Life's been hell & missing you guys. :(

The last seven months has been way more stressful than I've even known how to deal with. I just never expected food to so completely put my life on hold. It dominates my time so much that the only energy I have for DD is to snuggle with Tama sometimes and seeing them around the house just being happy. Time and energy for sewing seems almost like a joke. The only refuge I've had to let the Kiddos flourish is because they have staged a full-on invasion into my fantasy world that I'm still writing. Correction, re-writing. The silly little chapter that I posted in the story section was only the beginning. Now the entire first book is being rewritten so everyone can join in. They have literally changed the course of the entire world.

 

I've been writing to simply save my sanity and to work on something that I hope can be published someday. At least in my fantasy world I'm not constantly sick all the time like I am in the real world.

 

What happened seven months ago? Frankly I don't know what changed on the physical level, but numerous food groups that would occasionally cause me trouble suddenly cannot be tolerated at all. I have never been this consistently and violently sick/in pain in my whole entire life. 11+ years ago I became vegetarian because my body does not digest meat well and caused a lot of discomfort. Over five years ago I drastically reduced my dairy consumption in every form because yet again it causes me pain. I thought I could handle wheat/gluten alright, but never quite realized that it completely clogged my sinuses and cause me to have frequent ear infections. Between September and the beginning of November last year my ability to handle these foods dropped like a rock. On Thanksgiving I was so very ill and tried to hide the fact from my family. The days that followed I was trapped in bed with crippling stomach pain and so sick I couldn't eat. It felt like everything was making me sick.

 

Food was really feeling like a game of Russian roulette, and I kept loosing. And just when I thought we had found the foods I could eat, I'd get sick again. Often I couldn't figure out why because we were checking every label. I was dairy free, ovo vegetarian (think vegan plus eggs), gluten free, wheat free, low sodium, reduced sugar, low fat, yeast free, and seriously struggling to figure out what was left to eat that even felt familiar. And yet I was still getting sick. I noticed that there was a difference between citric acid listed on food packages (like canned tomatoes, spice mixes and season salt, as well as most juices) and citric acid naturally found in fruit. The food additive citric acid made me sick every single time while the fruit never did. I finally figured out that foods that listed koji (miso, tamari/Braggs Liquid Aminos, sake (rice wine), and other fermented Japanese foods) did the same thing. There simply was no logic to it.

 

Once mere tap water, even filtered, was making me violently sick as well as dehydrated I started to wonder what the common factor was between all of these random foods was. It had to be something because the food intolerance reaction was the same every single time. Six hours after eating a corn tortilla, the symptoms returned. Crippling stomach ache, sinuses so stuffed up I couldn't breathe through them, and yet another severe ear infection flaming back up. Part of me was in a state of disbelief as it dawned on me that corn could be the culprit.

 

If you've heard how difficult it is to follow a gluten-free diet, it is a complete stroll in the park compared to being severely intolerant to corn. There is over 100 names for corn and corn derivatives. Since corn is not one of the 'Top 8 allergens' recognized by the US government it is not required to be listed on food labels, or if it is used in the manufacturing process (cornstarch is used to mold gummy bears & gummy worms.) The government keeps telling me that if the percentage of corn falls below the range of 200 parts per million, that it is so insignificant that the body cannot tell the difference. As is the case with vinegar. And yet my body knows quite well the difference. I have reacted more than once to wheat and corn cross-contamination in foods that were supposed to be safe. Rice chex make me sick. Organic almond milk makes me sick. Pill vitamins make me sick. All of these use corn as a carrier for the vitamins, as is the common practice for any fortified food that would otherwise be safe.

 

And tap water? Our city adds chlorine and fluoride, both of which can/do have corn additives. I think it was cornstarch is added to powdered chlorine to help it stay 'free flowing.' I had to research what brands of bottled water are even safe for those with corn allergies or intolerance. Luckily there is a common and cheap brand that I can drink, but I even had to research to make sure that the plastic they use for the bottles isn't corn plastic (it isn't.) I'm still trying to make heads or tails over what kind of water filter system would make our tap water safe for me. The Brita pitcher we tried to use was just a joke. I'm still trying to figure out what brand with ceramic filters would make the water safe enough for me.

 

I really have no idea what my body thinks it's doing. I'm almost 39 years old. Why is this all popping up now? But wait, it gets 'better.'

 

Roughly a month ago we discovered I'm suddenly deathly allergic to baking soda. 1/16 of a teaspoon is enough to kill me if not treated because it makes my airways swell shut. And a reaction is triggered in less than 3 minutes. My life makes no sense anymore.

 

If you want to know about all this in further detail I've written about it even more extensively on my food blog. https://whisklymittens.wordpress.com I started it to try and help me keep my sanity or at least have somewhere to vent, and post recipes once I can figure out what to even cook. There is no other food blog out there that has the same food restrictions that I have no choice in following so I basically had to make my own. My "Banned Foods" post is huge, but even that isn't complete. Seven years of my sun allergy never made me feel this isolated.

 

Despite all of that, the last few days have finally started to turn more positive. Never in my life have I been so happy about white vinegar. After finding a brand made from beets we tested it in homemade ketchup. I have never liked ketchup so much in my entire life. I can see if it is possible to make lentil loaf again, or salad dressing, Japanese pickles, vegan sushi rice, or even just mustard that strangely makes vegan macaroni & cheese vaguely more cheddar-like. Not enough to fool a non-vegan but I like it. It gives me hope that I'll find a safe brand of apple cider vinegar (or just make my own) so I can have sweet & sour sauce again. I'm starting to have enough base ingredients that I can eat to actually cook recipes with, even if most of it still needs to be made from scratch.

 

I've been missing you guys like crazy and thinking about you everyday, but by the time I'm done with food R&D, I'm exhausted, falling asleep, and completely emotionally drained. I'm really happy that the payment date for the preorder girls is finally inching closer. I am so thrilled that Gizella will have her proper DDP body and Skipper can finally come home. That will be amazing. I'm still beside myself floored over having the right head for Hatoko Kobayashi (Angelic Layer) because I never thought she would be a possibility. And the more I write about Lillian (Anastasia) in my fantasy world the more excited I get about her actually coming home.

 

After the way life has treated me in the months since I preordered this trio, I feel additionally privileged to have had the chance to bring them all home. Raven amd I have no plans of more DD preorders unless it happens to be Vocaloid Luka. I have too many kiddos that need to be finished first and a couple more boys needing to be started. Those two I blame on Alister (shadow Len) and Lillian simply because they were always together. At least I can have the joy of opening three new girls in a day. That is certainly a first for me.

