Lost childhood paper dolls recovered. Part One: Hilda Miloche dolls

It was at a school "fun night" in my third grade year when I found these paper dolls in the jumble sale, tucked in an old lidless shoe box and priced at twenty-five cents. I loved them at once: they were so sturdy and stood so straight, their clothes were so beautiful and complete with accessories! They had pinafores, school dresses, party dresses, long formals, swimming suits, play clothes, snow suits, and dress coats--four of each, one for each girl--with hats to match. I offered up my twenty-five cents and bore them away, along with a hosiery box full of Betsy McCall paper dolls cut out of the McCalls magazine by someone's diligent fingers. 

Dolls were sold separately; still need the "Lois" one.

The fun night was a lovely time for me with my fistful of tickets. At the buttons booth I paid four tickets for one that said "Kiss me--I'm Irish!" A mysterious person named "Pat" was there, running around and buying bunches of buttons that she pinned to the front of her pencil skirt. I wondered how she could move so fast with high heels on. When she ran out of tickets, she'd work at a booth for awhile and get some more--apparently she had her own notion of what "taking tickets" meant.  The booth ran out of  "Kiss Me--I'm Irish" buttons and Pat really wanted mine--she offered to trade me any of the ones on her skirt for it, but I declined. (Though later, when Mr. Veltman at the grocery store lowered his giant face down to my level and offered to kiss me, I wished I'd let her have it.)

Best of all,  my beloved teacher Miss Rolph was there too, presiding over the ring toss game, and wearing the outfit that I loved best, her McLeod tartan circle skirt and black turtleneck. She looked like she was having a marvelous time too, calling people to come play the game, cheering and laughing and the pretty skirt swirling around her. I showed her my new paper dolls and she admired them.

All my paper dolls disappeared when we moved from Grand Rapids to McBain. My mother assumed that I had outgrown them and she was right--sort of. By the time I had my own house and my own daughter I was nostalgic for them and began to pick up duplicates wherever they could be found. I've searched for this set many years! Sometimes one doll or two would turn up online, and they were even reproduced on quilting fabric, but I kept searching for the whole set.

Then last week I was poking about on etsy, and there they were--all the same four, and all their cut-outs right down to the baby doll carriage, even the round plastic stands! So now they are mine for a while, for me to be a good steward of, and then they will pass to some other collector. Might not be someone who remembers them from childhood, but they'll find someone to charm.

I'm looking for you, Lois!

Notice the tape along the bottom of the figures. I believe that was put there--very neatly--to make the doll just a little more secure in the plastic stand.

The paper doll artist is Hilda Miloche, who also did "The Paper Doll Wedding" and whose work can be found all over the Internet if you search for it--there are many beautiful images of her work, and you can see a family resemblance in her various dolls.

Sasha Comes Home!

No longer dangling like a loose-limbed marionette, Sasha is fresh from the doll hospital and good as new. Here she is in a little dress I made for her when I wanted to learn how to smock. It is a Peggy Trauger pattern especially for Sasha. You use the pin dots to space your stitches instead of marking them.

She is the 105 Silk Dress model with Honey hair and brown eyes, and she still has her complete original outfit and box. She was the last Sasha I bought--the last one I was looking for, and I looked for her a long time. I already had four other girls, a baby, and Prince Gregor, but just couldn't feel like my collection was complete without her.  Finally found her at a doll show, unfortunately AFTER they had been discontinued, so the price was higher than formerly, but still not horrible. 

Coming up: a look at some Sasha knitting and sewing patterns...

"Summer Sand" Barbie

Here's a look at my new favorite doll,. 1967 Twist'n'Turn Barbie, trade-in program doll, in her original vintage swim suit and fish-net cover-up, with ash brown hair. So pretty!

If I could send a gift back through time to my ten-year-old self, it would be this doll. Plus $100 to buy up a whole bunch more dolls in boxes to never play with but to save for my future self.  That seems fair.

Update: 6/28/2015.  It turns out this girl's hair is actually "Go Go Co Co," a pretty light brown. I found a doll with the "Summer Sand" hair color at the same booth that I first found this one! 

