#kid kore katie

[smallerplaces]

Journey to boy doll, bald edition

This morning, as a break from trying to figure out the right hotel for our Las Vegas trip, I pulled off my excess Kid Kore Katie's head, got myself a pair of tweezers, and yanked out the excess hair tufts.

The way the rooting holes along the hairline are starting to merge explains why brushing this doll's hair always pulled out tufts.

I found Ben some more-or-less fitting clothing that doesn't scream Princess. Ordinarily, I'd be in favor of boys enjoying princess-y things, but Ben's been forced to present as a girl for 30 years. He is enjoying a good wallow in stereotypical boyness. In a few years, he may feel renewed enthusiasm for a flowered shirt, but that's for Future!Ben to deal with.

[smallerplaces]

Here's the story I was looking for!

I'm contemplating turning my least-loved Katie into Kyle.

The original intended Katie Kommunity was going to be two. It's four because Neveah the 2002 Jodi came with two curly-haired Katies, and the lot price was too cheap to turn down.

My original Katie, Dancing Brook, is the one at mid-right. I'm thinking of boil-washing her hair straight before rebraiding it (which requires finding one of the two bags of tiny rubber bands). Front is Rosa, who was a welcome addition because it's great to have two brown girls with different face paints! Mid left has been named Isabelle: I need to style her hair after having boil-washed and curled it. Isabelle is pretty close to what I looked like as a child, because I got all the recessive Pale Person genes from both sides of the family tree. (I did not stay blonde into adulthood.)

Then there's Beatrice, in the back row. Even after a full-day soak in fabric softener, then having curls boiled in, Beatrice's hair is a rat's nest. It doesn't have a frayed spot here and there, the way post-boil-curling Kelsey does: it's one big awful. I'm also just... not crazy about her. When I look at the other three and Creata Hilary, I feel excited about designing their dresses. With this one... nope.

So I'm thinking... if I remove her frazzled hair and replace it with flocking, I'd gain a boy doll in great condition without adding to the population. I wouldn't go with dark brown hair to fake Pistol Pete (who in one version uses the Katie head mold, so there's no doubt that the mold is non-gendered). I'm contemplating making Kyle a redhead so he can be Kelsey's younger brother.

Flocking a doll’s head

I decided to flock a doll’s head. For this purpose, I chose a Chelsea doll. This turned out to be a mistake.

To start off with, her head was very hard and solid-feeling. I put her into a ziplock bag which I lowered into boiling water. Once her head was warm and softened, I began trying to pull it off. I had no idea what I’d find inside.

It turned out to be a simple flat peg, which was partially secured by glue, explaining why her head turned so stiffly. So her head didn’t turn and twist like a Barbie’s head, but I didn’t have to worry about a hook inside. With the head off, I cut most of her hair close to her head.

Normally at this point you would remove the hair. I hit the roadblock that the indie of her head was just absolutely encrusted with a thick layer of glue. I shone a flashlight inside and I could see it. I guess this was to support the head and prevent squish-face, as well as make sure it didn’t come off the peg too easily and the hair couldn’t be ripped out. But ripping the hair out was exactly what I wanted to do! And her neck hole was so small that I, with my limited and amateur equipment, couldn’t get my tweezers in very well.

I started pulling the hair out with the tweezers from the outside of her head. This took a while. At this point, I was kind of fed up.

So I got my dad’s pliers out of his toolbox…

It actually worked like a dream, but with some major drawbacks. I ended up ripping a hole in her head.

That chunk of hair and glue on the table was part of her side part, where the hair was more closely rooted. It came out as one solid piece, ripping through the rubber skull in the process.

Aside from that, switching to pliers improved my efficiency 100% and I had ripped out most of the hair within half an hour. At that point, the remaining hair was too small and brittle to hold up to the pliers, but was still holding in too firmly for the tweezers. I looked inside her head again and realized that the glue had been broken up, to the point where I could now scrape the chunks of glue free with my tweezers, pulling the last of the hair out from the inside of her head.

Here is some of the glue and hair I managed to extract.

Now the head was nice and smooth, albeit with a hole in it.

Next step: flocking. (I’d had ideas of a rerooting experiment, but after that ordeal, I never want to take a step towards rooted anything.)

I ordered some flocking powder from RestoreDoll.com. in the videos I watched, you just spread glue on the head and then shake powder over it. What I didn’t realize is that the powder wouldn’t shake off that easily. I had a residue of hairy powder all over the doll’s face and my hands, which I had to wipe off with a wet napkin.

