At my son's school, in kindergarten, they have a doll-party day each year. Hymie is really quite shy and did not want to go, especially in such an embarrassing condition.​ Akiva said that he would rather borrow a strange doll than bring Hymie! I had already promised to re-do Hymie by Akiva's birthday, but now I had to hurry.

Re-making a doll is much easier than making a new doll. First I took apart all of the seams. I stripped the skin from his body, removed his wig from his head, picked out the embroidery on his face, then removed the fabric and stitches from the head. I re-used all of the stuffing in the exact same places it was used in the first make. I re-attached the arms and head, sewed new ears, gave him a new face, and sewed on the old wig. I made him a new sweater to celebrate the transformation, then he was done!

One thing that gives each doll its unique personality is the shape of the underlying head. In this case, the under-head was completely un-changed. However, everyone noticed that Hymie's new mouth is exactly two centimeters narrower than his old mouth. Oops. Other than that, the newness is imperceptible, in terms of personality.

Here is a photo of Hymie after the re-make
​with his friend Napua on a recent trip to Mont-Ham.

Whereas my daughter brought her doll to school most days, my son's doll has never particularly been interested in school. He is afraid of getting lost or stolen or ruined. While bringing a doll to school may remind some children of home and therefore make them less anxious, bringing a doll to school may make other children feel as if they have something very important to take care of and therefore make them even more anxious. A doll can be a very special, private thing. Requiring all children to bring their doll to school for a party is not necessarily fun.

When I picked Akiva up from school, we chatted about his day, as usual. “It was mostly okay, but part of it was not,” he said. And then he asked, “Does crayon come off?”

I love how kids expect parents to know exactly what they are referring to.

The next part of the conversation was hard to follow. I eventually figured out that while the kids were drawing, Akiva’s arm that was holding Hymie got pushed too close to another kid's crayon. Hymie got crayon on his skin. “That was the part that was kind-of bad,” said Akiva in a sad voice.

“Did Hymie cry?” I asked.
“A little,” said Akiva.
Pause
“Or maybe it was me who almost cried," said Akiva. "I cried inside of me, but I didn’t have any tears. After that, Hymie was very shy and he stayed in my backpack for the rest of the day.”

Dolls are like people. Some of them like big parties, but others would prefer to just stay home.

When I make a doll that doesn’t have a home immediately, I always name them. No one likes to wait nameless and homeless. This doll’s name is Satya. For nearly a year, Satya lived in a box in my apartment. After that she moved to a teeny-tiny toy store in this teeny-tiny town, where she waited patiently for about one more year. My daughter felt so sorry for her just waiting and waiting in the toy store that she wanted to take Satya home. My daughter already owns three big dolls. She said that having three dolls is a lot of work because they all need attention. She also said she didn't really want another doll, she just wanted Satya to have a home.

I don’t make many dolls that aren’t going right to people, mostly because they don’t sell right away. I’m sure it would be easier for them to sell right away if I made them the sort that sells right away— fancy art yarn hair or blonde hair and fair skin— but that wasn’t really my point in making Satya. I was silently making under-represented dolls for under-represented people. The sad fact about underrepresented people is that they generally don’t have as much money as over-represented people. So Satya sat. When I made her, I was thinking of native American peoples, which means basically anywhere in all of the Americas. I also thought that she looked kind-of Indian or Tibetan or like many Chinese people do (the ones less likely to be in fashion magazines). I also thought she looked Egyptian or maybe middle-eastern— tho my own mideast ancestors had incredibly curly hair. Despite (or because of) what I thought was a rather broad neutrality, she never did sell.

Satya could have looked pretty much like anyone and still be who she is, but this is how she looks. Her name is Satya because the truth about our own self remains the same no matter what we cover it with, no matter how we look, no matter how we try to disguise who we are. We can change as a mountain changes— we can be worn down or built up slowly over time— or quickly— but our essence—our foot— our root— our history— cannot be changed. Who am I? Who am I now? Who am I? Who am I now? Satya has a wise little knowing smile, but never did part her lips to tell me who she is.

​Now in her new home with her new little girl, I am certain she has tales to tell!

