More Wiggings

I've gone through several 18 inchers over the last year but realized I had to cut back on them, so I settled on having Sunny and Meriel, and two Our Generation girls from Battat. The first was Winter Rose.

Sunny and Winter Rose

Our Generation girls are noted for their bad hair. So first I tried cutting it.

Merry with her curls and Winty with her bob.

It was actually pretty cute. Then I got Haila, a blonde Our Generation girl. Apparently I didn't take any pictures of her with her original hair. Basically, she looked like Winty only with blonde hair. After I rewigged Merry, I got the urge to rewig more dolls. So I took the two wigs I got from the Doll Parts place and tried them on Winty and Haila. A new type of Dolly Fever was born -- Dolly Wigging Fever!

These clothes are all tagged Battat but they seem a bit tight.

I had to cut off their hair close to the scalp, because they had rooted hair, not wigs.

As an added bonus, Auntie Berman repainted their lips a more pleasing color.

Now I took a good look at my 14 inch hard plastic girls. We had been picking up wigged porcelain dolls when we could and had quite a collection.

Sally before

Sally after

Noelle before

Noelle after

Penny before

Penny after

I am keeping my eye out for another wig for Penny. I like this one except it had a circlet of roses glued on it and when I tried to get them off (heating the glue with a blow dryer), a lot of the glue just melted and got caught in her hair. But I like the style.

And now for my two masterpieces. We found Caroline at the Salvation Army Warehouse, dumped in with a bunch of miscellaneous stuff. Even though she's not my usual type, being vinyl and from the 60s, I had to rescue her.

Caroline before

(She has a bad case of Green Ear, but we try to ignore it.)

She was dressed as a bride

Well it seems Caroline was really meant to be a blonde!

Bouncy blonde curls!

Later, we found Juliet, I think at Goodwill Bargain Bin. She was dressed as a bride too.

The rejected bride

She has jointed knees

She is also made of vinyl, and from the markings on the back of her neck, I found out she is a Valentine Doll and is a ballerina. She has a tiny touch of Green Ear, but nothing like Caroline has. Her transformation was amazing.

This is the True Me!

And then there was Baby Barry, now named Gwennie. I wasn't real crazy about her but now I like her a lot.

"Help! My hair's coming off!"

"I like my brown hair."

And that is all the wiggings I have done so far.

American Girl Fever

A while back I got Barbie Fever, after thinking it could never happen to me. Now I have American Girl Fever, again after never thinking it could happen to me. It just goes to show: Never say never!

It started a few weeks ago when I found a Josefina American Girl doll at work, complete with her clothing (except for her shoes). I knew Auntie Berman liked her and had the Mini American Girl version of her. So I called her and asked if I should get her and of course the upshot was that I should. I think I got her for $1.50. Auntie Berman named her Mendoza, after the heroine of books by Kage Baker. I keep accidentally calling her Mendez.

But I like going barefoot.

The next day we had to go out thrifting and at a small shop, sitting on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, was a Kirsten doll! Auntie Berman used to have a Kirsten and I quickly talked her into getting her (for $1.00). Her legs were a bit floppy and her hair had been cut. I kept looking at her and thinking how pretty she was and decided that I, too, wanted an American Girl. So then we had to go to several more stores but couldn't find any AG dolls. The next day Auntie Berman went on an expedition of her own to try and find one, but with no luck.

My birthday was approaching and Auntie Berman, after realizing the futility of finding an AG at such short notice (and possibly realizing how daunting it would be to adopt two girls at once), made the sacrifice and decided to give me the Kirsten doll. When she first got the Kirsten, she had immediately sent off to ebay for a lovely pink dress with pinafore for her. Then, under the pretext of going to see a neighbor who was moving, she took the doll and went to her hairdresser, who trimmed dolly's hair, put it up in rollers, and fastened a lovely flowered barrette in her hair where the hair-chopping could not be fixed. And the hairdresser didn't charge her a thing, since it was such a fun project.

Look at my hair!

While I was at work, Auntie Berman came over and put the dolly on the shelf with my other dolls (not easy, she said--there was hardly room). Then she waited. I came home and went into my room a couple of times but simply did not see her. Auntie Berman had to suffer all evening, waiting for me to find her. At last, when I went to bed around midnight, I saw her! I was overwhelmed with her cuteness but it was so late I didn't call Auntie Berman. When I woke up in the morning I was again delighted, but I didn't know for sure if she was mine. I thought maybe Auntie Berman had just set her there to remind me that we were going to restring her legs. Auntie Berman said indignantly that she would never be so mean.

Best friends

Now I had to think of a name. Of course it had to be Scandinavian, since AG Kirsten is Swedish. When we were in junior high, we had a Norwegian PE teacher named Miss Skaarstad. She was called Sonny by her peers. A little googling revealed that her first name is actually Søgnhild, so that is what I named my dolly and we are calling her Sunny (because I like that better than Sonny). However, we still don't know exactly how to pronounce Søgnhild and if I ever have to yell at her, I won't quite know what to say.

(In case you are wondering what ever happened to Sunshine, the relentlessly cheerful doll, well, she had a leg operation that was not a success and she has gone to that great Dollhouse in the Sky.)

Now for the operation. I found instructions here. We assembled the parts and began. First we untied her neck strings and removed her head.

Then I pulled out all her stuffing. There was a lot.

We did not want to totally remove all her parts and use new elastic, so we decided to put the brass inserts over the ferules that were already there and then crimp them. They were very hard to crimp. I had to wait until HLP came home and have him do it. I wanted to tighten up her arms, too, so I used zip ties (an idea we got from another website) as inserts on her arm elastic. Then I restuffed her and tied her neck back on.

In the Recovery Room

Unfortunately I didn't tie her neck tie tightly enough and as I was picking her up to show Auntie Berman, her head fell off, which was a bit unnerving. Auntie Berman retied it for me.

Able to sit up and take nourishment

Mendoza and I can have a tea party!

I forgot to mention Auntie Berman's doll Delilah. She is a Fancy Nancy doll I found several months ago at my store. She had her original outfit on too.

Delilah in her butterfly dress and polka dot pants

Now we are all exhausted, but happy.