I’ve decided to extract all my doll-making adventures, notes, and dolls from Ravelry and resurrect Queermaculture as muñequerx blog. I have all those notes on the Ravelry database, photos, dates, etc. And here I can share them in that silly blog way that’s just about what I’m thinking and trying to figure out. Sharing the research bits that I’m having the best time with.

The fact that I read Lisa Guerrero’s article on Bratz yesterday and then almost without a pause, I saw her mentioned on Lalo’s facebook.

“Can the Subaltern Shop? The Commodification of Difference in the Bratz Dolls” in Critical Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, Special Issue on Race and Kids’ Pop Culture, 2008.

The midwife dolls that Julieta Kusnir sent me a foto ofand and the way they’re sold by a AngloAmerican midwife living in Oaxaca but likely crafted by Oaxacan women, which has some parallels with the “invention” of the “Maria” dolls.

The different birth dolls I’ve seen. The anatomically correct dolls.

The African American women dollmakers, like Aniqua Wilkerson (My Kinda Thing) and Yolonda Jordan (My Pretty Brown Doll), who clearly articulate how the crafting of African American dolls is derives from African American culture. And how before they started doing it (and teaching it), there were few folks selling handmade African American dolls and some of those were just white dolls made with brown yarn.

White dolls/Brown Yarn

Yeah, I think maybe I’ll do this, even though it’s prob’ly only for my own pleasure!

Note: blog posts older than 9/14/2018 were actually journal entries, and were all imported to the blog today.

Here's an example of research:

10 diferentes tipos de muñecas artesanales y de dónde vienen

Chicanx Punk

When I was learning Aniqua Wilkerson’s curly hair method, I practiced with one of the blank dollheads I made a while back. I made like four of them with warm brown yarn. Then used the yarn for a bigger project, then ran out. I’ve been thinking about cannibalizing these heads, until the opportunity came to practice this hair.

I used bright pink yarn to make it highly visible.

Yesterday I put on eyes.

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I always feel like somebody’s watching me...

A post shared by Catriona Rueda Esquibel (@munequerx) on Sep 8, 2018 at 9:59pm PDT

This evening after dinner at La Suegra’s, I started the body for it. I decided to work chonies on to the body. So after finishing the first leg, I did a color change row. And the same on the second leg, and then joining them, continued with white. I have to wait till after the increases before I switch back to skin tone, otherwise the chonies will be too low cut.

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Another little person with their feet on the ground...uh, bookshelf.

A post shared by Catriona Rueda Esquibel (@munequerx) on Sep 10, 2018 at 8:02pm PDT

Buddy Person

Name: Buddy person
Pattern: My Little Buddy Doll by Ornicka Owens
Craft: Crochet
Hook
3.75 mm (F)
Yarn
Red Heart Super Saver Solids
Colorway
336 Warm brown

I’m putting the start date as September 8, but the truth is that I made the head some months ago. The head languished with no eyes and only one ear. But this evening I felt the need to cast on for a different doll, and thus this kid was pulled into action.
Note: some dollmakers that I admire greatly refer to the “doll graveyard” as that space in which dolls languish in a state of limbo. unfinished, awry, perhaps never to be finished.
I prefer to think of them as in doll rehab. They disappear from view for a while but will return with a renewed determination and a stronger sense of self.
(Next day)
From my recent experience with the Stylin’ green dress, I’ve decided to incorporate nether garments when the pattern does not do so.
I used two full rows to get to the starting stitch count (this is a deviation from the pattern that has the full stitch count on the first row) so I’m making the legs 1 round longer than called for by the pattern.
To achieve nethergarments, I’m subtracting two from the adjusted leg count, changing yarn color to white, doing 1 color change row and 2 regular rows before finishing off.
Starting the body (from bottom up), I’m using color: white for rows 1-4 and then a color change row.