O happy day - to have TWO trolls to unbox, with Bentley helping me every step of the way.
Showing posts with label troll dolls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label troll dolls. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Wednesday, August 4, 2021
The Troll Doll Channel: GIANT Dam Trolls!
One of the more gratifying aspects of troll collecting has been sharing them on my YouTube channel. I suppose this gives me an excuse to buy more of them! These two MASSIVE trolls were actually priced well below normal, and I was able to dress them with things I made myself.
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Creepy comfort: when dolls talk back to you
I just have to dust this one off again.
Maybe it goes all the way back to voodoo and burning your enemies in effigy, but humanity has always had a very strange relationship with dolls. They're both cuddly and creepy, calling forth a weird mixture of maternal tenderness and hair-raising shock. We don't expect them to talk, and most especially they weren't supposed to talk in Edison's time, which is what made this doll so - unique. The fact that the mechanism inside them (which was actually a teeny-tiny phonograph that played a miniature disc) broke after one or two uses meant that their popularity soon faded. Most of the dolls were returned. A few must have survived more or less intact. It was decades later that Chatty Cathy took over as the most "possessed" doll (meaning, of course, that more little girls owned them) in history.
I had no interest whatsoever in dolls when I was a child. I was more interested in frogs, toads, newts, snakes, polliwogs, mud puppies, millipedes, salamanders, and anything else that crawled (or barked or whinnied or meowed). I have no idea what has happened to me in the past few years, but my doll collection (if you count the trolls) has boomed, so much so that I don't know how many I have now, and don't want to count.
I can't account for this, except to say that the reborn doll craze has given rise to dolls that are much more realistic and less creepy (some would say MORE creepy due to the uncanny valley effect) than the staring-eyed, round-headed, stiff-limbed hunks of plastic we used to play with. I've knitted clothes for my dolls, made tons of videos about them, bought more and more of them - and, of course, during the pandemic, have relied on them as a source of comfort. They say we return to the enthusiasms of childhood as old age approaches - but in this case, I seem to have aged backwards, and am catching up on what never appealed to me in childhood.
I still like crawly things, and LOVE birds, which have become a serious interest in the past few years. Sometimes the only thing that pulls my spirits out of a bog of sludge is feeding the red-winged blackbirds at Burnaby Lake. The glossy, sassy males tilt their heads this way and that, their brilliant red and yellow wing patches flaming in the sun. The females, much more practical and industrious, are no-nonsense creatures who get right down to the business of eating, without any flirtation needed.
I can't see ahead right now - can anyone? Are we out of this woods yet? It seems to me it grows darker with every step. Each day HAS to be sufficient unto itself, because I can't plan. We try to focus on how much better our situation is than someone else's - but don't I also bleed for them, my fellow suffering humans?
For some reason - this is terribly disjointed, sorry - a song jumps back into my head, one that gave me great comfort during another time when I couldn't see ahead. I'd be walking through the woods with this song playing in my ear and try to find some sense in what was happening to me. Mostly I was just trying to stay out of the hospital, and when I was unable to find the light, I had to try to develop a taste for the dark. I don't know how I survived that time, why those soul-destroying times kept returning, and why I am not in that state now when I suppose I have every reason to be. Maybe the message was finally delivered.
No one is alone
No one here to guide you
Now you're on your own
Only me beside you
Still you're not alone
No one is alone, truly
No one is alone
Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood
Others may deceive you
You decide what's good
You decide alone
But no one is alone
People make mistakes
Fathers, mothers
People make mistakes
Holding to their own
Thinking they're alone
Honour their mistakes
Everybody makes
One another's
Terrible mistakes
Witches can be right
Giants can be good
You decide what's right
You decide what's good
Just remember
Someone is on your side
Someone else is not
While we're seeing our side
Maybe we forgot
They are not alone
No one is alone
Hard to see the light now
Just don't let it go
Things will come out right now
That's the best I know
Someone is on your side
No one is alone
Stephen Sondheim
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Friday, January 17, 2020
The Troll Doll Channel: GORGEOUS Troll Makeovers!
