I will be the first to admit that in the beginning, I didn’t really “get” the appeal of reroots done in natural fibres. This was partly because I was new to the hobby and I just adored my dolls with their ‘natural’ (stock) hair instead, and partly because I had never seen a doll with a natural fibre reroot in person, or had the opportunity to touch/pet a natural reroot. Of course, this all changed once I got to know people in the hobby (and those people let me touch their dolls). An alpaca reroot that a local friend made felt like petting a kitten.

Most of my dolls are (surprise, surprise) stock, but I do have a couple of custom dolls now and two of them have reroots. Halo has a mohair (?) reroot – it’s like a white fluffy cloud on her head. The other is Lark, whom I believe (based on feel) has an alpaca reroot because it feels just like a kitten. And I genuinely still love the stock dolls with their stock hair, but I can’t deny the appeal of reroots made with mohair or alpaca (or other natural fibres!). There’s just an softness to them that cannot be duplicated by synthetic materials, which is what saran and nylon are.

Do you have any dolls with natural fibre reroots? What kind of animal hair is on your dolls’ heads?

I finally unboxed my Intensive Care Petite and I’m so happy about it. While I’d love to give her a change of clothes, it appears as though her hat is firmly stuck on. There’s quite a thick piece of plastic that seems to be holding her hat on, and it seems to go through her scalp. So she will remain in her outfit indefinitely, at least for the time being – and here some Chickadee spam!

I was recently having a conversation with a friend who asked me how many dolls I had now, and my go to answer was “Ummm… *mentally does some math* 16 Blythes with uhh, 2 Middies and 4 Petites.” This brought up the response of “Wait, weren’t you at like 8 recently? When did you get so many?”.

That is an excellent question (sort of), and I try not to think too hard about how many dolls that I have or how quickly I’ve acquired them, but it really isn’t that quick as one would assume. I’ve been collecting and acquiring dolls since 2009, so coming up on 7 years in June. In 2009, I got my first three Blythes (Sophie/Cappuccino Chat, Belarus/Love Mission, and Tertiary Jane/Simply Peppermint) and I maintained that increase by three dolls per year for a while. In 2010, I went up by three (Bennett/Margaret Meets Ladybug, Eden Mouse/Punkaholic People, Kindred/Velvet Minuet) as did 2011 (Emmalynn/Kenner, Moxie/Simply Bubble Boom, Mollie/Simply Sparkly Spark).

2012 saw me go up by three as well, but with two of the three being Kenners (Primrose and Lillian Rose), as well as my first custom (Halo, a Friends With Blythe customized Prima Dolly Saffy). I also added three in 2013, are you noticing a trend yet? I added Kitty Brighton (Jackie Ramone Middie) as my first Middie, Cedar (Monique Magnifique), and Minnow (Hi-Ho! Marine). If I had been adding at a rate of three per year, I would be up to 21 by the end of this year and so far I’m doing okay! 2014 saw me only add two dolls to the family (Cameo, another Friends With Blythe custom; and Lydia Melbourne, a Yellow Marshmallow Middie). In 2015 I did amazingly well because I was scrimping during my unemployment (and saving for BlytheCon Vancouver spending money) and only added one doll to the family – Lark, the I.G. Sirenita Petite who was a gift from my sister (after she’d won her from the raffle), although I usually don’t “count” Petites into my doll count because they’re so small and I only have four right now. And then that takes us to 2016, where I’ve added one Petite and one Mondrian.

If we don’t count the Petites (which I often don’t – sorry little ones!), that means that I average about 2.25 dolls per year. Which isn’t bad! I do have plans on adding an ADG soon, to round out the family a little bit, so that’ll skew with my numbers a little bit – but overall it’s not a huge surplus in dolls all the time. If I had the money, I’d probably increase the size of my collection by more than two-to-three dolls a year, but as it currently stands I have more pressing matters to contend with when it comes to if I can spend money on dolls (the answer is usually no, but that doesn’t stop me from watching auctions and paying attention to what’s going online when it comes to buying/selling dolls).

I was chatting with a doll friend recently (who asked to remain anonymous) and we were talking about Middies, and then she said this gem:

I don’t really get the point of them.

The point? The point is that they’re cute! They’re adorable and pocket-sized! They have even tinier feet that demands a tiny shoe collection all to themselves! But I don’t throw all of these points at her, instead I simply go “What do you mean?” – the response I got wasn’t surprising, but was a good point.

“I’m worth every penny!”

On a good day, a Middie costs roughly the same as a Neo Blythe – but she doesn’t have the same characteristics as a Blythe. For instance, a Middie doesn’t have the famed changing eyes that a Blythe has, instead she has a dial and can just move her eyes from side to side (much like a Pullip). The functionality isn’t the same as one doll has one set of eyes, the other has four.

Isn’t the whole point of Blythe is to have the oversized head and the changing eyes?

I thought about this – and I thought it was a yes and no type of answer to that question. Yes, the classic (vintage) Blythe was well known (and feared by children?) for having the changing eye colours. That’s also one of the features that drew me to her when I first discovered Blythe on the internet because it was quirky, weird, and cute. But I tend to consider Middie to be a different doll altogether. Sure, she shares a lot of similar qualities with Blythe (large head to body radio, similar facial features), but she’s not a smaller version of her big sister.

Middie is her own doll-self (so to speak). After all, nobody looks at Petites and go “Ugh, she doesn’t have changing eyes like Blythe does!”.

When I first started in the Blythe hobby way back when (2009! It’ll be 7 years in June!), “grail doll” was a phrase used to describe a very sought after doll that was out of someone’s reach. This could be due to finances or just due to rarity. For instance, the beginning a grail doll for me was a Kenner Blythe because at the time they both seemed really expensive and they were really expensive. Custom Blythes at the time seemed expensive to me too, and they averaged around $300USD (a lot has changed over the years!).

What are we? Chopped liver?!

Nowadays, I see ‘grail doll’ being used to just describe a doll that someone wanted (and then bought! and then they resell). To me, that doesn’t really seem like a “grail” because it wasn’t ever really out of their reach, they just wanted the doll and bought it. If a grail object was that easy to find, there wouldn’t have been a journey to search for it and the adventure that goes along with it. But, I digress. A word is a word is a word, and language develops and changes all the time – and so does the definition of grail doll.

I’ve had a lot of high-on-my-wish-list dolls come in – Margaret Meets Ladybug (Bennett), Velvet Minuet (Kindred), a redheaded Kenner (Emmalynn), and a Mondrian (Lottie). I think next on my wishlist might be an Aztec Arrival (BL) or Sunday Best (BL). I’ve seen BLs in person before, but I’m very much smitten with them now that Lottie is in my life.

Do you use the phrase “grail doll” to describe your wish list? Who are you wishing for right now?