Sad Sad Sasha

This poor little gal is headed for the doll hospital tomorrow. I can re-string most dolls, but I've read that Sashas need expert handling. Looking her over, I can see how to do the legs and arms, but how to get the head on is a mystery. And it's not something people are posting on the Internet.

Fortunately my local doll hospital owner says that she can do it. For a long time, my plan was to take her to the New York Doll Hospital, but somehow I never got around to it--going to the city is always such a big important thing in my life I tend to forget about the small important things. And now I see that the Chief Surgeon at that doll hospital died in 2009! So that plan is out.

I hope to be posting an "after" picture of her soon. She is a special Sasha to me--I can't say "favorite" because I love all six of them (four girls, a boy, and a baby). But she is the one I waited longest for, looked hardest for, and paid the most for. She was even more expensive than Prince Gregor, because she's the only one I bought after they were discontinued, and the last one I intend to buy unless a really good deal presents itself. And she is so pretty, with her honey blonde hair and brown eyes. It will be so lovely to have her back with her sisters--I might have to make her a new dress!

Update 7/20/2014:  Sasha has been admitted to the doll hospital, and a lovely place it is! Patti has re-strung Sashas before--in fact there was a newly re-strung blonde blue-gingham Sasha on the work table waiting to be picked up! I'm sorely tempted to take a porcelain doll class there in the fall. I used to make them years ago, and have a kiln and my own molds, but my methods are all severely out of date. It would be nice to learn newer, safer procedures...

Book Review: "The World of Japanese Dolls" by The Tokyo Doll School

This book is useful for learning new dollmaking techniques, even if you don't want to make a traditional Japanese doll. I remember reading that the amazing dollmaker Antoinette Cely studied this book early in her career and based some of her methods on it--particularly the face masks, as I recall.
 
All of these dolls are, to my mind, technically "figurines," as they are designed to hold one graceful, pre-determined position. I don't mind that, but if I make one I may adapt it for movable arms and legs, just for fun. Probably my goal won't be to make a rigorously authentic model--although I can't rule it out entirely.

They are stuffed with "wood shavings," which I think is the same thing as the "excelsior" that other Japanese dollmaking books of mine have called for.

Maiko: Dancing Girl of Kyoto

The book begins with general information about Japanese dolls and their history, along with some color plates of samples. The second section, "How to Make Japanese Dolls," is divided into six parts, the first three instructions for making dolls with face masks. For "Maiko," you're told to use a pre-made mask--you may have to improvise for that. Illustrated instructions and diagrams are provided for making a kimono, painting the facial features on the mask, and creating the hairstyle.

Next, instructions for making Ocho Fujin (Madame Butterfly), a doll with a face mask which you design and create yourself. This process calls for paulownia powder--and if you know where to find that, please write and tell me because I don't know what it is. My plan is to figure out a substitute for it. You're also shown how to create hands with individual fingers.

The last of the mask dolls is "Ukiyo-e, who is supposed to be very easy compared with the first two dolls. She is constructed of cloth as a "stump" doll (no legs) It looks like they have you make her mask by sculpt her nose, mouth, and ears with paper mache and applying them to the face. Later you smooth out the face by applying extra paper clay and then covering it "white knit (hosiery) material."  It's cute that they have you make separate little feet to stick out from under her kimono, as if she did have feet!

From the "Maiko" doll instructions

Next comes a "toso" doll, which looks to be a wooden doll whose head is sculpted onto a tombstone-shaped wooden core, then covered with washi paper and painted. An all-cloth doll, "Yakko-san," has a needle-sculpted face with a fabric covering to smooth it out; complete instructions for his clothing are given.

Last is a section on egg dolls, bottle dolls, and paper dolls (chiyogami).  These all look quite simple--maybe too simple to bother with, unless you really like the origami ones. The book ends with cutting diagrams for the clothing, plus several pages of Japanese hair styles to create with the hair rooting instructions already provided. Tucked inside the back cover are the paper patterns you need for cutting out the cloth parts of the dolls.