Ah, YouTube! Such a glorious way to not re-LIVE, but re-DO my childhood, taking one element I loved and multiplying it like loaves and fishes. Since I can't keep a horse, this will have to do. But such fun I have. SO FAR, there has been no major blowback from the FTC/COPPA fiasco. NO one knows how to mark their videos now, and so far the only direct result has been YouTube labelling some vids for kids, even though they weren't meant that way. Strange are the ways of YT. But I"m keeping on keeping on, probably not buying as many this year due to our budget, but still wanting to play with them (I never played with dolls as a kid, and NEVER did anything with my trolls, none of which had outfits of any kind). It's fun, that's why, and YT is a way of sharing it with (I think!) other collectors. It's hard to see a six-year-old wanting to watch a video featuring 60-year-old troll dolls. No one says they CAN'T, but they weren't made for them. YT's algorithm is flagging some of them, but in their usual haphazard/scattershot way. It's all done by bot, and the bot has moods, I guess. It's a lot moodier and less consistent than any human being would be.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Friday, December 13, 2019
The Troll Doll Channel: DAM, I love these trolls!
Sharing a little bit of one of my favorite hobbies, which I hope YouTube doesn't take away from me. I have over 700 subscribers now, and though many have 7 MILLION, to have any at all is gratifying for me. It is so easy to get caught up in numbers as a source of personal worth. I don't know what the future will bring. 2020 SEEMS lucky, but is anything really lucky? I remember all those zeroes in 2000, but it was 2001, the actual start of the millennium, when everything changed forever, and a terrible ugliness was born. Please, God, if you're there, save us from this! Meantime, I will try to enjoy my ever-burgeoning collection.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Three speeds of Lucretia
(From eBay page for Lucretia's Lair)
This is "Candy". She is a vintage Scandia house troll doll 2-1/2" .
She's had a spa bath and has new long soft Icelandic sheep fur hair in shades of strawberries and mangoes, and new hand painted spiral eyes in shades to match her hair.
Her "skin" is rough in spots and is not perfect on her little face so I gave her a bunch of curls and pulled her hair off to the side which detracts from her flaws.
She comes wearing a little double ruffled dress in white iridescent fantasy fabric trimmed out in a pink/green mini gimp making up the bodice/sleeves.
Her hair clip is covered in the same trim and has a single ivory Mulberry flower that I dusted with iridescent glitter.
I design and make these clothes/accessories by myself. I create my own
I design and make these clothes/accessories by myself. I create my own
patterns and most of the embellishments.
BLOGGER'S NOTE. As addicted as I am to trolls, and let me tell you it's bad, I don't have a Lucretia troll (yet) - that is, a troll made by Lucretia's Lair, an Etsy store specializing in trolls so deluxe that when you're around them, you always feel underdressed.
I've been "trolling" and making videos to share for quite a while now, and when I look up I am startled, even shocked to see how many of them there are. WHY did I do this? Have I really gone crazy, at last? I've been called crazy, often very graphically and nastily, and by family members, so it's not a good look for me. People jocularly telling me to "just embrace your craziness" is like saying "enjoy your leukemia". Or so it would seem to me.
There IS something crazy, though - in the extremity of it - the need - the fact that maybe nine people see those videos (or none at all - YouTube seems to want to shut me down for no good reason, leaving the billion-view channels to transgress in any way they see fit.) And though I've sort of come to and rubbed my eyes lately, and wondered what the hell it is really all about, these trolls are really beautiful to me. I have worked on costumes and hair replacement and all sorts of things, and no, I am not going to sell them, which seems to be most people's imperative for enjoying something this much: surely I MUST be going to DO something with them. Get rid of them?
I don't post many of my troll videos here, mainly because it just doesn't occur to me. Separate worlds, you know! But here are a few. Just a few.
I've been "trolling" and making videos to share for quite a while now, and when I look up I am startled, even shocked to see how many of them there are. WHY did I do this? Have I really gone crazy, at last? I've been called crazy, often very graphically and nastily, and by family members, so it's not a good look for me. People jocularly telling me to "just embrace your craziness" is like saying "enjoy your leukemia". Or so it would seem to me.
There IS something crazy, though - in the extremity of it - the need - the fact that maybe nine people see those videos (or none at all - YouTube seems to want to shut me down for no good reason, leaving the billion-view channels to transgress in any way they see fit.) And though I've sort of come to and rubbed my eyes lately, and wondered what the hell it is really all about, these trolls are really beautiful to me. I have worked on costumes and hair replacement and all sorts of things, and no, I am not going to sell them, which seems to be most people's imperative for enjoying something this much: surely I MUST be going to DO something with them. Get rid of them?
I don't post many of my troll videos here, mainly because it just doesn't occur to me. Separate worlds, you know! But here are a few. Just a few.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Friday, August 31, 2018
I WANT THIS TROLL!
I. Want. This. Troll.
Don't ever start a collection, of anything, or this will happen.
What happened was - I don't know if I want to go back that far! Let's say I had a troll collection already, but somehow it was never complete. I felt guilty about every purchase I made, since we're on a very modest budget all the time.