 

The only other new hobby news I have is I finally caved and preordered my first two Pure Neemo boys. Tama is going to be SO delighted, especially since they should be Dolly size. Speaking of the hatted wonder, I bought a random squishy fake baguette type bread from Amazon and Dolly has totally claimed it. For his bed. He keeps snickering about his bread bed.

 

I'm not really sure what else to say. I just miss all my friends here like crazy but haven't even remotely had the energy to keep up or take any photos. All I was really hoping for was some virtual hugs if nothing else. I'm trying to stay as positive as I can but it is a challenge when the odds feel so stacked against me.

 

I love you guys so much.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Holy balls, girl, that's pretty rough. Glad that all this hasn't killed you though, even though it's tried!

 

You mentioned that gluten makes your sinuses act up; my own sinuses have been an absolute bear for the past like, 8 months, so I'm wondering if maybe I should investigate my own diet. :/ Any tips for sleuthwork?

I'm with Poofie.... I'm amazed you've been thru all that and you're still kicking! Good on you! Keep on fighting and win!

 

At least you have an outlet for everything and it's cool you've been able to do so much with the writing. And it's nice that all your little ones have been included! I bet they are all very happy about that.

 

It's good to see you post again and I hope you can keep it up! All my girls and myself hope things keep getting better and we all say a hue hello to all your boys and girls! Manami especially hopes you can eat cookies again because she can't see how anyone can live without cookies.

 

 

 

Billy

I'm really glad you're finally starting to get things managed! Hopefully it goes well from here. You've probably handled it better than I would be able to. And congrats on the 3 preorder girls! I got them too so I'm pretty excited as well. I just hope Iori's head works well on a DDS body cause if it doesn't then that throws a wrench in my plans for Lucy. I hope you enjoy the pureneemos too! The two I have are super adorable. They're perfect sized for dolls for our dolls lol.

Glad to hear you're still with us.

I was almost about to buzz you to ask if you were alright cos it had been a while since I'd heard from you! Biology is so ridiculous, I'm sorry you have to go through this nightmare. Best of luck in finding edible food ;; it's just so bizarre for this to suddenly manifest like this.

Welcome back. I'll give you all the virtual hugs you want. You need them. And my kids will give them to your kiddos.

 

Wow, just wow, that is crazy. Having known a couple people that had crazy odd allergies, and my 1st wife having other health problems that nearly no one else had, I feel for you. If it were me I'd probably been killed off by it by now. I'm pretty sure we're all rooting for you. I wonder what environmental conditions might be adding to your food issues. As for water filter, have you looked at reverse osmosis? That's suppose to pull all kids of things out. Just be sure to not drink deionized water, that'll make things far worse for you.

Thanks guys. I cannot express what a relief it is to hear from other people that I’m not just being overly dramatic. With my mom being her own sort of drama queen it is something I worry that I appear that way to others. It’s also probably a factor in why it took me so long to say anything about it here on the forums, despite mentioning it on Twitter and Instagram. I just didn’t want to sound like someone who always complains.

 

But this has been mind-twistingly hard to deal with.

 

Having such a huge amount of support from you guys has given me a chance to mentally step back and take a break. I feel like it is okay to admit to myself that it is okay that I get really stressed and it isn’t an overreaction to the situation. I’ve just been trapped so much in the middle of it that I’ve felt like I’ve fallen down a bottomless rabbit hole and could no longer figure out what way was up.

 

I’m sorry everyone that the following replies are so embarrassingly long. I have no excuse. Words happen.

 

I’ll post each reply as it’s own post to break it up some and make it marginally easier to reply to if you wish.

 

I think I just really underestimated how much I’ve needed to talk about this. And I am so very thankful that you guys are here to listen even if you may not know what to say. There was many times in writing this that I had to stop and research various things to better understand how to explain them, some of which were important things that I may have put off and ignorantly kept thinking “things aren’t that bad…” It could have potentially made things very dangerous for me simply from not seeing how serious I have to take parts of this whole thing. It’s been a real wakeup call after growing up in a family that never took allergies seriously because there never was a reason to. I feel like I’ve been put through the major food allergy bootcamp these last few months. And today was one of the hardest as I’ve looked at some of the grim reality I’m now living with. I’m learning to accept it and see how to go from here, but there has been more than a few painful tears shed today.

 

I was born into a military family and was taught what it means to be a soldier. I will fight these battles and won’t let despair get the best of me. These were not the skirmishes or or assaults I had anticipated in my life, but that never stops a soldier from being a soldier.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Poofie:

If you suspect that wheat may be causing you problems, you can either get tested for allergies and food intolerances or do an allergy elimination diet. HERE is a link that explains the options.

 

I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say it’s not that hard to remove wheat from your diet. It definitely takes work, a lot of label reading, and research. I fought tooth and nail to avoid having to wipe wheat and gluten from my diet. I knew about five weeks before my body forced a full stop that it was making me increasingly sick but I was just completely daunted by removing yet another major food from my diet. Meat and dairy had already hit the chopping block so I already knew what the task would entail.

 

I don’t want that to scare you off though. There are a ton of recipe blogs out there that are just wheat/gluten free. Simply being able to eat meat will give you a ton more options than I have, and there are plenty of commercially made gluten free foods available. My favorite brand of pasta is Tinkyada and the only one I’ve found that is just like the wheat version but it is made from brown rice.

 

You can take a look at the wheat section of my Banned Foods list I’m having to keep (it’s only a small portion of the list) to know what to watch out for on food labels. Also looking up what products are safe for people with celiac’s makes it much easier to know what brands are really wheat/gluten free. The reason that oats are on the wheat list is two fold. For some people the protein in oats reacts the same as gluten (wheat protein), but for those who are highly sensitive to either the wheat or gluten trigger can even get a reaction from cross-contamination (same equipment used for harvesting, processing, etc.) I happen to be one of those highly sensitive individuals. I certainly can’t eat Quaker oats, and I can’t even eat Bob’s Red Mill “Gluten Free” oats for the same reason.

 

It’s a lot of info to process. I really wish it was a short simple answer. Nobody gets it perfectly from the start. But removing a significant portion from your diet should show improvement.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Billy:

I’m as stubborn as an old goat. So even if this challenge makes me often question my sanity, it just isn’t in my DNA to give up without a fight.

