I need a break =_=. Last night I worked on fixing Lucas’ neck. What a freakin problem child!!! My planned way of fixing him didn’t work all the way because:
Problem A) the plastic bottle cap that was supposed to cap the neck piece and prevent the S-hook from putting pressure on the broken spot again, was too weak… I could see it bending under small pinpointed pressure.
Problem B) the stupid knot of the elastic was in the way and I couldn’t even pull the S hook far enough to get through the plastic cap.

My mother and I brainstormed and went to the hardware store to find a solution. What we ended up buying was a metal washer to put on top of the bottle cap to reinforce that which fixed problem A. We also bought a D-ring for the S-hook to hook on to so I didn’t have to push the hook and knot all the way through the hole which fixed problem B.

But then problem C was created: How to attach the skull cap to the head now that the top of the S hook was unavailable since it’s attaching to the D-Ring. We bought a few pins that could attach to the D ring… but how well it’d work and all… well I figured I’d think of something later.

When I got home I tried it out. Technically the idea worked very nicely. Except… I didn’t realize that the knot of elastic was so large it didn’t have a place to sit, either in the neck hole of the body or inside the small area between the neck hole of the head and the bottle cap’s underside. Problem D was created.

Well fiddling around with him this whole time… I noticed his torso started flopping around.

Problem E: His waist joint came unglued.

By then I had spent around 3 hours working on just trying to rig this system… My hands were/are absolutely raw from yanking the elastic and nylon safety string I attached and now he was flopping around everywhere.

I put him down for the evening. I was too tired to even want to look at him anymore. He wants to be a problem child fine. But I’d had enough for one evening.

Solutions: I have to take him apart and fix his waist joint (E fixed). Once I do that, I’ll restring him with the elastic knot hiding in his torso, not his neck (D fixed, which in turn fixes B). Then all I hafta worry about is finding a way to fix C. But I have to wait until my hands recover some. They’re stinging even now as I type. =_= Problem child. =_=

You know and this makes me think… MAAAAN if this was my Lucas and he was falling apart like this… This would convince me that Volks is a bad company that does crap jobs on dolls. I know it’s not true, but if this was my only doll and my only experience… that’s what I would have thought. I’d never buy another Volks doll again. Good thing there’re people who’ll do fixes for ya. XD