AND THEN.
And then, today, rummaging in my wallet for my bus pass, I spied - a cheque. It had my name on it. I had almost forgotten I had it! And it had a tasty amount on it, too, very tasty.
Pay.
I don't get pay from too many other sources. It also delighted me because it easily covered ALL my trolls, most of them costing five bucks and none of them more than forty (most of that being postage and handling).
I couldn't think of anything more apt than covering the cost of all my trolls with my Canada Council cheque. But do you realize what this means??
But I don't like Wishniks. I tried to like them. Their bulging eyes were pretty much their only outstanding feature. Most of them were old and the worse for wear, with sad clumps of hair coming away from the scalp. Some had no hair at all. The larger ones had hideous flat, elongated heads with huge ears and evil faces. No charm at all.
Plus they just cost too damn much, $40.00 or more for a small troll in so-so repair.
Whether I get this "big guy" troll or not is undecided. There were a ton of photos on the eBay page, which was nice because sometimes you only get one grainy one, so I was able to make this wonderful animation. Often when I finally make my move, the troll is gone. Or I suddenly change direction and decide that I hate that troll and want something else.
THAT troll.
Post-mortem. Sigh. It happened again. Somebody bought that troll. That troll that was far too expensive for me, anyway. This is what happens when you start a collection. And the weird thing is, I've never collected anything in my life before!
Now I know why.
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
Trolls! Trolls! Everyone trolls!
It has been a while since I posted about trolls. In fact, I can't remember if I ever posted about them at all, so I guess it's time.
I now belong to not one, not two, but THREE Facebook troll groups. By the time I actually post this, I might belong to zero troll groups, because I have gone back and forth a lot in my feelings about them.
Yes, it's nice to connect with people who love their trolls and have an enthusiasm for them. No, it's not so great to have someone push and push and push to try to sell expensive trolls to me, or tell me they collect nothing but one-of-a-kind 24" trolls from Denmark that Thomas Dam created with his own two hands in 1942. Or see photos of ultra-expensive trolls posing on the deck of a cruise ship, or in a room with a view in Sicily. Or see someone casually mention a small collection of, oh, say, about 5000 or so Dam trolls, only the finest and the oldest, and -
You know what I'm saying. It's all the same problems I have had with social media from the beginning. Troll elitism! It's beyond my powers to comprehend.
My trolls, the ones I started out with until I began to branch out a little, came from the wrong side of the tracks. They came in a little plastic bag:
. . . and cost me, rounded off, about $5.00 each at the dollar store. I had never seen a troll at the dollar store before, so soon I was stoking my collection and making them little felt outfits. I began replacing their silky but rather sparse hair with great spills of yarn, the fibres all pulled apart for maximum volume.
I thought they looked great!
Needing a place to store them and not wanting to just use a shelf, I converted some old CD racks and began to stack them in.
There weren't too many at first.
I am not sure which troll group I joined first, but it didn't make me very happy, even though I got some initial "likes" for my poorhouse trolls in their CD highrise.
But I still had the feeling they were from a different social stratum, and I was never allowed to forget it. People talked in "troll-ese", I am convinced to make people left out who DIDN'T speak troll-ese. It didn't occur to me that Facebook and its intentional envy syndrome had anything to do with it.
But then the inevitable happened, and I began to "covet". I knew I couldn't begin to afford the holy grail ones, but even the mid-sized Dam trolls cost plenty, what with outrageous shipping charges and conversion of the American dollar to Canadian.
But I went ahead. I looked on eBay, I ordered trolls, I bought trolls. I couldn't help myself.
I don't know how to feel about it now. I haven't counted how many trolls I have, and I don't want to, though I did move a bookcase into my office for the overflow. I have spent a lot of money, for me at least, which translates to a few hundred. Money I can't spare. I think I still like my "Dollarinas" best, my yarnies with all the masses of hair I created from material I already had. But the problem is, their faces all look pretty much the same. They're identical cousins. Their bodies are so fragile, knockoffs of knockoffs made of thin plastic, that you could squish them flat by sitting on them.
The feeling is exciting when I order "real" trolls, and even more exciting when I get them and open the box. It's Christmas morning! One of my faves is the one I call Grumpy Grandpa:
But now I want another one. With the same face. Should I get it?
Collections are horrible things, voracious, insatiable. I've never really had one before, and now I don't know what to do. Stop buying them, maybe?
Am I honestly trying to reproduce my Year of the Trolls when I was ten years old, which was (though of course I didn't know it at the time) the best year of my life?
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