Overall, this book seems like a reasonable, realistic attempt to teach traditional Japanese dollmaking techniques to Western dollmakers. It can't cover everything, but what it does offer seems do-able, and the unusual materials called for shouldn't be too much of an obstacle to resourceful people, especially now that we can search for items on the internet, and have materials like paper clay and instant papier-mache readily available. I might only ever use this book for technique ideas, but if I do attempt a doll I'll post a photo of her.

Copies of this book are currently available on Amazon marketplace at reasonable prices.

Book Review: "Crafty Dolls" by Jane Bull

Published by Dorling Kindersley
American Edition 2014
Hardcover, 124 pages, $20.

A dollmaking book has to be really bad for me not to buy it. Even a bad one I'll buy for archival purposes if I can get it cheap enough. Because if you don't like the finished doll, you can change her face, or you can learn some new construction techniques. Or if you like the clothes, you can make them for other dolls in your collection. Or if you don't like the clothes, the basic shapes might be useful, or the ideas, or the presentation. So to miss out on all these opportunities a book must be just dreadful.

Happily, Crafty Dolls: Simple Steps to Sew and Knit Adorable Dolls is a very nice dollmaking book. Took me only about 30 seconds to decide I needed it. The presentation is wonderful--generous use of bright and lovely colors, great fabric choices, appealing lay-out, clear photographic instructions, high production quality. A huge amount of creativity is packed into these 124 pages--you get a lot of bang for your buck! Not only many different dolls, but many different kinds of dolls. What really sold me, though, was the level of detail. Pretty and clever details in the clothes, heaps of cute accessories, variations galore.

The book is divided into four sections. First comes the "Lottie rag dolls." There's a basic pattern for a simple doll that looks to finish about 13" to 14". Construction is illustrated with step-by-step photographs. Variations are given for a Lottie girl doll, boy dolls Billy and Jim, and a mermaid. Hair is done with felt shapes, face is embroidered.  Then comes lots of fun pages of clothing patterns--I just love the sweaters knitted with self-striping sock yarn so that they look like fair isle! Little satchels and shoes, cameras and scarves, bunny slippers and ballet toe shoes, tutus and fairy wings, pajamas and little felt dolls' dolls.  The section finishes with "topsy-turvy" dolls, Cinders and Cinderella, and Awake and Asleep dolls.

 The "Yarn Dolls" section begins with instructions to knit a doll that looks like yourself, with different versions shown, all fitted out with little clothes, necklaces, knitted bags, and miniature knitted works in progress. Or you can knit Pirate Pete, a Superhero,  make some characters out of old knit gloves, knit some tiny figures, either easy or harder versions, or even one of the traditional all-yarn dolls.

The "Dolly Mixtures" section shows different crafty-type dolls: Lavender sachet dolls, two different styles of pillow dolls, a miniature felt Lottie that looks to finish about 4", with clothes and a still smaller doll's doll, and little "Handy Dolls" meant to hold and protect small items.

The last section is "Knitting and Sewing Know-How," very appealingly presented and all illustrated with clear photographs pleasant to look at. There's even an index!

One disappointing thing about this book is that it never tells you what size the dolls should finish to. Yes, the finished size can vary with the dollmaker but we still need a ball-park indication--don't make us rely on guesstimations.  We have to have a size to shoot for in order to make sure that the clothes will fit. Not only that, but the same doll could seem cute and charming at 8" or 10", but annoyingly out-sized at 16" or 18".
 
The Lottie doll is an excellent starter for beginning dollmakers or sewist. The body is so simple that she might not interest more advanced dollmakers, but there is great compensating charm in her finished self, so cute and cleverly turned-out. I will very likely change the face somewhat--but then, from me that's a probability with any doll pattern.

Summary: Very well done, and highly recommended. Acquire and enjoy!

Ideal doll: 12" Betsy Wetsy

Here's the only other doll to survive my childhood, a sweet little Betsy Wetsy doll made by Ideal.  A few months ago I was lucky enough to find the molded hair version of Betsy Wetsy in the same size and in lovely condition--such beautiful coloring and no marks or scratches. I think of him as her twin brother. The little nightgown he's wearing is one of two matching ones I found at an antique store; the pattern on it is little tiny baby faces.

