Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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A New Egg Cup

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Filming the egg cup collection, coupled with Easter occurring in April, saw me perusing available egg cups on eBay. I do this a couple of times a year. As I’ve said before, finding good vintage figural egg cups is much harder these days. You can find new egg cups that are figural in nature, but frankly, they’re usually cheap looking, with not nearly the detail that vintage cups have.

Anyway, I bookmarked a few that I liked. One of them was very inexpensive, so I went for it. It arrived yesterday.

I really love this bunny rabbit leaning against his egg cup cottage. I have one similar to it that is much smaller, with a gold lustreware glaze.

This one is in perfect condition, I love the paint colors used on the rabbit, It’s obviously vintage and was made in Japan. And it’s on the larger side. Hurrah!

I won’t be doing my annual egg cup tour because there’s a video tour on my YouTube channel. Oh, heck, I may highlight a few. There’s another wooden egg cup that I’ve been eyeing on eBay, but I don’t know if it’s still available. I’ve bookmarked it, so I’ll check into its availability today.

The wind was relentless yesterday and it’s still making its presence known today. Less intensity, but still there. I’m over it.

But it’s sunny…

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.

 

Blog Stress

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Just thought I’d show you the contrast. The girls have the same OB22 body, but the head sizes are very different.

Jessie’s head is pretty close in size to a Blythe head. Obviously, Ruby’s is much smaller.

I love this brown hair, dark eyed look. I’m always drawn to it. I suppose that’s because I have the same color combination. Or had. It’s now gray hair and dark eyes. Sigh. I miss my brown hair.

Okay. Wednesday was rather insane in terms of the blog. I posted fairly early in the morning. As time went by, I noticed I had no comments, which isn’t the norm. Finally, around noon, I tried leaving a comment and I kept getting a message: This site has a critical error.  Okay.  I tried the usual things; disabling the plugins to see if there was a conflict, then turning them back on, one by one. Nope. Still had the error. Tried rebooting the site. Nope. Finally, I called my host and a technician fixed it – I’m not sure what he did. But then he said he had run a scan and the site had been hacked (infected with malware.) I was stunned. This has never happened in the time I’ve been with a server and that’s been at least 13 years. He sent me a copy of the files that were altered. The only thing I’d done differently lately was insert some YouTube videos, so I wondered if that had introduced some malware on the backend, because I’m notified if someone manages to sign in to my site and I knew that hadn’t occurred. So I contacted my security company and they ran a check and said they’d cleaned it up. But their response was their standard response and I wanted to know exactly what had been done. So I asked them for more information. In the meantime, I removed all the YouTube videos and edited the posts to include my channel name on YouTube and the name of each video I highlighted, so that readers would have the information and be able to watch the videos on YouTube itself.

The next day, I received a message from another technician and he said he had investigated it thoroughly and the files had not been infected with malware, there had been no hack. It was just a false positive.

Obviously, I was greatly relieved! But it was a crazy 24 hours and it showed in Wednesday’s post, as I kept going back and editing it to let you know what was happening.

Moving forward, I will post a link in the future that will take you directly to my YouTube channel. I think that will work out. Better safe than sorry.

You can see why keeping this blog going is expensive. I pay a yearly fee for the hosting company, a yearly fee for my main security company, a fee for a company to back up my blog posts, so I don’t lose them – and there’s more. But, when something goes wrong, I’m very grateful they’re there.

Today, we are in the middle of yet another “Wind Advisory.” You know how I feel about that. Spring, please get here. I’ve had it with this nonsense.

Trying to maintain my sanity.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Ruby and a Dollhouse Tour

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Since I’m filled with anxiety and fear lately (gee, I wonder why?) I’m going to post something cute. Adorable, in fact.

I’m not ordering any new dolls for the time being – maybe forever – but I ordered a doll head, faceup, and wig about 7 months ago from a BJD designer in China. This particular doll is very popular on my Blythe feed and I was enchanted by her ‘look.’ She was very reasonably priced, and as with most BJDs, the designer posts a preorder and then makes enough dolls to fulfill that order. It takes a lot of time because they are not mass produced. In this case, the heads had to be made, then shipped to the designer, then individual faceups had to be done, etc. I didn’t order the body because I had an OB 22 body on hand. That’s the same body that several of my Blythes have, as well as Jessie, the Little Keiko doll that I did the faceup for.

I knew she was going to ship about a week ago, but never received any tracking information. That made me very uneasy because the doll was coming all the way from Beijing. That’s never happened before. I was also concerned about customs fees, which I’ve never had to pay, but are now in place due to actions of the felon in the WH. But late in the day on Monday, there was a knock on the front door and the mail carrier was standing there with a box from China. It took less than a week, which is astounding. And no customs fee, though I’m not exactly sure why.

Here she is:

I hadn’t even thought of a name ahead of time, but the minute I looked at her, I knew she was Ruby. She has the smallest head of any of my dolls, even smaller than Lily or Wren. But it’s beautifully in proportion to the OB 22 body. (I’ll take a picture soon of a Blythe and a Little Keiko and this girl, so you can get an idea of the difference in body/head size.)

Her hair looks a little auburn here because of the sun streaming in our windows. That was yesterday. Today, it’s raining.

The wig was made by another creator in China, who is a pal of Ruby’s designer. It’s really beautiful. She even included a mini comb and brush!

Don is enchanted by her. I am, too. I must admit, her arrival lifted my spirits on Monday and Tuesday. Now, of course, I want another so she can have a friend. But the process takes so long, so that may not happen.

I have another video for you. It’s a tour of Hummingbird Cottage, my first attempt at restoring a dollhouse.

Since my site was infected today, and the only thing I’m doing differently is adding YouTube links, I’m going to discontinue that. Just go to YouTube and search under:  claudiathechroniccollector.

Dollhouse Tour: Hummingbird Cottage

I hope you enjoy the little tour.

NOTE: For some reason, I’m getting an error message when I try to leave a comment. I’ll check with my host. Update: the site was hacked – my first time since Blogger days, It’s fixed now.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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