January 31, 2018

We are so excited about American Girl® Girl of the Year™ 2018 Luciana Vega's SPACE theme!

So where did we go first thing in the morning on January 1st? To the Tyson's Corner American Girl store to meet the new girl, of course!

We tried something different this year. Instead of sharing our thoughts about Luciana's collection — and other new items, such as the four new Truly Me™ boy dolls — in written reviews or YouTube videos, we LIVE streamed the whole visit on Facebook.

If you missed our LIVE videos, you can still watch them at these links:

HERE WE ARE ON LINE BEFORE THE STORE OPENS;

HERE IS OUR LOOK AT LUCIANA'S COLLECTION;

HERE IS PART ONE OF OUR BOY DOLL REVIEW;

and HERE IS PART TWO OF OUR BOY DOLL REVIEW.

That's Truly Me #77 above, who has a re-worked version of the Addy face mold. He's definitely our favorite of the new boy dolls.

We couldn't resist buying Luciana's Space Suit at the store — and we posted a FACEBOOK LIVE unboxing and review HERE.

Though we love the suit, we were disappointed to find that the molded plastic elements have no working buttons, lights or sounds.

We really felt that the helmet at least should include lights, so we pulled out our handy-dandy bag of finger lights and tucked blue ones on either side of our doll's head inside the helmet. This isn't a permanent solution, but it works great for photos, and with a little bit of double-stick tape, should also work well for play.

After leaving the American Girl store with Luciana's Space Suit, we drove right over to the National Air and Space Museum for a close-up look at the real thing.

Here it is — a Space Shuttle Spacesuit! American Girl did a pretty good job replicating this, don't you think?

We're going to digress for a moment to bring you a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT about Facebook.

We enjoyed exploring the Facebook LIVE feature, and we'd love to do more videos like this (after investing in an iPhone stabilizer or tripod — we promise), but we are concerned about the recent Facebook algorithm changes.

Last week, Facebook changed their News Feed algorithm to severely limit the reach of non-sponsored informational posts from pages like ours. Even if you choose to follow Lee & Pearl (and we hope you do after CLICKING HERE) Facebook will only show you a tiny fraction of what we post — or quite possibly, nothing at all.

Facebook claims that they are making this change to battle unwanted commercial posts, but we worry the change will have the opposite effect.

Before the algorithm change, commercial pages like ours gained loyal followers by carefully curating our posts. The best way to get you to "like" our Facebook page was by getting you to LIKE OUR FACEBOOK PAGE — by posting interesting and informative images, links, videos, tutorials, articles, sneak peeks and anything else that we thought you really might want to see.

Since the change, it's not clear that any of that careful curation matters. The only certain way now for pages like ours to get posts to show up on your News Feed is by PAYING Facebook for a sponsored post.

As most companies and pages can only justify paying for a post that advertises a particular product, this change will cause you to see see fewer interesting informational posts in your News Feed — and a lot more ads, regardless of Facebook's stated intent.

But don't worry — there is a way to overrule Facebook's decision on your behalf.

Facebook still allows you to choose certain people and pages that you want to see in your news feed, regardless of their algorithm.

To do this, you're going to need to find "News Feed Preferences" in your Facebook menus. This item shows up in different places, depending on the device or browser you are using.

For example, in the side-by-side image below, on a Chrome Browser (on the left) you would click on the upside-down triangle at the top of the screen, then select "News Feed Preferences" from the drop-down menu. On the current iPhone configuration (on the right) you would click on the three bars at the bottom of the screen, then scroll down until you find an option marked "Settings." Click on that, then click on "News Feed Preferences" in the menu that appears.

When you finally reach the News Feed Preferences page, click on "Prioritize who to see first."

Scroll through the options shown, and click to add a STAR to any person or page you want to continue to see in your News Feed.

We hope that you choose to prioritize Lee & Pearl. But it is your News Feed, and we think it should be entirely up to you to choose the pages and people you want to follow.

Please remember that Facebook has been known to change settings and preferences from time to time without telling users. If pages that you have chosen to follow disappear from your News Feed again, you might need to repeat these steps to re-prioritize them in the future.

Facebook has given us a wonderful way to add value to our relationship with customers and friends. We'd hate to lose that value, and we hope that you find this tutorial helpful in that regard.