I actually did two or three layers of Modge Podge and flocking powder before I was satisfied.

And done. Off to the arcade!

[dollsonmain]

I had a feeling the Kelsey ♥ Kelsey half-bike went with the Kid Kore doll and it does. The doll is Katie and her older sister (the Barbie analog) is Kelsey.

I think I’ll work on Katie a bit. Her hair is pretty bad.

Other than Tuptim, I haven’t washed any of those dolls or things.

If anyone wants or needs any of those furniture bits let me know. They’re getting redonated otherwise.

[thelivesofourdolls]

Katie doll by Kid Kore

[starry-wolf]

Chapters: 26/26 Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron) Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), OC - Character Additional Tags: Accidental Baby Acquisition, But not very accidental, An alien planet is destroyed, Voltron Raises an Alien Baby, Kid Fic, Kid!Fic, Adoption, Adopted Children, Adopted Alien, Keith and Shiro brother relationship, Big brother Shiro, Parents, Semi-Slow Burn, One-Sided Crush, becomes two sided crush, Baby Alien, Female Alien - Freeform, Galra Keith, Galra!Keith, Gay Keith, Questioning Lance, Turns to Bi Lance, bi lance Summary:

"Her name is Kore."

"Keith..."

"Let her know that she was loved and please love her in my stead..."

"Keith!"

"I will." With that the woman slumped, the last of her energy leaving her in a final huff. Keith tightened his hold on the child and ran back to the lion. He got the two out of there in just the nick of time.

~

Keith, going against direct orders, flies Red into a burning planet to save the last surviving alien on the planet and now Voltron must raise said survivor.

[smallerplaces]

I vibe with all of the thoughts here so much. A couple weeks ago, I figured out the password sitch with my old doll-collecting blog (from before I moved to Connecticut and back again, so at the height of Bratz close-out and relaunch, Barbie Dreamhouse close-out and diverse body-type Fashionista launch, and the just-barely-post-peak era of Monster High).

Seeing so many dolls that I used to own brings up a lot of uncomfortable feelings, none of which is wanting to own those specific dolls again. I keep the content because I want the record of certain obscure lines, like Mystixx Rococo Zombies, but it's mostly a record of FOMO, compounded by my mother's tendency to get a grip on my hobbies and overbuy for me. (Sorting out Mom's 1000+ dolls after her death was... a thing that I did.)

My notable past FOMOs:

Everyone is talking about Dreamhouse Raquelle, and she's $10 at MarshMaxx.

Mystixx Rococo Zombies.

Here is a weird Monster High variant and Family Dollar/Dollar General is having a BOGO sale for Black Friday. I should get one of each.

If I like articulated Barbie, I should have an articulated version of all of her younger sisters.

I don't have enough dolls of X ethnicity, and Burlington has an articulated one for $4.

Mom thinks I collect dolls with blue hair, and here's one on close-out for $4.

Everyone else is ordering from AliExpress.

New Barbie body types!

New Ken body types!

Several local Walmarts had poor inventory control, making it possible to find unusual and exciting Bratz if you dug backward in the shelves.

Tuesday Morning still existed and was good.

I'm bored and took the bus to Toys R Us.

Toys R Us is having a going-out-of-business-sale.

Dealing with Mom's collections changed my POV on collecting, so my actual and target collection sizes are now much smaller and much more aggressively curated. A lot of dolls that are vaguely tempting don't retain their appeal past the "well, I'll think about it" phase -- which is not a judgment on people who own those dolls, or who own a lot of dolls! I love looking at people's collections! If you are happiest with 100+ dolls, I'm happy for you!

Today I'm passing on bidding on a NRFB Kid Kore Sisters set that has Kelsey, Katie, Piper (who I want eventually), and the mysterious Carla (who I also want eventually) at an astonishingly low starting bid of $20 because:

It's not getting the big YES from me emotionally.

I don't buy vintage dolls NRFB, as I don't leave dolls in box.

This set is the more common platinum blonde sisters, and I don't buy platinum blonde when there's another option. Piper definitely comes in brunette, as well as in a Native American version. Carla comes in brunette and redhead.

I already have four Katies that I like better, and one Kelsey that I like better.

I don't think I've evolved, so much as reached a point of post-Mom-collection exhaustion where owning things seems like a lot of trouble.

Faery Tale Dolls brings up some salient points I’ve recently seen shouted down on doll twt and I’d really like to talk about that part of doll collecting: the getting dolls (or not letting it leave) part whether it’s second hand or new because “what if I don’t get another chance?”.