 

I love writing because it seems to be the only thing that utilizes the full range of my knowledge, creativity, and where I can still use my understanding of my crazy/random set of talents for a single purpose. (Truly my biggest talent is I analyze everything and store the data in my head. I’ve been making ‘mental blueprints’ in my mind since I was at least 5 years old.) Writing is how I de-stress and sort out my thoughts since it is just exceedingly calming to me but also because if I feel like I need to punch something I can find a character who REALLY needs to be punched and whack ‘em a good one.

 

So far the Kiddos think that having a ‘grand tour of Lennador’ is like the best summer vacation ever. I’m really excited to find the right setting for Dakota to get into a brawl. I think a lot about your ‘army’ when Raven and I have talked about the different fighting styles for the Kiddos. Bree just cracks me up and I can't wait to write that one even if I have no idea about the cirbleepstances right now. I could see Bea going all Miss Piggy on the baddies, high heels and all, not even letting her hair get out of place. Finally yesterday I figured out Tama’s role. He’s the only one of the Kiddos who would not fight. I still can’t believe it took me more than two years to realize he would be a healer. Wearing his Dr. uniform, kitty tail, kitty ears, and his fairy wings. It will be fun thinking of Tama style defensive spells. I get the feeling they might look like something from Cute High Earth Defense Club. LOL! Magical boy Tama. I can’t wait to write dark fairy Lucas in. Dolly will probably get mad (again) that he doesn’t have wings too. I’ll have to find a way to remedy that at some point by giving him magical wings. If only to see him crash straight into a tree. Lucas would approve. LMAO! (I really do love Dolly, but he’s just so idiotic. Any time I need a prat fall, I just pull Dolly out.)

 

Naiomi however is just making me want to scream at her and lock her up because she hasn’t realized that she’s like a clueless lamb walking into a wolf’s den. I’ve got plans for her to be ‘rescued’ but I haven’t had a chance to write that chapter yet. Ringo is certainly being a little miss know-it-all because she very quickly realized that they were transported into my storybook. She’s my little writer and thinks she knows everything that’s going on, but she’s going to be in for a pretty major shock. Rainie… is going to weirdly adapt well to the fantasy world and yet I haven’t quite pinpointed precisely why. She just fits. It’s going to be fun working everyone in but also a little strange in places. Like Ralph. Still haven’t figured out what he’s going to be doing but he will be as weird as he normally is. For some of our DD they will be going home since they originated in Lennador. Madison, Sohi, Gizella, Bree, Dolly, Wolfie (another EB Mini), Horatio (EB Mini with male EB Beauty head), Tama, Hana, Miss Lottie, our 11 cm Obitsus Leaf, Pebble, Drop, & Po all are from there. Tama & Hana aren’t technically from Lennador as far as their DD backstories are concerned but their stories can at least logically be connected to it. Then there are others that have over time been integrated into Lennador since their original concepts I had for them never really went anywhere. Alister, Azalea, Lillian, Lorelai, Kiyoteru (renamed in Lennador), Kiyoteru’s older brother, and Pierce have already found distinctive places in my fantasy world (the last two have not yet made it into DD forms.)

 

I’m very relieved to shove Madison back where he belongs. I finally had to decide to keep the ‘nice’ personality for him in the DD form so our household wouldn’t constantly be in an uproar. A lot of the backstory for he and his siblings I haven’t had a chance to go into on the forums, but in short, he tried to exterminate Bree and she ended up here, and Sohi ran away from Lennador searching for her and to simply run away from home because she hated being a princess. Even if it was a goblin princess. Madison in his original character is one nasty piece of work. You know, normal royalty stuff.

 

Even one of my Pure Neemo boys, Corey, decided that I couldn’t keep him away from Bree so he shrunk himself to ‘fit in.’ I can’t say who/what he is because it would spoil one of the major things that will be eventually written in a Lennador book, but he certainly is in the top 20 most important characters in Lennador. I think the character count for my stories is probably around 200 by now. Each of them distinct enough that I could write a story of their own on each of them. And two more were added within the last week. And none of that includes monsters, beasts, or humanoid cultures I haven’t delved into deeply yet. Those are just the ones I can recall by name.

 

This might help put us having 25 DD more into perspective and why sometimes it hardly feels like any at all.

 

I’ll really start to seriously think through again how to compose our DD back stories in written form to post in the Stories section. There is still tons going on with them outside Lennador so writing those won’t spoil anything with my novels. I’ve actually worked on the beginning of the ’reboot’ already that ties everything together, but then I started tripping up trying to figure out how to put it in photo story form, do all the required props, etc. and the story kept getting more complex. In my mind it was supposed to be right after the photo story Out Of Time {Time Displaced pt. 1} where Naiomi’s ranting and raving about the student council president, and what all of that was intended to lead up to. I love photo stories, but man are they hard for me to do!

 

For as quickly as our Kiddos keep finding stories to add to their lives it is as easy as drawing an accurate and detailed pencil sketch of a train as it zooms by. At least with a text format I have a chance to take the same amount of time and actually tell the intended story well. More quiet characters like Ringo & Miss Lottie are difficult for me to convey properly with a camera. And Bree is difficult in her own way because she will never be articulate and verbose but her vocabulary is slowly expanding, but I feel like I can never get her distinct personality right with pictures. They always feel purely like snapshots to me and make her seem very one dimensional. Her goofball side came out the most clearly in the one written story piece I did. (I absolutely love Pocoyo on Netflix because it is exactly what Bree would be like if she were a boy. So adorable and hilarious!)

 

And if it isn’t obvious to everyone on the forums as long as I’ve been here, writing is just what I do. It's a compulsion that rarely truly stresses me out. It just has taken me too long to finally build up at least a base level of confidence to feel like being an actual published author is something I’m capable of. Much of the time I still have my overwhelming doubt, but it is hard to ignore the fact that it feels like the universe keep changing things around me so the only thing I can do is write. I have no idea if anyone else feels like they have one specific purpose for their existence. But for me my life has always been about stories. Very distinctly so. The original form of Lennador I started writing when I was 12 and it has never let me go. For many years I didn’t take it seriously and it took me a long time to write things that weren’t just flaming piles of dung. I still don’t like talking about what I truly think about my fantasy world because I’ve already had enough people over the years tell me that I’m just foolish and a dreamer. But what are writers if not a bit crazy? Spending days and months talking to the people in our heads, making up lives for them, crying when their world falls apart.