The hunt started out slow. I’d call her periodically, asking for progress. One day she responded, “I haven’t found a sewing machine yet—” by which of course she meant she hadn’t found THE sewing machine— “but you will never guess what I did find: a knitting machine!” ​

In case you were wondering: of course she found the perfect Elna. I took it back to Alaska carry-on after a trip home. ​

One time, when she was six, she found a key while playing cave-explorer under her mother’s bed. It was a regular silvery-colored key. It looked like it might open the door to someone’s house. Instead of leaving it under the bed or giving it to her mother, she slipped it in her pocket. On her way out of the bedroom, she tested it on the door. It didn’t fit.


Sometime later, she strung it on a shoelace. She wore they key as a necklace, hidden under her shirt. It started out innocently enough, the testing of doors. She just wanted to see if the key fit. She started with all the doors in the apartment building, and the locked front door to the building itself. If no one was looking, she’d test a keyhole on a shop door. Then she started with cars, even though it didn’t really look like a car key, and mail-boxes, tho it didn’t look like a mail-box key at all, until the time came when she couldn’t walk by a lock without trying to poke the key in. If she could do it secretly.


When she was ten, her mother took her to stay in an inn that had once been a house on the underground railroad. And it was here, walking down the hall, she noticed a key hole. There wasn’t a handle, just a key hole, so she would have to put in the key and turn it then open the door by pulling on the key like with the mailboxes by the entry to the apartment. That is, if the key fit. Which, of course, it wouldn’t.


But it did.


The door swung inward. Pink walked in and, without thinking, she shut the door behind her. She was in a small, dark space. There was a slit of light to her right, down at floor level, as if coming from under another door. There was no sign of the door behind her. Without moving her feet, Pink leaned as far as she could, hoping to find a wall, but there was none, so she dropped to her knees and crawled slowly toward the thin strip of light.


It felt like a door. Eventually she found a knob, a few feet up the wall where a knob should be. The knob turned easily. The room she entered was decidedly not in the same house as the room from which she had just come.


A girl not too much bigger than her, dressed in a fancy-dress costume with some kind of hat, stood gazing out a tall window. And the window, instead of cars on the street and people walking and houses all around, was grass. Lots of grass. As far as she could see, there was grass. And then, at the edge of it, trees. Pink had never seen such a lot of grass and trees in her life. Without thinking, she walked closer.


The girl at the window must have heard something. She turned toward Pink, dropped what she was holding, and almost screamed. But did not. She covered her open mouth with her hand.


Then the girl spoke. “What on earth are you wearing?” she said. Pink looked down. Jeans, sneakers, t-shirt. It seemed like such a dumb question, she couldn’t think of how to answer it. Then, “Are you a boy or a girl?” said the girl, crossing her arms.




Where is this place, through the door in the hall of what was once a stop on the underground railroad?
How did the key get under Pink’s mother’s bed?
Who is the girl in fancy dress costume by the window?
What kind of magic is here?
Which girl is a princess in this princess story?
Why didn’t Pink’s mom ever talk about the girls father?
When on earth will you ever find out???
Maybe in fifteen or twenty years, when my children are big and I am old. I dream there will be time to pull the tall tales from my head’s netherworld from out my finger tips— to type them on a keyboard— that they may some day fall upon a page.

​

In 1994, my older sister brought a large yak hair sweater home from Nepal. My mother estimates it weighed at least five pounds. It was so large, the only person it could possibly fit was my older brother, who is over six feet tall. Unfortunately, it had a rather strange smell to it, and it was harsh in a manner unfit to be worn.


My mother washed the sweater. After the first wash, the water was brown. It reeked of animal poo and floated with bits of plant material. The second wash was little different. But after five or six washes, the water came clean and the sweater was significantly lighter in weight. It still was nothing that anyone would have worn, so Mom decided to unravel the knitting to save the yarn. As it was a fair isle knit of three entwined colors, this was not so simple as having a song bird fly off with an end of yarn in its beak and having the whole thing come unraveled. In other words, it took a long time.


The end result of at least 10 hours of labor was four large cakes of yak-hair yarn of three different natural colors: dark brown, brown-grey, and natural white. It is a hand-spun yarn of variable width from fine to bulky. The yarn is not the luxury yak down, finer-than-cashmere stuff that is found on the internet when searching for yak yarn. It is a coarse yarn that incorporates any hair that might have come off a yak along with very fine bits of plant material that were tightly spun into the fibers.


What I love about the yarn is that it crochets into an amazingly realistic curly wig. Thus far, I have only used the dark brown. When I eventually dye the white, I hope I manage to do so in a way that does not mute the subtle variations of the natural fiber.


