I’m a Barbie Doll fan, When I was young the `teenage dolls’ were all the rage. The best of them came with a small wardrobe of clothes.  If I remember rightly, the one I so wanted cost 59s 11d, close to £3.00, that would be £85 in today’s money (surely not!?)  Put that way, I can understand my parents not entertaining the thought.

For a long time I just suppressed my desire, but a few years ago, I became attracted to Peg doll crafting.After I started working with them I was asked to do some children’s workshops and a couple of summer fairs, considering that I saw this as just a wonderful all-consuming hobby, I was rather flattered.  I’ve never had a hobby in my life!  – maybe the idea of just doing it because you want to seemed a bit self indulgent, but now I’ve reached a lovely self indulgent age in my life, where self indulgence just goes with the territory.

However, peggy-wise, I became increasingly frustrated with the shape, lack of mobility and furry arms (that will be the pipe cleaners by the way) of my `Peggys’. Add to that everything is teeny tiny, and although I have a love of miniatures, I realised that the sort of scale I was working with would never produce the results I wanted to see or increaslingly now, physically can see.

It has occured to me that I’m am truley a late developer, uni in my forites, new career in my `fifties and now this my very own Barbie, yes, in my sixties. I bought a sewing machine and started to learn to sew last year, I’ve made dozens of cushions and zip bags,  but still there was just something crafty-wise -missing.

Barbie buying felt like proper plain wrapper stuff and I really didn’t know how I was going to tell my close family and friends. What would they think?. Well, as it happens they are, as usual, taking me in their stride.

Apart from the tiny studio flat that Barbie now inhabits (pictures of that to come) Barbie, has now, in four weeks, taken over the spare room. It’s full of crafty materials for the `studio flat’, so called because I’m using a corner in my bedroom to `house’ her and beleive me scale-wise (1:12 remember), she just can’t have her own bedroom – anything bigger and I might end up having to sleep in a single bed.

Today I found a joke toilet in the Pound Shop. It’s almost the 1:12 scale that is perfect for her. As it was a joke toilet I did get a bit of a suprise when I lifted the little lid, but after a few adjustments Barbie looks great on it.  That means we’re gonna need a bathroom…..