Blythe is so full of personality and it’s part of what makes her special and what makes her relationship with you special. When I get a new Blythe, I feel like I need to figure out her name and some key aspect of her personality to make her more ‘real’ to me (erm, don’t throw me into a padded room, you should know what I mean!).

Eden Mouse (Punkaholic People) is decidedly a “little girl”. I think it has a lot to do with her hair, it reminds me so much of what my hair unfortunately looked like as a child – straight bangs and what amounted to a bowl cut. Thank goodness my hair no longer looks like that, just have to say… But Eden looks like a child and she only wears pink and enjoys pink things. It took some time to figure her out, but she let me know loud and clear that she would only be wearing pink after I put a crocheted pink mouse helmet onto her silly little head.

Sometimes it just takes one thing to help decide a doll’s age. For one of my dolls, it was her hair.

I don’t really have actual numerical ages, just a ‘range’ that they fall into. For my dolls, there’s the little girls, the teenagers and the ones in their early 20s. Yes, even my Kenner (who would literally be 40 years old this year) is in her early 20s.

How old are your dolls?

When I first started collecting Blythe, I noticed that some people on Flickr had more than one of the same type of doll. There’d be photos of two Samedi Marche dolls together or two Mondrians or two Kozy Kapes. And I just thought that was so boring to have twins. Because to me, at the time, with all this variety, why would you want to have identical dolls taking up room when you could have something else taking up that room?

But that was back in 2009 when I had three dolls and I just thought it was so awesome that all my dolls had different hair colours from one another and they were all totally different. Because that’s what I thought would matter most to me – variety. But now that I’m looking at my dolls… I wouldn’t mind another stock Margaret Meets Ladybug (MML has gorgeous special stock chips and a cute pull!). And I recently (in December 2011) got Simply Bubble Boom (Moxie) and Simply Sparkly Spark (Mollie) and I’ve been calling the pair of them my “fraternal twins”. This is mostly because SBB and SSS (along with STT, who I’m not getting) were part of a ‘trio’ and they belong together.

Looking at photos of twins (or triplets) is pretty fun. I like trying to figure out who is who in the photos. Sometimes there is an obvious difference (shorter hair or some other distinctive change), but having twins is so very awesome to see in photos. I’d love to have twin Mondrians one day, but I may have to settle for (one day!) getting just the one.

Do you have twins/triplets/more? Would you want them? And if yes, which dolls?

Lets say that there’s some kind of disaster (and it’ll be a financial one because I’m not going to put you through a hypothetical house fire or flooding). You have to sell off most of your Blythes and you can only afford to keep one of the ones that you already own. So it can’t be that you choose to only have Princess a la Mode when you’ve never touched the doll before!

Now, you keep as much (or as little) of the doll clothes that you already have. You just need to pick one Blythe doll. It doesn’t matter if she’s your most expensive or your least expensive – just the one that you would want to keep the most.

I think for me, the Blythe that I would want to keep the most is my redheaded Kenner, Emmalynn. I’ve been doing all of the restorations myself and she’s also the most expensive Blythe that I own. Not only that, but all of my Neo Blythes are stock (or mostly stock, aside from chip changes or gaze lifting), so while it wouldn’t necessarily be the same doll, I could eventually rebuy the ‘same doll’… one day. I would hope that whoever I were to sell some of my Neo favourites would be willing to reselling them back to me when I’m financially able to rebuy them though.

If you could only keep one of the Blythes that you already own, who would you pick and why?

It’s generally frowned upon to discuss money in public. After all, finances are personal, right? But the cost of Blythe, regardless of how you may fudge the number, is still high. I’m not writing this to call anyone out. Some people have arrangements for monthly ‘fun’ money. Or they just take care of their own personal money after joint bills and necessities are paid for. Some people post publicly about lying to their spouse/partner about how much their doll hobby costs. The idea of this seems odd, unless you actually use money that you can afford to use for entertainment purposes. But if you can afford it, and you’re using the money, how do you justify the cost of it when you’re balancing the chequebook?

I see posts online from people in the doll hobby who will say that they lied about the total cost of a doll to their husband, even going so far as to only disclose half of the cost. That’s a lot of money to be lying about, especially for a hobby that’s not a necessity. It’s one thing to joke about how shh, don’t tell the spouse how much the new doll cost! But it’s entirely an other to actually lie about it. Full disclosure is the best policy.

But if you have no spouse/partner or anyone who depends on you to tell the truth about the money and you can afford it…

I live at home (I commute to school) and my parents know how much Blythe costs (in fact, they’re the reason why I have four out of nine!). My boyfriend (whom I do not live with) knows how much Blythe costs because he’s seen me looking at auction listings on his computer before. My top financial responsibility is my tuition. But fun money? Yeah, I spend it on Blythe (well, and other things to, but this is BlytheLife.com, after all!).

Do the people in your life know how much Blythe costs?

I recently went through my dolls’ clothes to see if there were any things I could part with. My local doll group is fantastic for both destashing what I no longer really want to keep for my dolls and also for getting new things (they’re all a bunch of enablers, I swear!). Some of what I put into a bag of freebies are things that I’ve made myself for my dolls. I try to make most of my dolls’ clothes – at least that was the original goal that I had in mind when I first started collecting Blythes. I don’t really think that I got very far with that goal though – although most of the hats that my dolls have are made by me, if that counts. I have bought quite a fair bit of the wardrobe, along with participating in swaps (which are fantastic for getting new clothes!) and crafting things for my dolls.

With my New Year’s resolution of crafting at least two items for the dolls per month, I think I’m going to be a little bit more crafty this year. Photo progress will show up on Flickr (if I can remember), but it’ll also be good for me because I probably won’t be crocheting just 24 hats for the dolls, I may actually do other things (like knit and sew). It’ll be an interesting challenge – even if it’s not as challenging as making a clothing item per day (yes, some brave souls took on that challenge on Flickr!). I’d like to think that approximately a quarter of the dolls’ clothing that I have right now is handmade by me (but that’s a very rough estimate and probably being very generous to myself). But most of it is handmade by someone, if not me (thanks to trades with local Blythe peeps and swaps organized online), so that makes me feel pretty good about the level of handmade in the dolly closet.

How much do you DIY for your dolls? How much do you plan on crafting this year?