 

It is just a hard struggle feeling like for whatever reason my life keeps on restructuring and removing paths that don’t bring me back to working on Lennador. This is one of the reasons why I’ve felt more than a little insane thinking that maybe my current food restrictions are just a result of a delusional mind. Yet everyday I have to remind myself that no one would choose this, the reality hitting home very hard when I think about what baking soda could do. Knowing that there is a possibility that I’m putting my life in danger walking out the front door without an epinephrine auto-injector (aka EpiPen), if cirbleepstances are just wrong. Currently researching these to try and check that it wouldn’t trigger another one of my intolerances. I’m just not the type of person to expect that medical personnel would know/understand how my very weird set of allergies/intolerances need to be taken into consideration so I try and inform myself as best as I can beforehand. Most especially since corn is yet to be recognized as a major allergen in the US. I also am a bit suspicious that lots of agribusiness money is spent to keep it that way. Corn is in EVERYTHING. And I really wish that was just Ralph silliness. It feels so strange looking into medical bracelets but with the baking soda triggering anaphylaxis there is no other option.

 

And yet on these forums I’ve never had to worry about being treated like some drugged up freak who can’t tell reality from fantasy. I can, but for me they are a LOT more flexible than they are for most. Maybe to be a writer they have to be.

 

I still worry a lot about how to even get published, to be able to share my world with the rest of the planet. Hoping that the people who need this distinct kind of refuge can find it. It is a world intended to expand and make room for anyone who wishes to find a place for themselves there. I often see story ideas that would be great here and there, but I have the very distinct feeling that for the story to be right, I’m not the one to write it. Is there any other author out there who expects there to be fanfics about their world, and would love to read the best of them? Sure there are my core characters that I’d say are hands-off (like the Kiddos) but I’d love to see other writers or young authors write their characters that I didn’t even know could exist within Lennador’s framework. And it is a very large framework indeed.

 

I get so excited about all of this, but then feel like I have to totally clam up and not say a word about it until some unknown point in the future. It can be devastating and heavily depressing at times because I can’t even get feedback on if I’m even doing a good job. Why can’t there be a new ‘book format’ out there in the digital marketplace where a reader can buy a book that is still being written by purchasing a chapter at a time? Seems like the simplest thing especially if the price is dictated by word count. I’m thinking like $0.20 to $0.35 per chapter. Once the book is complete then it can be published in a physical form or could be bought as a single digital book. An $8 book with 25 chapters would only be $0.35 per chapter, so it’s not like it would be hugely expensive by the end of the book.

 

Who knows, maybe this is another one of my ‘crazy inventor’ moments. After working on a project for 15 years, anyone would be bound to get stir crazy. And with the Kiddos changing everything I’ve had to go back to chapter 2 and get that solidly in place before the story in chapter 3 that properly brings them into Lennador. I haven’t lost anything of my writing after that, but most of it needs to be restructured, often triggering more storylines that need to be written for the changes to make sense. Rewrites are the bane of my existence but I keep doing them because they are needed. And the only reason I don’t post my writing online simply because of copyright issues. I’m not a greedy person in the least but just very protective that my world stays my own.

 

(I’m really sorry about venting so much about my writing. I’m just super passionate about it but fear everyday that it will be all for nothing if it never gets published. With all my heart I want to share it, but just because of how the real world is I can’t ‘release it to the wild’ and keep control over it without going about it the right way. I feel trapped.)

 

And now an easier subject: Cookies! When the reality set in that I could no longer safely eat baking soda and baking powder, I very quickly realized I couldn’t eat cookies. In a panic I started searching to see if there was any kind of cookies that didn’t use either of those. Part of my answer came from the cake decorating forums I used to visit back when I was doing cakes a lot. It wasn’t uncommon for bakers to purposely leave out the baking soda/powder in cookies that were to be decorated with frosting. It keeps the rolled cookies flat so they don’t puff and distort the shape they were cut in. So while I’m still debating what would happen to chocolate chip cookie dough (drop cookies) without the deadly ingredient, I have found other kinds like sugar cookies and gingerbread (cut-out cookies), spritz cookies, refrigerator cookies (‘logs’ of refrigerated cookie dough), and shortbread that should be just fine once I play with some homemade vegan butter substitutes! Also, the point of creaming the butter with the granulated sugar is to add in tiny air bubbles to help them rise as well. I’ve been surprised to learn that baking soda/powder is not the only way to get them to rise, just the easiest. So even though I can’t eat just any cookies (R.I.P. oatmeal raisin...) there definitely still some I should be able to have. I even found one in my Betty Crocker Cooky Book that doesn’t have a leavener and already uses almond flour! So it looks like I don’t even need to alter it except replacing the butter.

 

I hope to be on the forums a bit more. It helps that I’ve finally had a chance to talk about what’s been going on. I don’t expect I’ll have any new pics to post soon or anything, generally the quick pics I do get posted to Instagram. However I will start digging through the Kiddo’s stories that I can post in the Stories section. (I really did intend to use the heck out of that section...)

 

~Sister Kyoya

Mimiyo:

The only way I’ve managed is because I had no other choice. There have been a LOT of angry crying fits over just food. It’s one of those things that generally isn’t appreciated until after you can’t have it and the rest of the world just continues by, oblivious. Frankly that’s worse than just having it forever taken away. An ungodly amount of willpower and fear of pain account for nearly all of it. I still keep shaking my head over the sheer delight it is to eat ketchup again. It represents two foods (tomato paste & vinegar) that I was trying to learn to live without. Vinegar is in most salad dressings, and often tomatoes are too. So something as simple as a salad was no longer simple. I learned to eat a lot of plain cooked veggies. When something so culturally vital as the foods you’ve eaten your whole life suddenly represent everything you can’t eat, most people have the knee jerk reaction to figure out how to replace the junk food with the next closest thing (‘safe’ junk food.) I hate to say that I’m no different.

 

I’ve done plenty of research on desserts, homemade tater-tots, chocolate, potato chips, and the like just to not feel like I’m forced to live a completely alien life. I do find it funny that I’ve had very little desire to eat those things, I just wanted to learn how I could still make them work for me. In the beginning I couldn’t even eat stir fry because it is always seasoned with soy sauce/tamari, rice vinegar, etc. I’m really glad that I finally figured out that the brine from canned black olives can be boiled down into a pretty darn close soy sauce replacement. Even so we would use seasoned salt very frequently but Lawry’s has citric acid. So any of the premade spice mixes in our cupboard were instantly not usable for me. Things I had only vaguely thought about what flavors they were created from suddenly had become this very difficult puzzle to crack.