Now you might think it’s easier if you stick to second hand or factory rejects, if you avoid certain places or give yourself a set budget. But the impulse is still there and that’s “Here’s something really interesting and I’m not sure I should pass it up”.

For me that was:

A bunch of 5+ Rainbow high heads in a row this summer

Paid more than I usually would for bald Barbie tropical Miko & now bald Barbie mermaid Daisy side glance,

Bought on impulse: bald Snow white, bald Licca Karen-chan

Bundles for the excitement of a haul with a couple of gold nuggets in it and the fun of fixing up a gunky bundle but without the full follow-through to see all the dolls completed or sent away.

This is despite efforts to keep out of the Instagram explore and away from doll YouTube which is mostly about the new shiny stuff.

Being able to figure out what fits in my collection is really complicated: pictures and in hand can be very different, a minor modification can utterly change a doll, there’s rarity, there’s emotional or labour investment.

For me there’s also the fact that I pared down my bratz collection right before the market exploded: dolls I sold for $10-20 are worth $100-200, items included for free are $10 each. There’s no regret about making space or not magically predicting the boom. In the moment I thought “Well if I miss this one, I can always get her again” and that is simply not possible for a couple I did end up missing. So now that it’s time to make some space among the Monster Highs: “ah well what if you can’t get her again?” rears its ugly head. 🤔 Post or treats are serotonin, it’s something to look forward to, it keeps you going but the backlash can be equally painful if you have a difficult relationship with clutter or money or just the fact that little things do add up if you don’t have a constant flow of curating your stuff/your space.

This is a judgement free zone for the dolls that didn’t work out and whatever feelings whether it’s:

Do i have too much? My collection is inadequate. I spend too frivolously. I resent the having duplicates and yet I love some duplicates. This line turned out not to be quite my jam but I won’t make my money back. I want the community: community wanes when you don’t have the latest stuff. I treat myself to be nice then later don’t feel like being nice to myself…

[ao3feed-klance]

Love Her for Me

read it on AO3 at http://ift.tt/2qxuETx

by Lady_of_the_Lake97

"Her name is Kore."

"Keith..."

"Let her know that she was loved and please love her in my stead..."

"Keith!"

"I will." With that the woman slumped, the last of her energy leaving her in a final huff. Keith tightened his hold on the child and ran back to the lion. He got the two out of there in just the nick of time.

~

Keith, going against direct orders, flies Red into a burning planet to save the last surviving alien on the planet and now Voltron must raise said survivor.

Words: 1139, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), OC - Character

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Accidental Baby Acquisition, But not very accidental, An alien planet is destroyed, Voltron Raises an Alien Baby, Kid Fic, Kid!Fic, Adoption, Adopted Children, Adopted Alien, Keith and Shiro brother relationship, Big brother Shiro, Parents, Semi-Slow Burn, One-Sided Crush, becomes two sided crush, Baby Alien, Female Alien - Freeform, Galra Keith, Galra!Keith

read it on AO3 at http://ift.tt/2qxuETx

[ao3feed-safeklance]

Love Her for Me

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2qxuETx

by Lady_of_the_Lake97

“Her name is Kore.”

“Keith…”

“Let her know that she was loved and please love her in my stead…”

“Keith!”

“I will.” With that the woman slumped, the last of her energy leaving her in a final huff. Keith tightened his hold on the child and ran back to the lion. He got the two out of there in just the nick of time.

~

Keith, going against direct orders, flies Red into a burning planet to save the last surviving alien on the planet and now Voltron must raise said survivor.

Words: 1139, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), OC - Character

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Accidental Baby Acquisition, But not very accidental, An alien planet is destroyed, Voltron Raises an Alien Baby, Kid Fic, Kid!Fic, Adoption, Adopted Children, Adopted Alien, Keith and Shiro brother relationship, Big brother Shiro, Parents, Semi-Slow Burn, One-Sided Crush, becomes two sided crush, Baby Alien, Female Alien - Freeform, Galra Keith, Galra!Keith

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2qxuETx

[ao3feed-galrakeith]

Love Her for Me

by Lady_of_the_Lake97

"Her name is Kore."

"Keith..."

"Let her know that she was loved and please love her in my stead..."

"Keith!"

"I will." With that the woman slumped, the last of her energy leaving her in a final huff. Keith tightened his hold on the child and ran back to the lion. He got the two out of there in just the nick of time.

~

Keith, going against direct orders, flies Red into a burning planet to save the last surviving alien on the planet and now Voltron must raise said survivor.

