Dithering and Dallying

. . . with my slender little Susie.

So many ideas, so little time!

Well, I will enter in one I have already entered elsewhere, as we can enter more than one, and because she does indeed fit the travel Susie or

Susie of many lands theme: the doll I made to represent Fleur Delacourt, the (half-?) Veela from Beauxbatons school in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

I made her before the movie was cast or released and both she -- Fleur the Susie doll -- and I were very disappointed in the casting of that particular role. Fleur, my Fleur, actually hissed and spat, as Veelas will, when she saw who was to represent her on screen: Veelas have white hair, and Fleur's was described in the book as a silver waterfall flowing down her shoulders and back. It was an image that stuck with me and while playing with ideas for the white-haired Riviera Susie I had bought for the purpose of a makeover, she announced to me that she was a Veela, specifically Fleur Delacourt.

While indeed, as the Captain of her Quiddich team, she could be a sturdy girl, she didn't read like a stocky muscular girl as was cast in her role.

Veela, or Veelas -- I think it might be a singular mass noun with no plural -- are actual (mythical) creatures outside of Harry Potter books, as are many of the mythical beasts, character names, items, and so on, which is the great value of the book for children who read it: it gives them a grounding for archetypal mythology to be applied later in their studies.

Actual Veela are not as breathtakingly lovely as those described in Rowling's book, nor are they portrayed as youthful. They are some sort of eastern European forest dwellers; I'll have to research it again.

Even Victor Krum is a legendary eastern European, someone like Vlad the Impaler. Enough of the Harry Potter: this Susie represents someone from "that neck of the woods," bad pun intended.