...2.4...a Friday Update...

...I think the little Madame Alexander Doll's hair has had ample drying time...

...I mean the glue I brushed around inside her head over the little nubs of hair has had ample drying time...I wasn't sure how long it would take to fully dry...but I can stick my fingers inside and it's definitely dry...like a plastic coating on the inside keeping everything nice and snug...

...so I got out some packing paper...because I'm going to cut her hair now...and I want to minimize the mess...

...and I centered the doll's head on the packing paper...and made a mark under her nose...

...and stretched the hair out on both sides...and made another mark...you can see the braids I used to keep everything tangle free during the months that I worked on it...

...so...I made a mark for the length that I wanted...

...on both sides...and taped everything down...

...this is the center mark where her nose was...

...I taped a string there...

...and then attached the marker to the string...and stretched it over to one of the side marks...

...checked that it was the same on both sides...

...and then drew an arc from one side to the other...

...so I'll put her head back in the center and stretch out the hair and cut it along that line...

...here she is...all lined up...

...and the cutting begins...

...I stretched out the first braid...

...unbraided it and brushed it out...

...fanned it out over the semi-circle...

...and cut it off...

...then I undid another braid...fanned it out and cut it off...

...and did the same with her other braids...

...it was a little bit awkward as the hair I harvested from the wig was a bit wavy...but I just combed it out over the arc and continued cutting...

...and then cleanup was super easy...as I just gathered up the paper...hair and all...

...and here she is post haircut...front...

...and back...I'm really happy with how her hair has turned out...and I'm really excited to get her put back together now...and dressed...it'll be fun...

...now...on the reading front...

...when I finish a book that I've penciled in...I'll write it in ink...haha...I've finished all of the James Heriot books now...and I really enjoyed them this second time around...I think I was about 13 or 14 when I read them the first time...definitely Jr. High...anywhooo...now I can focus more on the Read Harder Challenge...

...I've only penciled in a couple more options...for the book that's been on my To-Be-Read list the longest...I've got a couple of ones out there...Kerouac's On the Road...which I've been meaning to read since college...and for the poetry...The Canterbury Tales...I've read excerpts from it both in High School and in college...but never just sat down and read the entire book...

...I finished The Bookseller of Kabul...and somehow I thought that it just didn't really ring true...overall it left me with a sort of negative feeling...and I was not surprised to read about the controversy surrounding the book...the authorÅsne Seierstad was found guilty of defamation and “negligent journalistic practices and ordered to pay damages...it's listed as non-fiction...but I thought it was a pretty fictionalized and stereotypical...and again negative portrayal of these people ravaged by war...just so sad...all the destruction...and inhumanity...so very sad...

...so I just got this from the Library this week...and it's a sad story too...I know that going in...and again based on real characters...Shakespeare his wife and young son and daughter...it's going to be a quick read too...for some reason it's very easy to read...the author switches back and forth between two timelines...and often when that happens in a book...I'll read one entire timeline and then go back and read the other...I don't particularly like the switching thing...and of course...I've already read the ending...haha...

~Have a lovely day!