And Monday morning

Hard to get moving, because it's pouring down rain and I think I left my umbrella in the car. Also not-great news of the outside world, both locally (if you know where I live, you might know of the latest idiocy on the part of some parents in a district in the region, and the fact apparently the parents are the big bullies here is distressing) and globally.

But one thing I can manage: spa days for my Ponies.

Yesterday afternoon I was looking at two of them, Whizzer (a twinkle-eye pony) and Tip-Toes (one of the ballerina ponies). The hair on these sometimes gets kind of dry and frizzy (which I guess you have to expect for a 30+ year old toy), though it's interesting that some ponies have the issue and others don't. (Was it overbrushing by an earlier child-owner? The climate in which the pony was stored? The batch of nylon or whatever the hair is made of?)

I had heard of some people using fabric softener, but I didn't have any, but I did have some deep conditioner, so I decided to try it. (Unfortunately, I didn't think to take before photos - but Whizzer's hair was really bad, frizzy and also flyaway. Tip-Toes' was mostly just dry at the ends).

I *carefully* (so as not to get water inside them, or to loosen the glue holding Whizzer's "jewel" eyes in) wet down the hair, put a lot of the conditioner on it (and the tail), let it sit, and used a wide-toothed comb to comb through.

Then, I rinsed it out well, combed it gently again, and wrapped the tail around one back leg and wrapped the mane around the neck (this is kind of standard in pony renovation) and used hair-ties I had not used yet on my own hair (so there was no hair oil on them) to hold it down while it dried.

I took them off this morning. To my surprise* there was some improvement. I think it was greater on Tip-Toes. Her hair is a lot silkier and it seems like some of the original curl came back:



But even Whizzer looks better. At least, her hair lies flatter. Her tail is still frizzed at the ends, but it's better than it was:



At least her hair doesn't stick up any more. (Her forelock does, but I can't do much with that).

And yes, when I bought these I knew the hair was imperfect.

(*The hair on these is some kind of nylon or Saran-like material - so made out of petroleum products, so, I guess you would say, it's a lipid-based fiber, unlike the protein fiber that our hair - or things like wool - are. You can wash wool and use conditioner on it to improve its texture (and I often do) but I figured it might have little effect on the artificial hair)

And yeah, it may be a bit of crouton-petting, but there is something kind of satisfying about fixing the hair on these. (Maybe, maybe, yes: there IS something to the "brushable" ponies. I never cared about that kind of thing when I was a kid, but then I was a pretty active kid and stopping to comb a toy's hair would not have appealed to me - heck, I would barely sit still as a kid for my mom to comb MY hair - when I was very small I had long hair, as long or longer than I have now, and it was even thicker than it is now, so it took forever to comb out). But I do find, as a jangled adult, there is something nice about being able to gently comb out the hair (and the G3s, it seems, have nicer hair, or maybe it's that they're a bit more recent and are less worn, but used a less-cheap fiber than the G4s do). And even the whole "spa day" thing is kind of fun. (And now I am casting an eye over the other Ponies I have, to see if any other ones need their hair worked on....)