 

Eventually I struck on a pretty darn close replacement for Lawry’s that’s only missing one thing I can’t pinpoint but can definitely smell. I like that I can make it without salt too so I can have tons of flavor without tons of sodium. Raven and I are just beginning to figure out how versatile it is. I’ve considered mixing it with the ‘olive sauce’ (soy sauce replacement) to see if it can be used as a beef broth replacement. I haven’t eaten beef in over 11 years so I doubt it would fool someone who eats it on a regular basis, but I’ll be happy if it is close enough for me. Little things like that make it so much easier to take traditional recipes and adapt them to my current diet. Like taking a beef stew recipe and replacing the meat with tofu, and using the broth replacement. Suddenly there is one more (veggie filled) meal I can have without having to overly stress out about how to make it work. It always made me mad when people would say “Here’s a recipe you would love! You just have to replace the meat and you can leave the broth out/use veggie broth to make it vegetarian!” It’s like they didn’t even pause for a second to realize that 85% of the flavor comes from those two ingredients. And beef broth is very strongly flavored, so just swapping it for mild veggie broth generally is a waste, making it totally seem like something is missing.

 

Still a ton of basic ingredients I have left to decode, like A1 sauce, worcestershire sauce, and my vegan bouillon cubes (has yeast in it and I think corn), or what to replace cornstarch with in a sauce that doesn’t turn it slimy/snotty, but one step at a time I’m getting there. I’ve started to learn to look up foods that I don’t know how to make at home that I’m surprised aren’t that difficult like apple cider vinegar or sauerkraut. Sure I’d prefer to just be able to buy the AC vinegar, but if I can’t find one that’s safe at least I’ve got an alternative that would be.

 

Raven surprised me last night and made pizza. Not an easy feat since the vegan cheese sauce, almond milk for cheese sauce and pizza crust had to all be made from scratch (time consuming and a pain in the butt especially in the heat). At least the pizza sauce was in the freezer and he cooked garbanzo beans yesterday. He tossed in olives and sauteed tofu. It was really good and the first pizza I can remember eating since either September or October. We were both surprised that my gluten free biscuit dough worked well and all he did was leave out the baking powder. I’m thinking it might make good crackers too. Or easy pie crust. Or maybe even cold cereal if it was sweetened and had spices added to it. Hmm, that sounds like something worth playing with.

 

Every once in awhile there is an amusing moment when I think about that at least with all of this, I’m being forced to relearn things that the pioneers probably knew. Kinda a harsh way to learn though.

 

I hope Iori’s head works on the body you want for her. Generally so far the DD heads are mostly interchangeable, but who knows just yet what the DDP changes. I was a little surprised the other day to notice (probably again) that Anastasia is a DDS. I kept thinking she was a DD. At least for Lillian that’s no big deal, her character can be either and she may be cuter as a DDS. But Hana may be disappointed that the clothes might not fit. Oops. LOL!

 

One of the reasons I snagged the Pure Neemo boys is because I didn’t want Raven getting mad at me for snatching Himawari (his PN girl) for taking quick snapshots. Sometimes it’s nice having the limited articulation of their bodies (compared to the EB Minis or 11 cm Obitsu) but they have a wider range of mobility than my Strawberry Shortcake dolls from the 80’s. Plus I couldn’t tell Bree that she couldn’t have her ‘dolly’ (Corey wouldn’t hear of it either! The little booger...) and Ringo wouldn’t listen to ‘No.’ She had to have her frog prince. Even though she’s a completely yuri girl. Whatever Ringo.

 

~Sister Kyoya

K-2:

Thank you. I just keep my fingers crossed that nothing else will pop up. This is plenty enough to handle on it’s own.

 

Got a quick question I’m not sure if you can answer: Do you know of any tutorials to make wigs for the Obitsu 11 cm dolls? Or where some nice one can be bought that would fit? Three of the four we have are completely bald and really need hair (the fourth has a Kewpie head and doesn’t need it.) I’m frustrated that they are still bald but just haven’t had the emotional energy to think up the project up off the top of my head. I don’t know if you even have this size but I do remember you know a lot about Obitsu.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Torino:

Hey there! Didn’t mean to drop off the radar. Everything all together was just too much. I decided it was better to step away for a bit instead of having my brain explode in an emotional meltdown. I’ve been so out of the loop that I still don’t know why you went back home for a couple weeks. How long are your plans to be in Japan once you go back?

 

My grandfather had over 25 allergies, most of them food that developed over his lifetime. Even my mom says she doesn’t know what all of them were. As for timing, I’m not surprised too much since I’m inching towards menopause. Hormonally speaking that a pretty big shift. My earliest memories when I was 5-6 years old I can remember having problems with dairy, wheat, and higher amounts of fat. I remember because we had cream of wheat for breakfast, milk, too much butter, and way more sugar than even a kid should consume. (That’s why kids shouldn’t be allowed to add it themselves. ) I added more butter than I knew I would normally eat because I didn’t want to go to school (my guess is because it stressed me out. Me starting school a year early didn’t help either.) By the time breakfast was over I told my mom I wasn’t feeling good and got to stay home. It used to baffle my mom how a ‘healthy’ food (for the early 80’s) could make me sick, but the results were so consistent that she didn’t force me to go to school. Sure, being stuck in the bathroom the rest of the day was not fun, but much better than going to school!

 

I was also constantly struggling with one ear infection after another and the doctor pretty much wrote it off as ‘it just happens to some kids.’ Well, it screwed up my hearing at a crucial time and even to this day my listening comprehension is bad because my mind never learned how to accurately decipher the signals from my ears that were all sorts of screwed up. The volume I can hear just fine, but if someone doesn’t enunciate enough they are just mumbling really loudly. It’s annoying occasionally being treated as if I’m going deaf because of it when it isn’t the case at all. My hearing is so wonky because of the childhood ear infections that I’ve learned to somewhat read lips to compensate for it. I hate when people talk with their hand in front of their mouth (mom used to do that) because I can’t ‘hear’ them with my eyes.

 

So the food intolerances isn’t a new thing with those foods, just the severity has changed. I guess I don’t find it weird because it took a full 6 years for my pineapple allergy to trigger any time I came in contact with the fruit, but originally it was just fresh pineapple. I still wonder how long my corn intolerance has been around because I’ve been thinking about vinegar. I’ve always had a mostly hate relationship with it, and why I’d avoid mustard and ketchup because they would really hurt my stomach. Apple cider vinegar wasn’t as bad, but it was still noticeable. But the most explosive confrontation I had with my mom about it was when I was in middle school when she was forcing me to eat frozen reheated spinach with just distilled white vinegar on it. I know she was trying to get us to eat veggies and she liked it, but by the third time in about a week or so that we had it with dinner, I just couldn’t quietly force it down. I literally had a screaming match with mom because she said I had to stay at the table and finish it or she would make me eat it for breakfast. The screaming probably lasted about 15 minutes as I was trying to get my mom to understand that it made my stomach hurt so badly that I felt like I had been stabbed. Basically the same kind of stomach pain I’ve been dealing with most of the time the last 7 months. She thought I was just making up excuses because none of my other 3 siblings had a single problem with it. I just knew I couldn’t suffer the pain and ended up just stomping off to my room. It had nothing to do with it being spinach. I actually love sticking spinach in lots of stuff, especially spaghetti.

