And then there were 17!

For my combined birthday/Christmas present, my partner bought me a 62cm female Mirodoll body in Normal yellow skin, and it arrived yesterday. So Galhaia, my CP Juri 2005 girl, got upgraded to a taller resin body that matched her resin better than the Obitsu 60 body she's been on for nearly ten years - over that time, her resin has yellowed more than the vinyl body had so it was no longer a good match for her. It's a perfect match for Seraphina, my modded CP Sleeping Soony girl however - so Seraphina got a body and Galhaia got an upgrade! Add to that little Autumn, the tiny 14cm tall ABS Hujoo girl I got back in November, and that brings my tally now to 17 complete dolls and no floating heads!

First, Galhaia on her new body, looking quite regal:

Galhaia (CP Juri 05 on Mirodoll 62cm body)

 Seraphina on the Obitsu body:

Seraphina (modded CP Sleeping Soony on Obitsu 60cm body)

Seraphina and Galhaia together, illustrating the difference in height between the Obitsu body and the Mirodoll 62cm body:

Seraphina and Galhaia

Seraphina reunited with her sister Ayame (Volks FCS F-22):

Seraphina and Ayame

And Galhaia with her partner Marius (Dollshe V2 Hound):

Marius and Galhaia

 

And a family shot of Marius, Galhaia and their little daughter Sophie (Bambicrony Kumi):

The family together

And finally introducing tiny little Autumn (Hujoo Suve)!

Autumn (Hujoo Suve)

 

The tribe is getting very large and I'm running out of room on top of the piano for them all! But at least Seraphina and Christine (CP Lishe) are no longer having to share the same body any longer. :-)

And here's a shot of the whole line-up - all 17 dolls as of January 2015:

Photostories blog

I've now set up a seperate blog for photostories. All Arkadian Dreams photostories from "Lost In The Snow" onwards can be found there, and all further installments in the series will be posted there. Please add the Arkadian Dreams Stories blog to your bookmarks to continue following the story!

Dolls stolen in L.A.

These dolls were stolen from a fellow collector late at night from a car in L.A. The thief took a random load of stuff from the car, including dirty laundry and a packet of trail mix. They almost certainly had no idea of the value of these dolls. They may show up on eBay simply as "big dolls".



Resinsoul Grey


Dollstown Soph head on an Impldoll body


Notdoll Belladonna


Soom Syen/Impl baby hybrid and BC Elf Lotti

Victory!

Trafigura and Carter-Ruck backed down shortly before the 2pm High Court hearing and lifted the gagging order; it must have been obvious it was going to be overturned even to them. The overwhelming response from the blogosphere and Twitter must have been a very nasty surprise for them!

Kudos also to the Spectator, which was the only other media outlet to report on the story. And a big thumbs-down to the BBC and Channel 4 who refused to report on it even when directly asked. Even now that reporting restrictions have been lifted, there is NO mention of it on the BBC website. Shame on you, BBC.

It has been revealed that Trafigura were indeed trying to cover up the injunction against reporting in the British press of the Minton report, on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura. In several incidents, Trafigura dumped thousands of tons of sulphurous coker naptha mixed with caustic soda off Côte d’Ivoire in 2006, with full knowledge as detailed in internal emails that doing so would likely cause thousands of injuries and deaths. The chemical waste came from a ship called Probo Koala and in August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was illegally fly-tipped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast. This led to 16 deaths and 31000 injured.

Trafigura can now thank Carter-Ruck for having ensured that by trying to gag the British press, pretty much the whole world now knows exactly what Trafigura did.

[Edit to add] The BBC finally reported on the lifting of the gag nearly three hours afterwards with a very mealymouthed piece.

Bringing home Kai

On Friday I'll be making the final layaway payment on Kai (KisakiSama's Kaitou); it feels weird to think that in a couple of weeks or so, I'll be holding in my hands the very first BJD I ever saw, on the fourth anniversary of the day I saw him and first got into the whole BJD scene. If I hadn't seen his photo on wtf_inc, of all places, I might never have gotten into this whole hobby. I wouldn't have 14 dolls (soon to be 15!); I wouldn't have an Etsy shop (from which I've made my first sale), I would never have created the obitsulovers community on LJ, and Arkadian Dreams wouldn't even exist.

Can't begin to describe how I feel right now. "Excited" doesn't even come close!

This is a dream come true. I am so looking forward to Kai's homecoming.

I think Eric is too. ;-)


In other news, I've now switched the blog over to Blogspot where it will be found from now on. This will not affect those of you who read the LJ, but those who read the blog should update RSS readers and bookmarks accordingly.