Meet the new crew for this week. Starting on the left is Holly, then little Morgan/Mollie and Kendal. When I set out the eyes I saw they were in three graduated sizes. I started with Kendal and immediately found I needed the next size bigger. It worked out that every body needed one size bigger. I was glad to have these even in brown as Sandie's is out of the blue ones I want.
After a night and morning of rain, here near noon, the sun finally came through. It dried the paint and the nail polish on the limbs.

While these dried I found a new bigger wig for Willie and came in to try it on him.

While looking at him I decided to rearrange the bookshelves a bit and was able to put the top shelf of big books down where he had laid in pieces. This freed up a shelf high enough to get the babies on the floor up to really be part of the display.

You can appreciate how much bigger Willie is than my old porcelain doll and even a new Ching doll. So glad to have him together and see now why he needed such a big wig, They are predicted a big storm for us tonight, so we will see how the babies and we weather it. I put extra covers on all the babies in the studio.

I found out today I can get tired even when I do not make babies. But I do hurt a lot less. Today was such a cloudy grey day it was as if one was still in bed no matter where you took the body or what you had it do. I did re-glue this lady's head on to her body.

I am not totally sure what her body is made of. It feels as if it was rubber that has hardened  so it is not nearly as hard as composition but no longer bendable. I do know Bambi and I bought her in the Hamburg Floh Markt  in the early 70s for very little in Marks but surely more than she was worth. We were never able to clean up her eyes which held us back from being very interested in her. I know I made the knitted dress in an effort to make it look like it came on her. I made it the length I wore my dresses then. I giggle to see how the dolls turn into reproductions of ourselves.

While I waited on her glue to dry and on into the evening I crocheted diapers.

What you cannot see is the difference in size of the two pink booties. I know I often count stitches wrong, when I do count, but that alone should not make such a big difference in size! Thank goodness I do the diapers by memory and just gauging the size since I cannot make babies the same size either.

They look innocent enough, but I am sure all dolls are in communication with one another and especially the ones who have untied their arms and legs have formed a pact. When you first try out the elastic cord all their parts jump into place, tight against the body. Then when the doll-maker begins to tie off the cords, no matter how tightly she tugs on them, and how tightly every part is pulled in place, as soon as a knot is made the doll drops off arms and legs or lets the head flop around like a spaz. The only way I could keep everything in its rightful place was to put the clothes on the doll. The diaper held the legs in place, the t-shirt steadied the neck connection, and shirt sleeves held the arms on right. I had forgotten how much bicep strength doll-making required. It also demands a certain dexterity of fingers to hold the tension on a cord and tie a knot in it.  I am on the lookout for a new wig. This one feels too short and small, but I like the color.

All together I feel she now looks more like a little boy and after struggling with the knots and all her parts I think she is definitely male. Her name is now Willie - will he? It is so different to hold and carry around such a baby with a hard, unyielding body. I expected a hug back from him as I carried him in to the living room, but there was nothing. So I just plunked him down in front of the bookcase without finding him a good place.

Around his legs I set the other dolls I re-strung today and then realized they at least deserved their own photos on the bear rug. Here Willie's haircut looks like the ones boys had in the 50s. He was surely already 50 years old then. What you can hardly see here is the hole in his head. They did not send back enough chips so he looks like a bloodless victim of a drive-by shooting.

The only way I could keep all this kewpee's joints connected was to pose cupid on her back. She too pulled the old trick on me of letting her cords go loose once they were tied.

The Storybook doll was easier to do because someone taped her legs in place so I only had to connect both arms and her head. Still if you touch her she will drop her head against your palm. Darn.

This little bisque boy was hardly worth the elastic to tie his arms and legs on but weirdly enough, his went on almost perfectly. With that big part of his head missing and the cracks and poor repairs on his face along with the paint chipping off his shoes, he is worthless. I can get a newish old one, at least one without cracks and missing parts, on eBay for $10! I may go shopping tonight! I still have a Christmas wish or two!

Today I felt like having a special day and not starting a new crew of babies. Finally all the things had arrived to fix the large broken doll in Bambi's collection. I had bought it for her in an antique shop in Hamburg for Christmas in 1973. I had great fun cleaning it up and making baby clothes for it. I made a christening dress drenched in lace with a matching cap. The hair was a bit the worse for wear so it was kind to cover it up. This was the first doll I had ever paid so much for and I was delighted with her.

I did an online search and found out the initials are for Schoenau & Hoffmeister who were in Berggrub area of Germany which was next to the center of doll making. There was another company, Simon & Halbig, who also made dolls and many doll heads for other companies in the same area both earlier and later but they did not use the star as part of their signature. As far as I can tell online, that '9' under the 'B' is earlier than any of the numbers they list. So this head could have been made before 1909. The head had been broken so the hair was gone  as well as the dress but someone saved the wig cap which has German words on the papers. Still the doll would only be worth $600 -700 without the broken head.

