Indulging Myself and Meeting Monica.

What's your favorite ice cream?  Did the taste of it just pop into your mouth, or are you intellectualizing and internally debating the merits of mint chocolate chip or rocky road?  To say I love ice cream would be an understatement.  Did you know that ice cream is different depending on where you are.  Oh, of course, there are the 'standards', but each location has an ice cream of which they are particularly proud.  Each region also has concocted favorites whose names usually involve the wild animal of the region:  "Moose Tracks", "Deer Tracks", or the local fruit or nut or condiment - "Maine Blueberry" or "Oregon Blackberry".  In Montana and Idaho, I hit huckleberry season, and there was huckleberry ice cream.  I never tasted better maple ice cream than in New England.  And to give the Aggies their due; the best ice cream EVER is Aggie Ice Cream at Utah State in Logan.  Yes, friends, as much as it pains me, the homemade USU Aggie Ice Cream is better than Texas' Blue Bell.  

Here, in Seal Rock, we have a sweet shop called "Indulge" that advertises evil brownies, fudge and ice cream.   The ice cream is luscious.  Tonight I had Brown Cow.  (It probably should have been called Brown Sea Lion.)   Think of the taste of white chocolate and milk chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate chunks.  If the ice cream isn't enough, the shop also has homemade fudge as well as chocolate candies.  I haven't eaten any of that stuff....yet.  The divinity is calling me, though.  And she has penuche, a cooked brown sugar candy similar in consistency to fudge.  OK, enough, enough.  I could talk desserts, ice cream, and candy until people run screaming from the room.

I started talking to the owner, Monica, tonight.  This wasn't our first trip into the shop and I ease dropped last time as she told a friend she had an upcoming vacation.  This is her first vacation in 10 years.  Understand, she runs a business that is open 7 days a week from 10 - 6.  And where is she going?  Paris, France to show and sell her doll clothes.  

Meeting interesting people is the best thing about traveling.  Monica confided if you live on this rural, Oregon coastline, you'd better have a hobby to occupy yourself when the rain blows sideways for ten days in a row.  I can already see this has to be true.  About ten years ago, she was noodling around browsing eBay.  Thinking she might want to buy some fancy jam, she came across a doll dress designer with name that popped her up on the eBay search.  Monica saw her first Blythe doll.  It was the start of a unique hobby.  

Blythe is a doll introduced to the American toy market by the defunct toy company Kenner in 1972.  It's an 11 inch doll, that has a Japanese anime look with big eyes and an oversized head.  It also has a string to pull which will change the eye color of the doll. It was a total flop, and was only manufactured and distributed for one year.  

According to Wikipedia:  In 1997 a New York TV and video producer, Gina Garan, was given a 1972 Kenner Blythe doll by a friend and she began using it to practice her photographic skills.  She began taking the doll everywhere and took hundreds of photos.  The result was in 2000 Ms. Garan published a book called This is Blythe and started a phenomena which resulted in Hasbro (who bought the defunct Kenner Toys) to issue a license to Takara Toys of Japan to produce a new edition of Blythe (Neo Blythe),  The re-issued doll was used in advertising campaigns in Japan and became an instant hit.  The Japanese success caused Hasbro to issue a license to Ashton-Drake Galleries in 2004 to sell Blythe replica dolls in the United States.  Alexander McQueen, the famous fashion designer, launched a fashion line for Target with an ad campaign featuring Blythe dolls.  These dolls are now collected and 'dressed' by a growing group of hobbyists.  Monica visualizes "Blythe" as a sweet, innocent 10 year old girl, but if you search the internet, you will see many incarnations of this doll.

As Monica and I started visiting, I learned that she has a background in tailoring. She brushed off those skills and translated them into designing and making Blythe doll clothes.  These are individually designed and sewn.  They are 1/6th the size of adult clothes.  Now, I've made Barbie clothes for my daughter and for sale in the St. Paul UMC Fall Festival.   I can tell you that my best friend was Velcro.  Monica is in a whole different class; she's a haute couture doll clothing seamstress.  She is making cuffs, and button holes and doing hand embroidery using a single thread to create a Trompe L'Oeil  effect.  She's hand knitting sweaters and vests, making wool felt coats and trimming all of her creations.  While she downplayed her skills, I suspect you don't go as an exhibitor to a show in Paris, France unless you have major talent.

Monica prefers the original 1972 Kenner dolls, and she owns three of them.  She'll be taking and exhibiting two of them (wearing her creations) to Paris.  I was disappointed not to see some of these dresses, but as she put it,  "I don't have any fabric in the candy store".  Smart.  That would be disaster waiting to happen.  I wouldn't want to risk a smear of inadvertent chocolate on something I had spent hours making under a magnifier.  

This evening's visit was fascinating.  Here's a woman running her own business, and in her limited spare time also has an unusual hobby that is largely self taught.  I can hardly wait to get to know her better.  Oh, and if you are driving down Coastal Highway 101 in Oregon between Newport and Waldport, stop in Seal Rock and INDULGE yourself.