 

About two months into this 7 month ordeal, I was so sick that the only foods I could eat for a while was produce, nuts, beans/legumes (except soy), and starches like tapioca or potato. Everything else was suspect, including fruits with high amounts of natural citric acid until I learned that citric acid as an additive is not from fruit. For a while I wasn’t even sure if I could eat rice, quinoa, or millet because of the concern of cross-contamination.

 

The baking soda just has me flabbergasted.

 

~Sister Kyoya

Sinclair:

Thank you. Hugs are always good. I like hugs. Good luck trying to give Dolly one thought. Tama, Rainie, and Dakota are the only ones that would manage it.

 

To be honest I’m afraid to say “At least I can still eat _____!” because with my luck that would be the next one I’d have to strike off my list.

 

I do have to say that discovering that I was negatively reacting to water was the scariest feeling (this was before the baking soda discovery.) In part of my mind I was trying to calculate how long someone can survive without water. For a brief few moments of panic it felt like being told I had two weeks to live. I cannot even express my relief that with a day I had started to sort out the corn connection and saw that there was some alternatives.

 

Doing some quick research on reverse osmosis and corn allergies, pretty much makes it clear that it’s a no-go because the antifungal part of the system has some corn derivative in it and causes reactions who are sensitive to corn. “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” *sigh* So I’m still trying to do a lot of research on water, even the extremes of how someone with a true water allergy (aquagenic urticaria) survives. I know it isn’t remotely that bad with me but it makes it easier to see the scope of the possible whole problem. Often it helps me calm down by realizing that what I have to deal with is not a worst case scenario. That’s baking soda. And the feeling that there is no real way for me to extensively know all the different things baking soda could be in since it is so overwhelmingly considered safe that it just isn’t disclosed. At least I can truthfully say I’m allergic to BS.

 

Most of what I know right now about my water options cane from Corn Allergy Girl’s blog post. Still trying to think through what the best filtering option might be for me. I’m a little indecisive right now because I don’t want to sink hundreds of dollars into something that won’t make the water safe enough. I do get a little frustrated that I have to buy bottled water to drink and use in any cooking, but at least it’s safe.

 

After doing more research on anaphylaxis (the reaction I get with baking soda) make me want to go back in time to the first reaction I had, and scream and slap myself for trying to logically think it through before overreacting. That was precisely a time I should have overreacted. I like to think of myself as an intelligent person but there are times that it is an extreme detriment. Basically I’m smart enough to be a complete idiot under the wrong cirbleepstances. And the fact that I was never taught about deadly allergies and what to do if one should trigger. In my family allergies are just this weird inconvenient thing. I never heard that any of my grandfather’s allergies were life-threatening. Even now I get frustrated with my mom who most often speaks to me like I’m just being a bit too serious over all of this. Thinking that ‘just a little’ would still be safe. She doesn’t see me ill and feeling like total shit for days from just those trace amounts even when I’ve tried to explain it to her multiple times. She seems to think that I should be fine with the food restrictions she has for herself (they are nearly laughable even though she shouldn’t be eating dairy or corn and the wheat is the only one she takes seriously.)

 

And with Raven’s previous(?) pepper/onion allergy all I knew was just that he avoided those foods and eventually learned to tolerate them and now his allergy has all but disappeared (or so he likes me to think.) But dealing and living with deadly food allergies was nothing I was ever educated on, and even Raven treated it like it was no big deal even though it was still highly active for many of the early years after we were married. I am just very emotionally hypersensitive to people telling me I’m overreacting. I heard it constantly growing up (when my emotional outbursts would trigger like a firecracker) and wasn’t taken seriously because of it. So I still have the association that If I get emotional that no one will listen to me, or worse yet, flat-out ignore me. This fear is not put on hold for medical personnel either. So this is really at the core of why I was trying to ‘think through’ what was going on when my airways were swelling. I was seriously worried that if I went into the ER that it would be like some nightmare where no one can see or hear you, no matter how loud you scream.

 

From some of the info I’ve been researching today about EpiPen use and the deadly allergic reactions they are for, I’m realizing that not heading to the ER the instant I was becoming aware something out of the ordinary was wrong, could have already been too late. Excuse me while I step away, curl up in a ball and have a minor meltdown. This really scares the hell out of me. Wikipedia has info about anaphylaxis, and it says that one of the symptoms is that “the skin can be blue tinged because of the lack of oxygen.” For most people this would be an obvious indicator. But Raven is colorblind. He would not be able to see this difference because to him people’s tongues are always blue. It was a complete shock the day I realized that. But now it seems to be taking on a more serious tone than ever before.

 

It is just really a lot of harsh reality to absorb.

 

~Sister Kyoya

At least I can truthfully say I’m allergic to BS.

 

This! This is how you are going to survive. By being able to see the humor in life's misery.

 

I had no idea corn was used in so much, even filters. At least you know now to avoid it.

As for getting Dolly, I'm sure Yumi would manage. If I tell her to go do it, she'll chase Dolly until the hug has been given. I'm sure she'd get along with Tama well. Those MDDs just have a thing about them.

About your writing, Amazon has self publishing, as I think Apple does two via iBooks. I know a person or two that have done shelf publishing I could ask if you want. I know if you posted a link here to go buy/download your work, I'd go do it. After skimming your reply to Billy, I can tell you have been putting a lot of thought into the story and world building the right way, and that's the kind of thing I love.

And I feel you for the "no one takes me seriously, they think I've just a drama queen" reactions people give you. My 1st wife got that all the time from her family too, and it nearly killed her. Did they straighten up after that, nope, "See, it's not the big a deal, we were able to get you help when you really needed it." But it wasn't really the help she needed (As much as it was maddening, I can't fault them as it has a lot to do with the way they were raised and the world they grew up in. And it'll be similar between me and my kids I'm sure.). The sad part was she did find relief finally from her life long health issues, when cancer showed up and took her out. But by that time she was done with life and ready to go. But since I can tell you aren't done yet, I know you'll fight to win, and we'll be here to cheer you on.