The story about that is in 1978 Bambi returned to the United States and took her collection of dolls with her. She felt the dolls had some value so she took them to the museum in Fresno, California for a special exhibit. I wish I had photos of that but there are none. Here is a photo inside the head showing how the eyes were affixed and yet made movable with that weight so they swung open and closed naturally.

While the dolls were on display a young boy, drinking from a can of soda pop, for some unknown reason, threw the can at this doll. He hit her in the forehead above the eyes with the can breaking her head, ruining her hair and the hemp cap in her skull. 

I never saw the doll in any of my trips to the states and it was only when Bambi decided this summer to let me keep her collection that I received all the parts. I do not know who tried to repair her but they cut the inner elastic cords that held her together. After wiping down every part and delighting in the cleaning of those real glass eyes (as good as I could without using anything stronger than warm water) I began to devise a method of running the elastic cord through the wire loops in her limbs. By noon she was able to sit on my work table in front of the mess of cords and rubber bands I took out of her body.

In the afternoon I decide to attach her head with a series of elastic bands instead or ordering, and then waiting, for the proper wire connection. My method worked very well and was soft and small enough to not hinder the swinging of the weight that open and closes her eyes.

With her head attached she suddenly had personality and I could love her again. Suddenly I was happier than I have been for days. Falling in love with a doll is such an amazing experience beyond any human connection. Here you can see the size of the hole in her head. Thank goodness someone had saved the chips so I laid her out and started to glue them in. I picked a new wig that has bangs so even the seams in the glued parts will not show.

It was so hard to see her naked so I put socks on her and laid a t-shirt on her. There on the arm you can see the brown stain where the pop ran down the body. Everything else was covered with clothes, thank goodness. I wanted to glue on the second big chip but forced myself to leave her alone and wait until the glue is good and dry.

I took all the babies off the middle shelf on the steel rack, took up the blankets and rolled out this section of poly-fill I had gotten when desperate for the econo-fill. Though I do not have Christmas clothes for everyone I at least gave everyone (even pup and pigs) a view of the tree.  Then I crocheted a diaper cover for the old new German baby (I don't think she ever had a name other than baby) until it got dark.

The only constructive things I did today was put the lights Mary gave me on the little Christmas trees and I see in the photos that even that job was not done the best. I also put lights on the little silver tree with the snowmen that did not sell years ago at the festival of trees. It is in the house with the collected dolls.

I think the flash ate the lights. Hope to get a better photo of this in the daylight tomorrow.  And I will try to have that poor rubber kid dressed!
I tried to photograph the monkey again to get things in the photo the way I wanted them. WR said he really liked this monkey and that I should keep it! That is something I should have gotten in writing!

Having a low self-esteem attack tonight. It cannot be because B. got such good news from a publisher! I am so happy for her. I think it is the weather. A new storm is moving in tonight so every thing hurts more and all I want is sugar stuff. I am full/ sick / tired of the sugar-free gum-mi bears. The candy canes are in grave danger tonight.
The ICO came today and there is not one letter to the editor of anyone finding any art! It is like they say events are - if no one comes it did not happen. If no one writes about it, no one found anything.

Yesterday was housecleaning and today was mailing calendars so I must stretch my memory back to Wednesday in order to have anything to show. I loved the photo of Thistle with the Halloween corn!

My painted version has to watch his cousin make a pig of himself. Yesterday, even with housecleaning and getting out the Christmas things, I worked on this in the afternoon.

It was raining cats and dogs so I felt unsafe taking Kiwi outdoors to trim his mohair thus he really looks shaggy. I do like the dark brown body fabric on him. I wanted to send a photo to BB of their Christmas gift to me as a buyer, but I feel the camera is not taking sharp enough photos. Maybe I am just blurry-eyed from preparing the calendars for the post office. You decide.

I really tried to hold still but, but but. This morning, I took the time to look at my Jane's Dolly Daze blog2print and loved it so much. So tonight I tried to do a book of the Reborn Therapy Dolls but the site was asleep and no one was home to wake it up. Maybe everything will go better in the morning.

I had planned to have the morning side addressing envelopes to mail the calendar off in a day or two. The new pen set had arrived yesterday and I had an extra nudge of happiness to have new pens for the job. After spending an hour trying to get any of the nibs to work (not just the thick one I really love) one finally made a line on the paper with the green ink. It was so faint no post office could ever read that! So I tried to get a black cartridge going. Nothing! It was amazing how little success I had with those pens. I was sure my years of coaxing rapidographs to work made me some kind of an expert. Evidently an inkless one.
Determined not to buy another cheap online pen and not wanting to wait for ink for my good
Schaffer pens, I typed in all the addresses and printed them out on the computer. End of story. After   lunch I ran to the studio hoping for a world I know and can work with. I did the pug pup with no trouble at all, Then came the pig. Thistle was painted at the factory and I am no longer unhappy with my paint job.

 

There is something in me that wants to send these photos to the forum at BB when I am looking at the pigs but when I see my photos all my courage slinks away. I an proud of the cow fabric but little else.