Words: 1139, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), OC - Character

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Accidental Baby Acquisition, But not very accidental, An alien planet is destroyed, Voltron Raises an Alien Baby, Kid Fic, Kid!Fic, Adoption, Adopted Children, Adopted Alien, Keith and Shiro brother relationship, Big brother Shiro, Parents, Semi-Slow Burn, One-Sided Crush, becomes two sided crush, Baby Alien, Female Alien - Freeform, Galra Keith, Galra!Keith

from AO3 works tagged 'Voltron: Legendary Defender' http://ift.tt/2qxuETx via IFTTT

[ao3feed-voltronlegendarydefender]

Love Her for Me

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2qxuETx

by Lady_of_the_Lake97

"Her name is Kore."

"Keith..."

"Let her know that she was loved and please love her in my stead..."

"Keith!"

"I will." With that the woman slumped, the last of her energy leaving her in a final huff. Keith tightened his hold on the child and ran back to the lion. He got the two out of there in just the nick of time.

~

Keith, going against direct orders, flies Red into a burning planet to save the last surviving alien on the planet and now Voltron must raise said survivor.

Words: 1139, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge (Voltron), Hunk (Voltron), OC - Character

Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Keith & Lance (Voltron)

Additional Tags: Accidental Baby Acquisition, But not very accidental, An alien planet is destroyed, Voltron Raises an Alien Baby, Kid Fic, Kid!Fic, Adoption, Adopted Children, Adopted Alien, Keith and Shiro brother relationship, Big brother Shiro, Parents, Semi-Slow Burn, One-Sided Crush, becomes two sided crush, Baby Alien, Female Alien - Freeform, Galra Keith, Galra!Keith

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2qxuETx

[smallerplaces]

What child is this?

Existing Native American Katie is to the left, New Girl is to the right.

New Girl seems to have a subtly different face-up on the same head mold, as well as much longer hair. I'm leaning toward keeping her, even though she's a second Dancing Brook.

So who should she be?

Native American but of a different tribe than OG Dancing Brook "Brooke," so I can make them different folklorico outfits when I finally get to that project for all the 6-8" girls. (Nobody's singled out as "ethnic" if everybody participates.)

Latina so Teresa can have a younger sister.

Assyrian because that's part of my heritage and nobody ever makes Assyrian fashion dolls.

East Indian because that's also an under-represented doll heritage, and Bollywood would love that flowing hair.

[smallerplaces]

Struck by the enthusiasm of the moment, I used nail polish remover to remove most of the brown-haired Katie's lip color and did a preliminary hack-off of her snarled and frazzled locks.

This specific doll is cuter as a little boy.

I tried the smallest of my extra wigs from wigging Cinderelsa, and while it fit, it gave me a little girl with chin-length hair, which is not the vision for this doll. This is a little boy.

So I went looking for flocking.

Good grief.

Flocking apparently had a moment circa 2017, the exact moment when I needed no flocking at all. That moment is long past.

After considerable gnashing of teeth about how it should not be this difficult to buy a small vial of auburn flocking, my fourth visit to Restore Dolls' site turned up Titian color, and I decided to spring for shipping, which is much cheaper than I'd braced myself for. It's more flocking than I need, but it opens the possibility of extending Kelsey's family with thrift finds who get fresh titian buzz cuts.

While enjoying the new Quiet Hour at Walmart and failing to find flocking, I picked up plain colored fat quarters appropriate for pants and some solid-colored baby socks for sweaters for smaller dolls.

Planning to dress a boy Katie made appallingly clear how much of sewing is built around ideals of frilly girlishness. Ordinarily, I'd be on the train of "boys can like florals too!" But after presenting as a girl for 30 years, Kyle is eager to wallow in stereotypical boy things. As compensation for likely giving him a pretty boring first outfit, I picked up a set of earth-moving vehicles for him at Dollar Tree.

[smallerplaces]

Kid Kore Katie joins the fam

Stacie, Whitney, and Hilary have a new friend: Katie, who is a mid-1990s Kid Kore "Dancing Brook."

in thinking about my small community of dolls, I'd been pondering who isn't represented. A glaring omission is Native Americans. So I went looking for indigenous girls among vintage clone dolls, and in a weird clonish way, I hit pay dirt.