Lee & Pearl™ ♥ SPACE !!!

Have you signed up for our mailing list yet, and downloaded the FREE pattern for subscribers that we debuted last June — Pattern 1025: She Blinded Me with Science Unisex Lab Coat (or Unlined Coat) and Safety Goggles for Dolls?

We're still patting ourselves on the back for getting ahead of the STEM curve with this pattern — but it's only going to remain our FREE pattern for a little while longer. We'll be debuting a new 2018 FREE pattern for mailing list subscribers soon.

Don't miss out, or let your doll-sewing friends miss out. Make sure that everyone you know who wants to send a doll into SPACE has signed up for our mailing list so they too can have plenty of white lab coats on hand to make the trip possible!

The NASA patches on the lab coats above were added in Photoshop (as were the moon and pressurized window, of course), but here's some great news...

Thanks to the dedicated efforts of Bev Runyon from The Doll Closet in Farmington, Iowa — who spoke with Bert Ulrich at NASA — we now know that you CAN LEGALLY MAKE YOUR OWN NASA patches for doll outfits, as long as you strictly follow these style rules:

FIRST: Though there are TWO approved NASA insignia — the "meatball" and the "worm" — you can only use them one at a time. You should never put both the "meatball" and the "worm" on the same item of clothing. This is a BIG no-no.

For the "meatball" insignia (that's the one in our picture, above):

• The official NASA colors are PMS 185 Red and 286 Blue. The full color NASA insignia can only appear against a solid black, white (like our lab coats), gray or silver background.
• A 1-color NASA insignia can appear against a colored background, as long as it is shown with a thin white rule around the circumference of the circle, which is not covered by the vector.

For the "worm" insignia (that's the stylized, curved text version used from 1975-1992):

• The permissible tones are PMS 185 Red, warm gray, white and black against a white background.

For both insignia:

• The NASA insignia cannot be shown in reverse.
• The NASA insignia cannot be distorted and elements cannot be shown separately.
• The NASA logo cannot appear inside another logo.
• The NASA insignia should not appear with names of private companies or private company logos.

And finally, NASA has a strict privacy policy regarding the use of astronaut's names — DON'T use them!

We hope this helps and that lots of doll astronauts and ground control teammates will soon be running around in our lab coats. Now let's all give a big hand to Bev for pursuing this information — and to the Facebook group Doll Lounge, where she originally posted it.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE LEE & PEARL MAILING LIST TO RECEIVE PATTERN 1025: SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE AS YOUR FREE GIFT, BEFORE WE DEBUT THE NEW 2018 FREE PATTERN!

Pattern 1025: She Blinded Me with Science isn't just a unique STEM related pattern, or a great unisex pattern — it's also the FIRST Lee & Pearl pattern to be offered in three doll sizes: our original 18-inch American Girl size, a 16-inch size for poseable A Girl for All Time dolls and an adorable 14 1/2-inch size for Wellie Wishers and similar hard-bodied dolls.

Each smaller size was drafted with the same Lee & Pearl attention to detail, proportion and fit as the 18 inch original. These aren't just re-scaled patterns — they are re-considered and re-designed.

What's coming next from Lee & Pearl?

We've been doing a lot more re-consideration and re-designing lately, as we work on creating 16-inch and 14 1/2-inch versions of EVERY Lee & Pearl pattern in our collection.

The first such re-design is almost ready for release!

Look for our Pattern 1051: Ballet Basics Leotard, Unitard and One-Piece Swimsuit for 16-inch and 14 1/2-inch dolls to debut in our Etsy store soon, followed by the rest of our popular stretch fabric patterns — including all our swimsuits and skating dresses!

Make sure you are on our mailing list and we'll let you know as soon as these new pattern sizes are available.

See you next time!

NOTE: Do you like the photo backgrounds in this newsletter's images, like the Santa Monica beach lifeguard station above?

We want to share the source of these photos with you. Our designer "Pearl" recently discovered the artistic wonder that is unsplash.com, and all the high-resolution, free-to-use images on the site. We'd like to give credit to the photographers who made these wonderful images available for commercial use:

The pressurized window image is by Jaku Arias. The moon image is by NASA. The pool and pool float image is by Timothy Meinberg, and the Santa Monica beach and lifeguard station is by Meric Dagli.

Thank you!