K-2:

Got a quick question I’m not sure if you can answer: Do you know of any tutorials to make wigs for the Obitsu 11 cm dolls? Or where some nice one can be bought that would fit? Three of the four we have are completely bald and really need hair (the fourth has a Kewpie head and doesn’t need it.) I’m frustrated that they are still bald but just haven’t had the emotional energy to think up the project up off the top of my head. I don’t know if you even have this size but I do remember you know a lot about Obitsu.

 

~Sister Kyoya

 

This is demo'd on a Monster High, but it should totally be scale-able to an Obi11, or even to a DD:

She's got lots of tutorials for other styles, too, and can technically be done with any hair fiber type. (Though, the brushed out yarn would probably be good on an Obi11.)

Got a quick question I’m not sure if you can answer: Do you know of any tutorials to make wigs for the Obitsu 11 cm dolls? Or where some nice one can be bought that would fit? ~Sister Kyoya

I don't do much with wigs other than buy them. If I remember correctly the 11cms don't come with heads so you kind of have to go by the dimensions of whatever head you're using. Parabox has a number of small heads that can be used on the 11cm as well as wigs to fit them. I'm also partial to JpopDolls. They have some of the small sizes, 3-4, 4-5, etc.

http://www.jpopdolls.net/store/home.php

Bah. Life has been a whirlwind again. Nothing wrong just really busy. Finally have a chance to respond now that I’m mostly awake.

 

Sinclair:

I may get knocked down, emotionally beat up, but so far I’ve managed to be able to pick myself up again. There have been droves of people my whole life that take my smiles and frequent laughter as a sign of an inherently happy and carefree life. I cried a lot growing up because I had to silently deal with a world that was overwhelming almost 100% of the time. I’d hold myself together as best as I could until I could break down in secret. Always saving the ‘good’ faces to wear in public. I really have been truly happy a good portion of my life, but it never erased the black lake of pain and despair inside. I can have a pretty dark sense of humor sometimes, but at least I can still laugh.

 

Because I can remember when I couldn’t.

 

My depression was swallowing me despite having an ‘idyllic married life’ were everything was supposed to all be Donna Reed. Raven was doing his best, but there was just a shit ton of expectations of society that I could not even manage to reach. I felt like a complete failure because I could not even hope to reach those expectations. I was barely surviving. It went on for 4-5 months. Most of it I don’t remember because it wasn’t even noteworthy. 3-4 months in I starkly realized that I no longer remembered how to laugh. In high school I laughed so much that my friends called me Giggles. My depression had gotten so suffocating that I couldn’t remember what my vocal cords were supposed to do the times Raven tried to get me to even chuckle. I’d just give him a dead stare. On the very, very rare occasion that it did happen, it felt like banana slugs were crawling out of my throat.

 

Within a month or so I was put on antidepressants and broke that cycles but made me suicidal in other ways. Needless to say the side effects were not worth it and once I had the presence of mind and my real self bubbled to the surface I quit taking them before they killed me. I was like a mental vegetable who would only occasionally be able to get my conscious and thinking mind to float to the surface. Those times I’d get furious that I was so drugged that I could not even think. I was practically a zombie. I recall sitting down on the couch to think through something I was trying to do, only to realize three hours later that I hadn’t finished the thought. And this was not high level processing on how the universe worked on a Stephen Hawking level, more like trying to figure out the steps to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

 

So I’m someone who is so very starkly aware of how much humor matters. Even dark humor serves its purpose. Since then I’ve told my mom on occasion that even if I still happen to cry a lot, at least it reminds me I’m still alive. Pain is still an emotion. I’d prefer pain to emotional numbness because that is the emotional equivalent to being flatlined.

 

This is also why our DD are literally my sanity. The months before the antidepressants there was nothing to keep me from hitting deadly rock bottom. I couldn’t draw. It was still a few years before I started writing Lennador. And more than a decade before we found DD. I literally had no purpose. Strangely though, that may have been the time frame when I first started seeing BJD. Financially it was only a pipe dream and Raven saw them as ‘only dolls.’ Neither of us could have guessed at that point what level of immense impact the doll community would have on our life. Back then I was told that I was childish and foolish for holding onto my childhood dolls and stuffed animals (not by Raven though.) The hell I had to deal with growing up, they were my best friends. Unlike most anybody else they listened without judgement. And then somehow I was supposed to figure out how to live an adult life without my best friends. I may be strong, but I’m not that strong.

 

So what I’m dealing with now is super hard and I’ve had more than one emotional breakdown over it, but it still doesn’t feel as hard as the months preceding and following my antidepressants. Raven has been super wonderful about managing food based on what we know is safe so I can have a break. Too bad my brain couldn’t stop and spent all of yesterday working on another food list, this time of the foods I can have. Still it didn’t give me a mental break from managing food. However I may have located a brand of juice I can have, and better yet they have cranberry! I’ve missed cranberry jelly. I like it on pancakes and can add it to coconut rice porridge for breakfast. Once it’s not so durn hot. OH! And in an old cookbook yesterday I found a recipe for thumbprint cookies that doesn’t have baking soda/powder in it! Even though the brand is too expensive to drink it should make decently priced jelly! *happy dance*

 

One of the biggest reasons I thought I couldn’t have commercially made juice anymore is added citric acid or added vitamin C is corn/corn derived. So even if I ignored the juice ‘blends’ or ‘drinks’ (full of crap) it still excluded 100% juice like the Ocean Spray Cranberry juice.

 

Ran across some posts today by someone who’s severely allergic to corn (contact allergy that triggers within seconds) talking about how to deal with hospitals. I know what I have to deal with isn’t that severe, but there was a fair amount that would apply to me. It was really very disheartening to hear how clueless the hospital staff was even in her extreme situation. She clearly said not to say you have a corn allergy because they will dismiss it, so even she has to say she’s allergic to citric acid, dextrose, and has an extreme intolerance to additive or extracts, etc. It’s just insane. Pretty much all meds have corn in them unless specifically combined by a pharmacist who offers it, antibiotics have corn (and no way around that), IV have dextrose and need to be swapped for saline only, it is clear that you have to bring your own safe water, who knows how much corn plastic (PLA) they use, and then in my case I at least know that antacids have baking soda. The frustration in that is if I’m in the hospital and I ingest any form of corn, within 6 hours I’ll be sick. This probably is only a concern for a longer stay. I have to sit here mentally calculating what probable percentage that the baking soda/antacids would be a problem. I just feel completely defenseless over such a ‘safe’ food. This wouldn’t be a concern normally, but in the next few years I’m looking at a few different surgeries. No major health issues that I know of but also something I’m not quite comfortable talking about here.