Because I fear I will eventually run out of this yarn, I looked to see if I can find similar yarn for sale on line. I haven’t. The only similar yarn I found was for sale on Etsy for about $16 for 50 grams, plus shipping from China. It is only 50% yak hair, does not contain all the subtle variations in color, and does not appear to have the same hairy appearance. So if anyone knows an exporter of similar hand-spun, thick-thin yak hair yarn, let me know!
​

The question was raised— and is raised often— as to why Waldorf dolls cost so much.


I sell my simple dolls for $85 & up. They are on the less expensive side. My goal as a doll-maker has been beautiful simplicity in the name of affordability, without sacrificing quality of materials or durability.


My dolls are made of heavy-weight cotton tricot skin, minimally processed, humanely-raised wool stuffing, and various natural-fiber yarns that are often hand-dyed by me. I use high quality thread, have a high-end sewing machine made for heavy use, and go through quite a number of needles, both hand and machine. When I sew the dolls, I use a stretchy-stitch that uses quite a bit of thread, because I want to be sure that children playing tug-of-war will not pop a seam. I hand-sew three times around the attachment at the head and at the shoulders with doubled, waxed thread, using tiny, invisible stitches that go deep into the body. The hair, too, is stitched deep into the head, so as it cannot be easily pulled out. Hair alone can take 4 hours or more. In order to save money, I try to source the most economical of high-quality materials. I purchase them in bulk. 


Rolling a happy, round head with big cheeks takes experience, as does producing a consistent expression. For a more seamless look, I stuff the body through a tiny opening with 8” forceps.


As for clothing— my dresses are fully reversible and have no raw seams showing. To ease the user’s frustration, all clothing can be worn frontwards and backwards because there is no front and back. And all of the clothing and the dolls are my own design.


When I make a custom doll, do I like to spend time talking to my customers to insure that they are getting what they want. If I am making a doll to look like their child, I like to know what their child looks like. I hold this child in mind. And with each simple mouth I embroider, I smile, for I want the doll to be happy. Happiness grows happiness.


When I am done creating the doll, I photograph it. As a good photograph sells better than a shoddy one, I take some time. Then there is the dull, behind-the-scenes stuff: marketing, searching for customers, listings fees, PayPal fees,  accounting, website maintenance, and so on. When a doll sells, I pack it lovingly for its trip to forever-home— I attach it’s little numbered tag on a gold band, write a hand-written note, include a blush kit, and tuck it in a bed of colored paper. I want my simple brown boxes to be a joy to open. I estimate, with everything included, each doll probably takes 16 hours.


But honestly, it is quite difficult to keep track of time. I spend plenty of extra time starting and stopping, and this I can’t really account for, for I work on my dolls with one small child running around and one 6-month-old baby to care for.


I hope people wonder, by now, why a doll costs only $85 in stead of wondering why the dolls cost so much. There are plenty of artists whose dolls cost much, much more than mine. And these doll-makers are just that: artists. Their dolls are objects of beauty. The highest-end dolls are generally collected by adults, not played with by children. The maker might make one doll per month. I do not believe there is a single doll maker who is over-charging customers. Most do not make a livable wage. A few make a living.


If one needs to have a less expensive doll, it is a wonderful experience to make one from scratch or from a kit. There is a lot of information on line on how to do so, and there are a number of good books out there. There are also used dolls, cheaply-made dolls, plastic dolls, and factory-made cloth dolls. So many options! How we make our choices depends on our value system and our pocketbook.

​I make dolls with love. I make dolls for loving. I make dolls to last.  For those who can only afford to look at them in photograph, I hope they bring a smile. These little dolls are smiling for you.

2)
If you are making your diaper of quilting fabric or another fabric that frays at the edges, cut two different fabrics using the solid line as a guide.
Pin the fabrics right sides together.
Sew from point A to point B, leaving open the 2” space indicated.
Clip the curves and the corners.
Turn right side out Use a chopstick to get the corners nice and square.
Iron. Topstitch the opening closed very close to the edge, then topstitch around the entire edge of the diaper, ¼ inch from the edge.
Sew the fuzzy part and the prickly part of the hook & loop closure on the diaper as indicated.
​Be sure to attach the hooks and the loops on opposite sides of the fabric, or your diaper will not be functional.
DONE!!!


Any questions?