Sometimes it is hard to find time for Blythe because of real life situations. Case in point, during midterms ‘week’ or finals ‘week’ (and, let’s face it, midterms and finals were never contained to a single week!) I spent a lot less time with my dolls. During the holidays and I’m going from one party to another another and then out for dinner with relatives that I primarily regularly see in December? Not going to spend a lot of time with the dolls either. It can be difficult to carve out some time for hobbies, like Blythe, because other things just seem a bit more pressing. And, if we are going to be perfectly honest, some of those things are a lot more pressing. Going to your job, or spending time with your significant other/children/other family/pets, or going to the grocery store so you actually have breakfast for the morning. These are all important things. So where does Blythe fall in the general pecking order of things? Do I just not spend the time on Blythe because other things are more important? Don’t be silly!

It’s important to me that I spend a little bit of time each week (not necessarily each day, I don’t think that I could manage that) doing something with my dolls. Why? Because it’s a hobby, it’s an outlet for me, and I like spending time with my dolls. If I didn’t, I should probably considering selling them then!

The time that I carve out for Blythe time isn’t the same every week. Sometimes it’s an afternoon where I am tired of studying, so I decide to try out different outfit combinations on a doll. Sometimes I have a moment of inspiration for a blog post for BlytheLife so I scribble the idea down on a notepad so I can get to it later when I don’t actually have something more pressing to do. For instance, I am writing this current post about making time for Blythe during a lovely Monday afternoon while having a cup of tea.

It’s important to make time for the things that matter – like cooking, or spending time with loved ones. But it’s also important to make the time for your creative and fun outlets because nothing wears a person out more than doing nothing but ‘what you have to do’ without anything fun in the mix.

It can be hard to find time for Blythe, but it doesn’t have to be a lot of time every week. 30 minutes spent changing outfits can be fun and rewarding! If a few minutes rearranging who sits where on a little couch is enough to make you smile, then that makes it worth it – because a happy hobby should be indulged in whenever you can.

Cameo’s wearing: dress/Puppy52Dolls in BlytheCon Vancouver fabric, tights/Endangered Sissy.

To give my Middies a bit more love, I’ve decided that the first Monday of every month from now on will be Middie Monday!  Middie Monday will be posts about Middies – either new releases, things I’ve done with or created for my Middies recently, and I may even feature some favourite Middie crafters/sellers! The sky’s the limit, as long as it’s Middie related.

For the first Middie Monday, I wanted to share some photos of Miss Lydia Melbourne. I love that Blythes have been made with two-toned hair, especially with hugely contrasting colours like white and hot pink. It’s brighter than the pink of Cameo’s hair (she has stock Ichigo Heaven hair), which is a nice treat.

“I just thought you should know that today is going to be a bad day.”
“Why?”

I think new colour combinations of hair would be fun and exciting! I’m all for natural coloured hairs as well, but I do love it when they come out with something new as well. While Lydia is not the first Blythe that I’ve had with fantasy coloured hairs, she is the latest and the most interesting because of the two colours. Aside from her hair, I’m still learning about Lydia’s personality. I think it doesn’t really help that my self-induced challenge is to hand craft my Middies’ wardrobe, poor things. But overall she’s very sweet, I think – I just haven’t spent enough time with either of my Middies to figure out who they are yet (Blythe people will understand this, I hope). My hope that as Middie Monday progresses, I’ll figure out their personalities a little bit more.

“They got my drink wrong. Again.”
“…”
“2% milk instead of skim. Pretty sure one less espresso shot.”
“You’re too young for coffee.”
“That’s what you think.”

If you have any suggestions for a future Middie Monday post, please send me an email or use my Suggestions form!

Let me start this off with saying that I love Blythe and I have met some wonderful people through the Blythe community. But there is a however (and I guess there’s a but too) about that, because there is a problem with Blythe being a primarily online hobby and an online community. For those that live in an area and don’t know any other Blythe enthusiasts, it’s a solely online hobby. For my first three years, it was an online only hobby because I wasn’t aware of any local collectors until I went to Portland to meet people from around Vancouver. International travel does seems counter intuitive to meeting people who live a 30 minute drive from my house, but that’s the way it worked out.

The issue with an online community is that nearly all communication is done with text. Nearly all meaning in communication can be conveyed from body language and tone. When you have a primarily online community and all of your conversations are in text, you lose a lot of the meaning when you can’t hear what a person is saying, or see their facial expression, their body language, and hand movements. People who talk with their hands, you know what I mean.

It’s hard to convey sarcasm online, or jokes, without risking offending someone (or actually offending someone). It’s even harder to sometimes see how people could misconstrue what you mean when you know what you mean and way would anyone take it the ‘wrong’ way? It’s even harder when you get offended by something that someone else said and you don’t understand why nobody else is expressing that they feel slighted or wronged.

The internet, while wonderful, has made it both easier and harder to communicate with other people.

Now online video chats… That’s a whole other story. Tone! Facial expression! My waving hands! (I’m not the only hand talker who collects Blythe, am I?)

Collecting Blythe has led me down the path of collecting other dolls. People in this community have influenced me in a variety of ways, being able to see other types of dolls beyond Blythe (and Middie, and Petites) has led me to acquiring an assortment of dolls.

From the more commercially-available standpoint, I have some Monster High dolls (5 out of the box, 2 NRFB) and a My Little Pony Equestria Girl doll (still in box…). What I would love to eventually do is get the rest of the MLP girls to complete the ‘set’.

There’s my BJD, Joy, that would be an on topic BJD for a certain online forum, she is a Doll Leaves Ding Ding (16cm):

Then there’s Kanin, my Petworks Usaggie, and my Hujoo Nano Freya in light gray, whom is oddly still without a name:

Who do you have in your doll family that’s not a Blythe?

For those who are not long-time readers of BlytheLife, it may shock you to know that I do not take a Blythe with me everywhere that I go. In fact, some of my dolls have only left my house once or twice since they’ve arrived. I’m occasionally just a very bad Blythe owner. However, I have made a conscious effort to change that by taking a doll along when I go out. Even if that doll doesn’t come out of my bag, I still carry one sometimes (except when I’m going to the hospital, because then she’d just stay in a carrier, in my bag, in a locker for 12 hours and that just seems unusually pointless).

On two separate occasions, I went for a short day hike with a doll. Most recently, I took along Lydia Melbourne (my Yellow Marshmallow Middie Blythe doll), mostly because she’s ‘newer’ and I felt that she needed some camera time. And you know what? There’s just something so fun about having something to photograph beyond the scenery (not that the scenery wasn’t beautiful, because it was). People passed me on the trail and the look out points and nobody asked about why I was holding onto a doll or asking me what the doll was about. I took photos, posed my dolls on perches, and just have a really good time.

Maybe one of these days I’ll pull a doll out on a busy street downtown and be as comfortable as I was on a trail. Maybe…

Lydia Melbourne is wearing a rainbow knit dress (by me), and Kelly shoes.