We need to backtrack a second, to Maureen Trudelle Schwarz' "Native American Barbie: The Marketing of Euro-American Desires." Schwarz looks only at Barbies -- and, oddly, doesn't address Mattel's Pocahontas dolls, even though Pocahontas was likely at the heart of the 1990s craze for Native American dolls -- but this narrowness of focus doesn't change the validity of her point. She argues that Native American fashion dolls have been consistently marketed as "other," "historic," and spiritually tied to the earth, in a manner that has no equivalent for white fashion dolls (or even Black ones).

Hooboy is she right about that for Kid Kore's many, many Native American dolls, as well as Totsy's smaller assortment. Kid Kore's are part of the Heartland series, complete with actually labeling dolls as "Indian Princess." Totsy's are packaged as Heroes of Yesteryear. Everyone is in a movie-western version of "traditional" garments. Nobody except the men have any attempt at a head mold that isn't also used on the white dolls. And yes, the boxes have friendly information about historic close-to-the-earth practices.

"Dancing Brook" is a Kid Kore Katie, the 7" younger sister of flagship doll Kelsey. She is also cute as all get-out, and I'm less concerned about head molds on a character that's a mid-sized little girl. I bookmarked a bunch on eBay and bought the one whose seller offered me the best deal.

She arrived in her "traditional" costume, in really great shape. I don't think she'd ever been undressed.

The first step is, of course, to get her out of that costume, since she's here to be a little girl among other little girls. In the long haul, all of the 6-9" little girls are going to belong to a children's performing arts group that requires them to have traditional dance dresses, but this requires getting out the sewing machine, which means getting some eBay listings done first. Point is, Katie will be defined by her "traditional costume" exactly as much as Stacie, Whitney, and Hilary.

Speaking of which, here's Katie showing that she's a little shorter than Whitney (Stacie) and about an inch taller than Creata Hilary. She's also reminding me that I'll need to sew casual outfits for the whole gang, as the clothes I think are Stacie clothes mostly fit Kelly, Skipper, and hypothetical other dolls that may not exist.

Let's see what's under the clothing.

Katie has a pretty simple body, but because she's Kid Kore, she has a secret.

It's not in how she does splits.

It's not in how she sits much more gracefully than Hilary.

No, it's in how Kid Kore handled articulation. Those legs are bendy!

It's unsettling, but allows for a range of motion.

Her face is adorable! I might want to do a little washing on her hair, but it's in great shape for a doll that's almost 30 years old. Unlike Hilary, she has kept her eyebrows.

She's looking forward to hanging out with her new friends... oh wait... her name!

Well, I'm not going to call her Dancing Brook. That's an obvious "white person romanticizing" name. I haven't decided what tribe she belongs to (which is going to be important in making her a more accurate festival dress). The major candidates are Northern Yokuts, Miwok, or Tohono O'odham [the first two for where I live now, the third for my 10 years in Arizona]. For naming, though, it doesn't really matter because west coast natives usually don't disclose their native names to white folk, for reasons that should be pretty obvious. So I'd only know her Anglo name, and... she's a Kid Kore Katie. As the first Katie in my little doll community, she gets the name.

[smallerplaces]

2023 in Review 3: the Katie Krew

The Katie Krew did not start out to be a krew.

When I first started thinking about getting back into dolls, I happened on a discussion of Creata's "clones" from the 1980s. Like a lot of fashion doll lines of the late 20th century, it's unclear how much the dolls were actual clones and how much they were simply fashion dolls doing their own thing. The rock 'n' roll Creata line, for instance, was probably a clone for Hasbro's Jem & the Holograms. But the Creata Flower Fairies? Much less clear.

Really unclear on its clone origins is the 6-1/4" doll at front left, with dark curled hair, wearing her karate practice outfit over a red striped top. That's Creata's "Today's Girls" Hillary. "Today's Girls" debuted several years before Stacie was a twinkle in Mattel's eye, but long after Todd and Tutti. There's really no Mattel niche that these dolls match! They were definitely also used as little sisters for the Flower Fairies, but mine was sold as a little equestrian (foreshadowing Kid Kore's horse riders).

My first Kid Kore Katie happened because I was researching Native American clone dolls (there were a lot in the 1990s). I bookmarked on eBay a cute and cheap brown-skinned doll with dark braids -- the doll now sitting in the front row wearing checked shorts and a blue and pink jersey, waiting for her hair to be rebraided. That's a Dancing Brook, the "little sister" of the Heartland families. She is now officially called Brooke.

Then it was a no-brainer to get a Rosa Lee, the Romani Katie. She's the curly haired brown girl behind Hillary, wearing a flowered dress.