About twenty years ago I made Betsy a pretty yellow dotted swiss dress and bonnet to wear; finally this year she acquired some new hand knitted clothes. The booties and soakers I made from the Sasha Doll Clothing and Patterns book, but the sweater is special because it's the first one I've ever made with no pattern--just started it out top-down and kept trying it on her for fit.

She's been with me longer than anything else I own. It must have been Christmas of 1961 or '62 when I got her; we were at my grandfather's farm, and someone--probably my sister Mary--was taking pictures of our new toys. She posed me in our favorite "spinning and rocking" chair with my brunette doll, Jean's matching blonde one, and Mary's own 10 1/2 inch Little Miss Revlon. The babies are wearing red polka dot kimonos that my mother made; she made little diapers for them too. These must have been packed in the little round cases, though I don't remember that part very clearly. I do remember being posed for the picture.



One of the first things I did to that sweet little doll when I got her home was to scribble up and down her spine with a blue pen, in the sure belief that it would wash off with soap. I colored in her ears too. I was so sad when I found out it wouldn't wash off that I hid her in a drawer for a while--but not long. I still loved her. Happily, time and high-quality vinyl are forgiving and now the marks have all but disappeared. And she still even has that lovely "new doll" smell I love so much.

Wish List: another blonde haired 12" Tiny Tears like the one Jean had. I did have one, but I wanted to give her to Jean so that her granddaughters could play with her. These dolls aren't rare at all, so we both can easily own one. Also, I'd like a nice 16" baby doll, as I don't have one in that size but do have several nice contemporary patterns for it.

To Do List:  Use some of my vintage doll clothes patterns to make these two dolls some matching "brother-sister" outfits. Also make more outfits for Jean's dolls.

Lastly, here is a fascinating look at how Betsy Wetsy was developed and manufactured--from extruding the heads, through make-up and hair-rooting--and yes, peeing--right into clothing and packaging. So neat to see!

Another happy happy birthday

I love to post about my birthday while it's still May 7 and I can enjoy seeing the date up at the top of the post forever and ever. May 7 is such an excellent date. If I could have chosen a birthdate myself, that's the one I would have picked.

So! I woke up early in the pleasant knowledge that with the day off I could always go back to sleep again. But at 6 am I wanted to know if the Library millage had passed, so I reached for my iPod touch and poked up Facebook. The first thing I saw was not the millage news (though it did pass--hooray!) but this lovely post from my lovely daughter, far and away in France:

And to preserve the record, this is what I answered her:

Ruth Wilson Thank you for the lovely greeting, Sister Bear--it was the first thing I saw this morning. Those lilacs are gorgeous! The bush here has just barely got leaves on it. Quite a while ago I revised my purpose in accompanying you anywhere--it's to have the best time ever! Looking forward to having you home from your travels again so I can hear all about them first hand. And if you feel like baking or cooking, I'm willing to sit up at the table to be served. 

6 hours ago · Like

Then I got out of bed and commenced practicing on the piano. First thing in the morning is the best time to practice because Ben is still in bed then. When he's awake, he likes to pound on the bass keys and bug me. This week my teacher gave me my first polyphonic piece, "Fairest Lord Jesus," to work on, and it was tricky but very pretty and nice. After while Betsy came nosing up to me to be petted and perhaps to intimate that I had played the piece about a thousand times too many. 

After Ben got up I desisted, and switched to cleaning and organizing my sewing room--always more work to be done on it, but pleasant work. Around noon I knocked off and drove into town for groceries and a pizza for Benny. (Heaven send he never gets sick of pizza and chicken fingers, the child will starve.) Included in the groceries were some cookies that you would identify as Girl Scout thin mints and Samoas if you hadn't seen the box. These I reserved for a special purpose, as you will see.

The rest of the afternoon I spent in equal parts running about outside with Betsy, hassling Benjamin, and puttering around the sewing room. And so lucky am I that the birthday presents we ordered from Amazon actually arrived via US Mail on the precise right date. So exciting--we got a piano lamp! It's just exactly what we needed. See, you can adjust it to shine right down on your sheet music. I just love it. 

