Still Drowning in Dolls.....: Migidoll Ell - restringing my BJD

I got this beautiful boy off of a family member sometime last year. I created a character many, many years ago which I named William. William the Wizard, to be precise. I even bought a bunch of fabric for him, way way WAY back in 2011. I actually still have the blue velvet for his cloak. I could never find the right sculpt for my character - I literally tried to make it work in every way possible, even trying to make one of my anthro dolls William. It didn't work. And then, when I had the opportunity to grab this guy last year - the William the Wizard character has finally been realized!!

He is a Migidoll Ell, and I can't remember the artist who did the face up - he had it already in place before my family member bought - but it is gorgeous. I'll never remove it. When I got him, he was so badly in need of restringing that his arms were hanging an inch or so out of the socket. His legs were loose, but not quite as terribly bad. But the arm strings were stretched out to the point that there was no more stretch to the elastic. I had ordered some BJD string from Volks USA last year, 4 packs to be exact for the several dolls that I have that desperately need restringing. Unfortunately, I either ordered incorrectly (which I am positive that I didn't.) or Volks sent me the wrong size string (which is likely, as I had to return part of my order last year when they sent some wrong items.) There wasn't enough string to do his arms and his legs. Now, he is a little over 60cm, so maybe that's the difference. But I wasn't real thrilled. I was able to reuse his former legs strings for his new arm strings, but they really aren't as tight as they need to be. I decided to live with that, rather than have to deal with getting into another new package of string.

Here's a pic of how loose his arms were before restringing. The pic really doesn't show how bad his arms were stretched out - but you get the general idea here.

Restringing BJDs is jut not my favorite job in the world. I got that fancy Volks restringing tool - but it always seems to NOT fit through the holes of most of the dolls I have tried to use it on. So, I use my handy dandy piece of 1/8th ribbon to feed the elastic through the pieces, and it works fine. Sometimes I have to tape the ends together, but I didn't have to do so on this doll. I had a horrible time getting the hand hooks off the elastic. Like, I almost didn't get them off. So, naturally, I could not get them back on. And in my infinite wisdom, the only thing left to do was to bend them out with some tiny needle nose pliers. Once I got the hook on the elastic, I tried to bend it back. Will I regret that in the future? Probably. But I had to get it on there somehow.

Once I got my dear boy restrung, I could finally dig out the long blonde wig for him and put it on him. I have never put it on him. I just knew that it was meant to be his as soon as I adopted him! Poor William doesn't have anything to wear beyond his star print lounge pants I whipped up for him. To take pics of him in his wig, I put my only Dollshe shirt on him, so he could be decent. I'm plotting out something simple to make for him - I just don't know when I'll get to it!

So, here he is! My beautiful William the Wizard.