The golden-blonde Katie, now named Isabelle, came as a lot with my Black(ish) 2002 Jodi, along with the brunette Katie that was shorn and flocked in titian to become Ben. Isabelle is at middle right, wearing an aqua gingham cowgirl outfit with gold trim. Ben is perched above her in khakis and a red and aqua sweater. (Katie originally had a brown-haired dude pal (Todd clone) named Kyle, who was also dressed in western wear as Pistol Pete. Kyle is hard to find, and it was more fun to make my own younger brother for my redheaded Kelsey.

Bette Mae, the brown gal with lots of straight black hair, wearing the pink striped shirt at middle left, is my second Dancing Brook. She's named for one of the leaders of the Seminoles in Florida, as I decided to have the two Dancing Brooks come from different tribes. She arrived with a large lot of vintage Katie clothes, which is why everyone here except Hillary has shoes!

Katies are absolutely, positively a direct competitor with Mattel's Stacie. They appear in a sister pack in 1992. However, Katie has a slightly younger sister, Carla, who was being sold as "Girls Club" before Stacie launched. Carla had a Katie head mold on what sure looks in photos like a Creata 6.25" body like Hillary.

The Katie Krew proved so compelling that I got rid of my 1990s Stacie and Whitney dolls, who'd once been major thrift finds (but Stacie had worn the same outfit for 10 years, so my enthusiasm wasn't as high as I thought). I'm still a little on the fence about Bette Mae, but every time I put her next to Brooke, I notice subtle differences in their face-up and decide she's uniquely adorable.

[smallerplaces]

Katie's Kloset arrives!

Suddenly, my order of vintage Katie clothes and shoes jumped from its orbit of Sacramento to the actual post office for my zip code, got sent out for delivery, and arrived!

Alas, she's not as Black as she looked in the listings: while her hair is wild and frayed, it was originally braided, so she's another Dancing Brook. I may keep her anyway. While I'm ordinarily not ready to own duplicates, Katies are so damn cute!

The point of the order was to get shoes, and shoes I got! I now have several pairs of pumps in different colors, pink sneakers, and (the real prize) white sneakers for Ben!

Everyone got dressed, though New Girl will soon have to be undressed to get her hair done. (I'm going to skip alt text and tell you below the pic what's in it.)

Starting from top left, Rosa Lee got a space-alien-themed pinafore dress in vibrant neon colors. Her shoes aren't visible, but they're purple. Isabelle, with her blonde curls, is modeling the Heartland Western cowgirl outfit in teal check with gold fringe. Brooke, my original Dancing Brook, found herself black checkered shorts and an aqua-and-magenta T-shirt with a skateboarder pattern. Her shoes are matching hot pink. I swear, I had so many summer clothes in the color scheme of her shirt, back in 1988. Ocean Pacific went to town for aqua and pink.

In the front row, my new Dancing Brook changed into a pink long-sleeved top with a white cat on it (which may be Piper's, judging by the fit) and a ruffled blue-and-white print skirt with hot pink trim. She is wearing hot pink ballet flats. Ben, my trans!Katie ("Katie" is not his deadname but his species) scored white tennis shoes and a long-sleeved sweater in red with aqua and yellow trim. It clashes with his hair, but it's the first garment he's had that was 100% his, not a compromise or leftover. So he's thrilled.

I need to do a full sort, as some of the pants are a little small and might do better for Creata Hillary or for Arvin Lebec, and a few items are too large and might do better for Totsy Teen Fun Lacey.

SHOES!!! Also, clothes to use as a pattern so I'm not guessing at every little thing!

[smallerplaces]

A tribute to articulated 1990s Stacie

This articulated Stacie from the 1990s was a thrift store find around Christmas 2014, when my parents and I went on a tour of all major thrift stores in East Bay, and it was epic. I'd been wanting an articulated Stacie at that time, and it was Dad who found her. I sewed her dress for Easter 2015.

While I think I found a Whitney of my own later, this one is from Mom's collection because she was in better shape.

Kelly is also from Mom's collection. Kelly was going to leave us, but then I started getting more into 4" dolls and decided that one Kelly was not excessive.

While Stacie has worn the same dress for 8 years, my krowd of Kid Kore Katies is growing at ridiculous rates.

Here are the articulated gals with the first of the Katies, the Katie that was the camel's nose under the tent. I'm up to four Katies and honestly a lot more excited about 1990s clones these days. If I move on from Stacies, I'd have an opening for a redheaded Katie to go with redheaded Kelsey, as well as for a Creata Today's Girl adolescent.