melannen | (no subject)

Todo list update:

started reading Words Are My Matter since it was tied most of the day and it's due back soonest; about 1/3 of the way through
have not written (yet)
not cleaning bathroom due to emergency storm water supply being in the way
have finished animals! opened box of "old doll clothes" expecting to find ones I played with back in the day; instead found ones my grandmother played with.
have not done any sewing, except for repairs to animals. Did find cut-but-not-sewed antique doll clothes in box, though, so number of sewing WIPs has increased instead. sigh
just put laundry in! mostly animals and doll clothes, but it counts.
have not worked on knitting projects, that's up next
officially not dealing with desk today. :P
officially not working on books today. :P
listened to lots podcasts!
writing dreamwidth post as we speak. substance questionable :P

Here is a photo of all of my Daekor Potbelly bears and raccoons - Dropbear and his friends and relations. There are, apparently, 17 of them, which means I've acquired a new on on average every two years.

The koalas, going clockwise, are: Bonnie (by far the best condition, still has original fur texture); Bongo (not actually Daekor, but a very similar design, and as the largest, an honorary uncle); Big Boy (the one who is exactly the same size relative to me as KB was when I was a toddler, and is therefore on emergency hug duty at all times - he got a new nose today); Ol' One-Eye (with his brand-new eyepatch!); Nobody (named after the Emily Dickinson poem, distinguished by having no distinguishable features - the third one I ever owned); Scarface (lurking like the bear of mystery he is!); Joanie (so named because she came on a road trip with me to find America right after college); Drop-Bear (aka KB, the original who's been with me since I was born); and Little One.

The brown bears just go by The Three Bears. The raccoons mostly don't have names, but the pinkish-colored one in the middle is Posey, and one of the others has the name Kekko on her tag.

Names and genders subject to change without notice, I just go by what they tell me.

No I do not need 17 semi-identical stuffed animals (or the, uh, 100-ish others I repaired and re-displayed today) but they bring me joy. And those first three - KB, Scarface, and Nobody - taught me early on just how much three creatures theoretically made from the exact same pattern can all have very obviously different personalities.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your collection looks super awesome! I love koalas so this really made me smile! /random

I have a lot of koalas! They were my official Favorite Animal when I was a kid, so I got a lot as gifts. :D (They are vicious and persnickety and not very smart but I love them anyway.)

Me too! And the one time I got to go to Austrailia... must of been 8, the first thing I wanted to see was a koala! Of course now I love a lot of different animals but koalas were the first tbh

I love KB's supersuit so much. It is black and good for lurking but clearly a hero suit and not a villain suit.

Yes! He is a great superhero. I recommend bionic superhero suits for any loved stuffed animals that are starting to have major disabilities due to age. :D

Wait--we can apply this to humans as well! Get us super capes to keep warm, super-vehicles to zoom about ....

I really appreciate the glamor on display in this post

That is awesome. I am glad they bring you joy and thatvyou can take care of them. And how cool is it that you found your grandmother’s doll clothes!

I can sort of take care of them! They've kind of just been kicking around for about a year as I VERY SLOWLY make enough progress in the larger tidy project that they can go home again. :/

I know I can't take proper care of seventy-five year old doll/baby clothes though, augh, now that I know they're there I'm going to feel responsible for them!

Ooooooooh plushies <3

Fuzzy hugs for all!

OMG YOU HAVE A WHOLE LOT OF RICKYS!

When I was a girl my brother and I had the raccoons, and I had also one of the big raccoons. I didn't know they were a thing a person could still obtain!

They're a thing a person can still obtain if said person has made a hobby of going to thrift stores and flea markets and one's mother collects stuffed animal donations for charity, and one has snarfled every one one sees for thirty-five years, and is satisfied with finding one every two years or so. :D

You can probably still get them if you keep an eye on online used-stuff sites too - the keywords are "Daekor PotBelly" (which I didn't know until I finally found one where I could still read the tag.) They seem to've been pretty popular among people our age, but stopped being made by the mid-to-late 80s (when, judging by the tags on my wider collection, stuffed animal manufacturing in general shifted from Korea to China.)

Unfortunately they don't age real well - they have shredded-paper stuffing, so they can't handle getting wet or be washed, and if they're loved, they will get seams splitting pretty quickly. (My raccoons are mostly female because of, um, a particular seam that tends to split first on them) - so they are getting progressively harder to find, as resellers just toss the more well-loved ones. :/

Would it bring your life great joy if Ricky came back to you in the mail? Because obviously one of the small raccoons I hadn't had a name for yet is a Ricky, and if he hadn't told me that name in all these years he's clearly just been biding his time here...

Edited 2019-02-21 15:32 (UTC)

I want to fall face-first into that pile.

It's pretty great, gotta say. (When things are in order they live on a spare bed and I can just snuggle in among them if needed.)