Also I got "100 Snowflakes to Crochet" so that I can participate in the Crochet-A-Long that Martine is hosting on her "iMake" podcast and blog, which seemed like such a fun thing to do that it needed doing immediately. Also a journaling work book. And that's not counting the seven dolls I bought at the Allegan Antique Fair last week, all of which I count as birthday dolls. Buying dolls for a girl's birthday was not a tradition in my family, so I'm filling in those missing years myself.  

This evening was our church's weekly "Challengers" program for first and second grade kids, at which I have the privilege of leading one of the tables--five marvelous eight-year-olds who were all seven when we started out together last fall. They've all had birthdays too. 

The highlight of my day came during the evening when my kiddos and their 35 or so fellow Challengers, all precious and beautiful, sang a good loud rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday to You" for me. They were all grinning at me and I grinned right back all the way through, plus I got two hugs. ("How old are you, Mrs. Ruth?" "Fifty-seven!" "Wow!")  At the end of the evening, that's when the cookies came in--cookies plus a 40-pack of Tim Bits I'd picked up on the way in. There was enough for seconds and thirds for everybody, too.    

My official birthday dinner is postponed until May 8, but that is a good thing because May 8 has always been kind of a blah day, after the exhilaration of May 7. If Ben will go with us, it will take place at Bilbo's Pizza, but if he won't then maybe Friday's or Red Robin. 

And do I have an official birthday cake? Yes I do! Ray brought me a Boonzaaijer Bavarian cream-filled birthday cake--the best cake ever. And there were birthday cards, and many lovely wishes on Facebook for me.

Now I will finish up this lovely May 7 and this happy recap by reading another chapter of "The Hobbit" to Benjamin as he settles down for bed. Betsy will settle down with him. She used to sleep in a doggie bed on the floor, but when she discovered that the bottom-bunk in Ben's room was untenanted she established occupancy there for herself. Her mama didn't raise no dummy puppies. 

And then when his prayers are said and lights are out and the fan is on and his iPod is lulling him to sleep with "Just So Stories," I will happily settle down into bed myself, so content with the pretty way our room turned out, and especially with the new mattress that is so-ooo-o comfortable you barely have to try to sleep. And I'll listen for a happy while to a knitting podcast, or Don Quixote, or some iTunes radio, and be soothed, be composed and quieted, so that when this May 7 slips away the last glimpse of its going will be unknown.

Flashback: How to Read More Books

Novel Goals

So many great books to read—so little time!  How can you get through everything on your “to read” list?

I don’t want to read faster because I like to take my time and savor it. But I do want to read more efficiently so I can get more done. Here are two methods that have helped me.

 

Reading_glasses

If you have bifocals and you’ve been reading down your nose with your head cocked up in the air, let me show you a better way!  With prescription reading glasses, you can read “full face” to the book—so much more comfortable and natural. It makes me feel like a kid again, pouring over Eight Cousins head-first! I wear my reading glasses most of the day at work, too, because they are much better than bifocals for working on computers and searching library stacks.

Second—know your approximate reading rate. How long does it take you to read a page of your book? Get a stopwatch and time yourself, either one page at a time, or read several and find the average rate per page. Don’t rush! Your rate will vary with the book, since some pages have more text on them or take more time to ingest. Test yourself on several types of books and you’ll find your range. Mine varies from about 60 to 90 seconds a page.

Why will this help you read more? Because activities that can be planned are easier to accomplish than activities that cannot be planned, or planned only vaguely.

For every book—or stack of books—you want to read, you can form a pretty good idea of how many hours it will take you and then plan accordingly. Without that knowledge, you'll just have to wonder, more or less glumly, how you'll ever get them read, and maybe give up.

This fall I had to read five books in thirty days for work--plus finish House of the Seven Gables just for me. I wasn’t sure at first that this was even possible. But then I added up how many hours they would take, set up something almost like a schedule, and finished them all by their deadlines.

Why not try it? Here's an online stopwatch you can use--you don't even have to make a trip to the sporting goods store before testing your reading rate.

