incompletes, but there will be time enough to worry about that when it happens. And the really great part is that, while grading the last assignment from my Literary Criticism class, I had the joy of reading the two best papers I have ever received, in twenty-plus years of college teaching. Sometimes I do love my job.

Now, for the arrivals.

Here's Shino, the one-off SD13 Cyndy, in her default getup, wig, and eyes. I do indeed believe that these are Thin Orange eyes, though I'm feeling a little ???? about that, since the Y!J auction said she was a 2010 one-off, but Thin Orange was discontinued in 2009. Not that it's inconceivable for Volks to have had a few left, especially in the lower-demand sizes, but it's still curious. No card in the package, though the unopened rest of the paperwork was there (unhelpful, but there it is). Her headplate says "ONEOFFMODEL," as it should, but I really wanted that card for more details. *sigh*



And a mad impulse seized me last Friday, when I noticed a Minoru Kamimura head AND a Minoru Kamimura SDGr body in the Marketplace at the same time. Both sellers were absolute sweethearts--shipped the same day I paid!--and, well, here is a lousy snapshot of Katsushiro, who's found his sensei at last. (I hated to interrupt their conversation to take the picture, heh.)

However, the post office just called to say that I have an express package from Japan to pick up (why, no, my post office does not bother to DELIVER express packages except on normal route schedules, but at least they let me know there's something waiting for me). This will be the big box from Celga, so I guess we're about to find out whether those are really Thin Orange eyes in the one-off Cyndy pretty quick-like.

And I took some pictures of new sweaters for the shop (http://www.squirrelmoonknits.etsy.com), one springy and one autumnnal.




Today is the Vacation Mode Protest on Etsy to bring attention to the problem of resellers and factories who pass themselves off as handmakers, but I have to confess that my political will is weak on this particular front. When I see a day opening up some picture and listing-edit time, I seize it, protest or no protest. I have mixed feelings about this protest, anyway. In theory, I agree 100% with the protesters, because I do think Etsy is both misleading in its promotional rhetoric and only too ready to pass off mass-produced goods as handmade when there's profit to be made. But in practice, WTF, handmade-artisan-people? You're protesting because Etsy won't protect your special snowflake microbusiness against Teh Ebil Factories? If you're staking your whole identity and livelihood on a head-to-head competition with mass-production sellers, then any single online venue is kinda unlikely to be your economic be-all and end-all. The Etsy fantasy of "quitting your day job and making your whole living here" has never appealed to me, though, and neither has the Etsy BS about "community" and "relationships," so maybe it's easy for me to shrug it off and roll my eyes. I don't claim to be reasoning through all this clearly, mind you--I just don't see Etsy as having any more of a personal commitment to me than I have to Etsy, and that's . . . pretty much nil.

And because, for no reason at all except random happiness, I remembered how much I love this poem. I'm pretty sure this is the painting Richard Wilbur had in his mind's eye when he wrote it: Jean-Frederic Bazille, "View of the Village," 1868.




Ceremony

A striped blouse in a clearing by Bazille
Is, you may say, a patroness of boughs
Too queenly kind toward nature to be kin.
But ceremony never did conceal,
Save to the silly eye, which all allows,
How much we are the woods we wander in.

Let her be some Sabrina fresh from stream,
Lucent as shallows slowed by wading sun,
Bedded on fern, the flowers’ cynosure:
Then nymph and wood must nod and strive to dream
That she is airy earth, the trees, undone,
Must ape her languor natural and pure.

Ho-hum. I am for wit and wakefulness,
And love this feigning lady by Bazille.
What's lightly hid is deepest understood,
And when with social smile and formal dress
She teaches leaves to curtsey and quadrille,
I think there are most tigers in the wood.

(first published in Poetry magazine, 1948)

Mine, mine, all mine. One-off Volks Cyndy on SD13 body; I snagged her on Y!J, and now I'm waiting for Golden Week to be over so Celga will get her packed and shipped. I'm hoping she comes with her paperwork, so I can see when she was released.



I can't say that I'm mad about the outfit. fairemma thinks it has a certain 1930s glamor about it, but in this picture I confess that I only see "dumpy Chinese grandma." It will be interesting to see what it's like in person. I do like the shoes, though; I have them in black, and they're v. useful.



Must get back to grading. I put the worst paper on the top of the stack, which should have been a smart psychological move, but instead I now feel as if I've done a good day's work by having graded it and should be able to go home plz.

Nope, instead I'm having an oldskool Saiyuki anime marathon (omg, I could listen to Ishida voice Hakkai 24/7 and still melt every time he says a line) and putting some stuff in the Etsy shop. The current "Baligate" debacle is making me think that I might want to have a venue somewhere else, in case Etsy really does turn into eBay Lite. With that in mind I plunked down ten bucks last week for the domain name squirrelmoonknits.com, figuring that I have a fair plenty of time to decide what to do with it. The first thing I have to learn to do is put up a redirect to my Etsy shop, but nothing's gonna happen on that front until the semester is over.

Two dresses and a cardigan (looky, tiny functional pockets!), http://squirrelmoonknits.etsy.com:





One more week of classes, then finals. I swear, I have never seen such a tired, squirrelly bunch of students or faculty in my whole career. Whoever on the campus Calendar Committee thought it was a good idea to stretch our semesters from 15 weeks to 17 weeks (plus finals) was so very, very wrong.

Hey, could somebody with an After School Shiro Tachibana and/or a Heath tell me if the headplate described below belongs to one of them? While I was rooting through my stash of packing materials just now, a Volks headplate fell out of a wad of bubble wrap. I think it must be either the headplate for Mayuki, the recently-arrived Shiro girl, or for Giuliano the also-recently-arrived Heath--more likely Mayuki, since After School Shiro was released in 2006. Still, it's also conceivable that one of the sellers I've dealt with in the past few months might have mislaid some other doll's headplate and accidentally wrapped it up with a doll or body being sent to me. I can't tell any longer which bubble wrap was around which doll, soooooooooooo . . .

Mystery headplate says: SDPHOTODAYS06

If this is either Mayuki's or Giuliano's, I'll glue it back on and be delighted!

I mean, come on. Tierney the School C in big hair? PRET-TY.





(Yes, the sweater is in the shop, http://www.squirrelmoonknits.etsy.com)

In other good news, the Pharaoh's stuff--at least some of it--is definitely coming along to rejoin him, so we can foresee at least an approximately Pharaonic photoshoot one of these days. Woo! and hoo!

. . . and all that jazz.

In the big TA-DAH!!! news, I liberated this awesomely gorgeous old-school guy from eBay. I think his name is Dare, though occasionally I look at him and say Elie instead. Hmmm.



If some of you are thinking he looks familiar (like, wasn't there only one tan Chowon, anyway?): why yes, he was indeed once the CH Unique Pharaoh or Paraho_Manere. His faceup has been redone by HeavyBomb, and he's become separated from his default stuff, but hey, he's a little too chill for a linen skirt anyway. First doll I've ever found who actually looks right in this particular Volks wig--I think it's awesome on him. Not quite as sure about the ED #32 eyes, but they're the best of what I have right now. I fail at visualizing eyes ahead of time; my color sense just doesn't work that way.

However, if I do say so myself, my color sense is pretty much on target when it comes to yarn. Like this beauteous Targhee wool, handspun by one of my fave Etsy sellers. Little antique buttons, probably vegetable ivory and vegetable dyed. Nummers.



http://squirrelmoonknits.etsy.com, don'tcha know . . .