 

Every time I start to feel like I’m starting to understand part of the immensity of food complications I’m having to deal with, something new comes up and blows me out of the water. If I do feel defeated it doesn’t last for long. But the overall effect is that I feel like the footing under me keeps being yanked out. Some days I’m just so tired of having to pull myself up once more. I just want to lay there awhile just to not have to take the effort. That’s not really a bad thing, more like “Ugh, this again?”

 

If Yumi did manage to catch him, it probably would look the same as if Bree tried to hug Dolly. He’d fight every inch of the way, wriggling like crazy, and making all sorts of nasty faces. I expect it would look something like this.

 

 

I’ve been aware of Amazon’s self publishing for a few years but just feel daunted about every aspect of self publishing. It’s one of those topics that I feel like I don’t even know where to begin searching. It just feels overwhelming. Like food restriction level overwhelming. Despite that, it at least makes it feel like getting published at least possible. Yet I feel clueless as to what precisely needs to be done once the the first book is wholly written. I’d be grateful for any help if it isn’t too much trouble.

 

I cannot even express how happy it made me for days after reading that someone would even be interested in reading my work. Hearing that is so rare and far between. As much attention to detail that I put into my DD projects, at least that much attention to detail is put into my writing. And with Lennador, there is so much to explore that I often feel like I don’t know where to start, but in no time flat something shoves its way to the front and demands to be written. It is a place that I get to unashamedly indulge in my love of mythology and has always forced me to learn more of the myths of various cultures. Same is true for various ‘golden age’ civilizations from around the world that somehow can inhabit the same world Nomadic ice dinosaurs, Steampunk city, Middle Eastern folklore, Wild West, Greek/Roman mythology, wooden sailing ships, fairytales, tribal native American lore, plus monsters and wizards? And that’s not even all of it. But in Lennador it works even though it seriously sounds like it shouldn’t. It’s a smorgasbord of everything I love about world mythology and world culture. I can’t ever claim to be an expert at it, in truth I’m a total hack. I hated history in school because it was just about memorizing dates, battles, and how many people died. But culture is something else entirely. It’s like organic history. Simply knowing something like five foods they ate during a period can tell you SO much about their culture, sophistication of their food system, what textiles could have been manufactured, even someone’s social standing. It’s amazing!

 

I’d really love to be talented enough to write historical fiction, but that takes a degree of research and automated mental fact pulling that I do not possess. So a fantasy world is the second best thing. Plus I find it enormously fun and hilarious to apply scientific thinking to fantasy, even in a world ruled by magic. Case in point is the small little bit in the Wandering We Will Go story in the Story section. Something as simple as fairy dust. It’s always treated as if it ‘magically’ disappears. Sure our skin flakes off and ‘disappears’ but that’s only because of our perception. Matter doesn’t just cease to exist. Something happens to it. And in the case of Tama’s fairy dust, it made a mess all over the clean floor. Just like it would if someone had a handful of superfine talc and pranced around with it. Science still matters even in Lennador, yet magic still rules. Precisely wild magic that does have a mind of it’s own. Try and use it against it’s own magical nature, and you’ve got one big problem on your hands, even if in our modern word it is a scientifically sound principle. I love science and how much it has enriched our world and understanding, but I also see that it can’t answer all of humanity’s questions since it only deals with the physical world. It cannot distill the intention of an emotional heart. Or watch the ‘theater of the mind’ of a mental patient and see the same perspective that the patient sees, as if they are in a VR helmet. And it most certainly can’t explain why humanity continues to need myths in our lives, to fill in the gaping holes of our existence that science cannot reach.

 

Science often presents us with a world of stark, harsh realities. Much of the time it can be helpful in understanding how the world works. But in the end, they are harsh. Going into a scientific analysis as to what is happening to a child as they weep and struggle to understand what divorce is, and how the brain does this and that to make you think your heart has been ripped out, slammed on the floor, and stomped on with cleats, when, in fact, it is still in your chest and functioning properly, does nothing to lessen the suffocating pain. Myth grants us the understanding that as complex as our lives are, no matter the joy or pain, someone before us and someone after us will have moments in our lives that are the same. That we truly do belong to a continuum. Simple stories to remind us what it is to be human. That it isn’t all fact. It is imagination. It is wonder. It is dreaming. It is possibilities. Life happens in the riotous colors of summer. Myth and storytelling grant us the thing that science cannot distill: the essence of the moment.

 

That is why I write. That is why I continue to believe in storytelling. That is why a simple fable will never be eradicated by science. Because we not only need to know about the dreamers, but the dreams. Our human experience is defined as well as remembered by the fables we hold dear, and the myths we choose to govern our lives.

 

Poofie:

That tutorial is so cool! In retrospect I had run across her tutorial for the yarn wefts, but hadn’t remembered seeing her wig tutorials. I love the one with the curls. Part of me is wondering if it is only a matter of time until Pebbles asks for curls. Only down side is the wig tutorials are lacking in the boy hairstyles department. She does have one showing how to do a shaved part of the head, so that’s at least in the right direction. Now the challenge is to figure out their hair styles. Pebble has already made it clear that hers, along with her outfits, change with the seasons. She can’t even decide on one color of hair.

 

 

If she just had hair her spring outfit would be finished.

 

K-2:

Actually Parabox does offer the 11cm assembled with heads and eyes now. There is even a text box to enter in your choice of eye color, making it super simple.

 

 

Here is Pebble (Hikari, “A” paint), Leaf (Muffin), Po (Petite Fairy, “A” paint) that I ordered that way a few months back.

 

All of mine have different eyes than their default. I love these guys to bits. Totally shaking my fist at the sky right now because Hikari B is back in stock and I want her for the character (Drop) that Po just didn’t work for because he looks too different than the other two. When I ordered them she was the only one out of stock.

 

I looked at the Parabox wigs when these little guys were in the shopping cart, but none of them were even remotely right for fairies & pixies. What Parabox has is just too tame. Thus is the curse of my collecting life. Always needing something that no one else has. I do appreciate your reply!

 

~Sister Kyoya

Aw, your little 11cms are so cute! You might be able to turn the Pixie Cut tutorial into a boy style:

I actually saved that one because it's my backup plan for doing Viktor Nikiforov's wig down the line, just in case the surprisingly-well-matching SPO wig is gone by the time I get to him. The only thing that bugs me about the way she does things is that she doesn't ever give them a widow's peak, even if the styles are pulled back or short, but that's an easy enough alteration to make.

 

Edit: Here's another wig tutorial that might be enlightening: