Middie Monday is a feature that is published on the first Monday of each month! A guaranteed monthly post on Blythe’s little sister – Middie! If you have any suggestions for a future Middie Monday post, please send me an email or use my Suggestions form!

It’s been an awesome 8 months having a dedicated day for Middies! I’ve been trying to focus a bit on Blythe’s middle sister because she seems so underrated at times. My Middie-related goal of crafting their wardrobe still remains the same, which means the poor dears have been wearing the same outfits for quite a while now and often rotate between the small handful of outfits that I do have for them. It’s hard though, finding time to craft for them because the little sleeves are a bit fiddly and (if I’m being completely honest) I prefer knitting socks for me over clothes for them – if only because I actually feel changes in temperature and I adore wool socks versus the Middies being made of plastic and not actually being able to care about weather and temperature changes. (Sorry if I burst anyone’s bubble, but that’s the way it works around here!)

That isn’t the say that I won’t continue to craft for the Middies – they won’t be getting new clothes otherwise so I definitely will! But with it being winter, I’m more likely to continue to knit for myself over them. But the great thing is that leftover yarn from projects I do for myself wind up being put into a bag for doll-related knits! It’s really a win-win situation (if you don’t think about it too much) because it means that I get hand knits and so do the Middies!

I recently toyed with the idea of adding a third Middie to the doll family (the Alice in Wonderland-inspired Mary Ann was quite high on the list of wants!), but then I realize that it would mean that the handful of clothes that my Middies do have would be split between three dolls instead of two, and that just seemed like a really mean thing to do.

2016 is the first year since before I started kindergarten that I am not in school, which is kind of an amazing feat in itself. I’m very excited to begin a new year! It’ll be the first full year of me working ever in my life (previous work included temporary positions and part-time jobs), which is pretty exciting. As I work to save up for some necessities to my life (e.g. car, saving to move out), I also hope that 2016 will perhaps be the year that I finally get a BL to call my very own. Besides the ADG, the BL is the only mold of Blythe that I am missing. Maybe I’ll get both and round out the doll family!

For now, my doll family hasn’t grown too much in 2015, with my latest addition being little Lark – whom I adore. You’ll be seeing a lot of her in 2016, maybe I’ll even get around to sewing some teeny tiny clothes for her?

2015 was a big year, what with organizing and hosting BlytheCon Vancouver. I couldn’t have done it without my fellow organizers (Chun, Juliet, and Angel)! It was certainly a labour of love that resulted in an amazing donation to a fantastic organization that we all truly believe in (O.W.L.).

Happy new year, everyone! I wish you all the best for 2016!

What are your doll-related goals for 2016?

This year, I had two simple resolutions/goals:

1. Write for BlytheLife, and continue to enjoy writing for BlytheLife.
2. Continue working away on BlytheCon Vancouver and have fun on August 9th.

And I think I did pretty well! BlytheLife kept chugging along and BlytheCon Vancouver came and went (and it was a lot of fun!). I’d like to keep it simple again for 2016. I started orientation for my new job in mid-October, but I didn’t start working until mid-November. Because I’m a casual Registered Nurse, it’s hard for me to predict my hours and what days I will be working (and not be working). So my 2016 goals are going to be fairly simple (I hope!):

1. Always have at least 1-2 weeks worth of posts ready to go.
2. Enjoy Blythe and take more photos.

Seems simple in context, but then again so did taking a photo of Eden every day for 365 days (and we all know how that turned out!).

The great thing about having local doll friends is being able to see them! The added bonus is getting together during the holidays and just spending time together, which I really enjoy. While my friends outside of the doll hobby seem to regard it as something that’s interesting, they don’t really “get” Blythe. One of my non-dolly friends thought that my blonde Kenner and my Cappuccino Chat were pretty much the same and even identical. Yeah, I don’t know how to explain that one… But it is nice to have local friends (and online friends!) who understand and appreciate Blythe as much as I do (or even more than I do!).

A small local mini-meet for the holidays was also my first opportunity to bring Lark to a meet. Lark is an I.G. Sirenita custom Petite Blythe that was a donation for BlytheCon Vancouver. My sisters were unable to attend BlytheCon, so they donated money towards the raffle (since it was going for such a great cause – O.W.L.), and one of my sisters won the doll! Luckily for me she’s not interested in starting to collect dolls, so I wound up with little Lark as my birthday present in November.

Do you have Blythe enthusiasts local to you? Do you get together for meets – big or small?

It has been a long, long, long year. At least to me. At the beginning of 2015, I was still in school, still going through the motions of writing papers and attending practicums. Then came graduation, and the sudden realization that I had No Job – this coupled with the organization of BlytheCon Vancouver had kept me busy. I was applying for jobs left, right, and centre along with trying to keep on top of things behind the scenes for BlytheCon. Then BlytheCon was blissfully over and I still had no job, but no I had no excuse for not putting even more energy into finding a job because I didn’t have BlytheCon to distract me.

And might I say it was really, really a low blow to the self-esteem every time one of my classmates that I graduated with posted about how they were going through orientation or aced an interview or how much they were loving where they were working? Jealousy and envy were my very close friends at that point. Of course I realized that nobody in my shoes were going to post things like “LOL, still unemployed” – which is something important to note: people put their best forward on the internet.

But once I got a job (!) and started going through orientation, it just all went a lot faster. Suddenly I had a full week of orientation, and some workshops, followed by more orientation, and then a whole bunch of orientation shifts which kept me really busy and also unable to spend as much time on my hobbies as I had grown accustom to during my ‘sabbatical’ between end of school and beginning work.

That makes the time that I spend with my friends and family more valuable, and the short moments I do get to interact with dolly people online or in person that much better. I don’t ‘waste’ time on the internet anymore, instead it’s quite deliberate visits to certain sites, making sure I don’t fall down the rabbit hole that is Netflix for hours and hours on end anymore because I need to be up at 5:30am the next morning. Life has changed a bit since I started working, and that’s a good thing. It means that I need to work on finding a work-life balance as well as having a greater appreciation for the time I have for the people around me.

The day that I wrote this, I spent some time writing in some holiday cards for people near and far from me, because I think it’s important to share with people that they mean something to do you.

Have you sent out your holiday cards yet? It’s getting down to the wire to have them hopefully arrive on time! And do you send them to Blythe friends?