Keeping track of reading rates is fun as well as practical. Want to know how long it took me to read War and Peace? About 26 hours. How long will it take me to read Moby Dick, which I have to do for work also? Looks like about 16 hours. If I read for a half-hour during lunch and another half-hour after dinner, I can finish in a little over two weeks. Even the whole Bible doesn't take so long as you'd think--about 72 hours from Genesis to Revelation.

Now, doesn’t that make reading Moby Dick sound like just a lazy walk in the park? Just think: if you took a vacation from work, you could knock off Moby Dick and War and Peace both in one week! You could be the first person in the history of the world to do that. And with prescription reading glasses, you won't even get a stiff neck.

November 2, 2008

Flashback: A Scent Can Break Your Heart

September, 2009

I breathed in a most evocative scent today. For a moment I didn't know where I was.

I'd been walking back up the mall toward the library at lunchtime when I passed a young woman going the other way. While she was still in view I noticed that her nonchalant air was being undermined by one's sense of its being assumed. That set me reflecting about whether it is possible ever to be nonchalant, if trying doesn't work.

But then all that was forgotten as she passed me and I breathed, in her wake, the exact, long-forgotten scent of the powder hand soap that was used, in the 1960s, in the ladies' bathrooms at White Cloud State Park. I recognized it immediately, as if forty years were nothing. Oh, it wafted me back to that park and to my childhood, to the playground and the foot-trail and the log fences, and it made me want to laugh and cry, because I used to own that smell, I used to carry it away with me on freshly washed hands, and it was part of me. It was a nonchalant part of my world, uncherished and almost unnoticed, because we camped there so often, summer after long summer as I grew taller, and how can something that was a part of me be so gone? So gone.

And what was that smell? Is it really gone forever again, so soon after rushing back to me out of nowhere? Should I have run after the girl crying, "Wait, Wait!"?


Happy happy update, spring 2016:  We took a vacation South this year to look at Civil War battlefields and see some Presidential homes. Waiting for the tour of Benjamin Harrison's house to begin, we looked around in the gift shop for a while. I was interested in the different varieties of artisan soaps they had there, and to my amazement, one was the long-lost scent I wrote about here! Of course I bought it immediately, and now it lives as a sachet in my sock drawer! Every few days I lift it out and travel back to White Cloud State Park again.... 

Flashback: Summer of 2009

Verbal Snapshots from our Vacation

 

Overheard: On a trail at Hartwick Pines forest, a young boy and girl rushing down a hill together: 
     Girl: "I don't want to run, but I'm running! I don't want to run, but I'm running!"
     Boy: "I know!  Our feet are running automatically!"

Overheard: At a craft store, a woman examining t-shirts with Husky dogs on them:
    Woman: "Gawd, I'd love t'git Butch one o'them."
    (Me, unspoken: "Is Butch a boy, a teen, or your husband? Your brother? Does he own a husky dog? Would he really like a t-shirt with a husky on it or is it only part of your illusion of Butch that he would like a t-shirt with a husky on it? How well do you know Butch, really? Would you like a husky dog t-shirt yourself? Or are you actually saying that you wish Butch were the kind of person you could give a husky dog t-shirt to?"  My brain contains an extra nosiness nodule or two, apparently.)

[Although now, five years later, what I notice about this utterance is the wistfulness of it. The impossibility of giving even so modest a gift to someone dear, a world of regret over many such chances gone.]

Observed: From a picnic table by a parking lot at the UP's "Mystery Spot," as I elected to sit quietly and knit in the sunshine instead of going inside:
     A sea gull walking along the road. He glanced about with rapid eye, like Emily Dickinson's bird, but he did not hop sideways nor hop anywhere. Nor did he fly, which you'd think would be his best option for travel. He just walked. Straight on and on, along the shoulder of the road, with no visible emotion, the whole length of the parking lot, at least five car lengths, he walked. Then he stopped, looked both ways--and walked across the road!
     Well! I guess that's why it's called the Mystery Spot.

And now, a real snapshot from my vacation, of an activity which prompted this essential question: When digging in wet beach sand, do fingernails get dirty or clean?

Ben at Lake Huron

Answer: Clean!  I can't help with the eternal mysteries of jaywalking sea gulls, feet that run of their own accord, or the true nature of Butch, but I'm glad we could clear up one question, anyway.