The Wonderful World of Waldorf Dolls

I love babies. I love little children. Sometimes its easy to forget that they are experiencing everything for the first time with eyes of wonder.

Sometimes if I'm working on a doll wondering if she is going to come out like the idea I had in my head, my daughter, Livia or my little Silas will walk by and with a voice fraught with excitement, will say "Oh mommy, she is so pretty" or "I like your baby, momma" and suddenly it doesn't matter if she comes out like the picture I had in my head.

I made a few dolls for my children and they loved them, bless their hearts. They have played with them and drug them hither, thither and yonder.


My husband is the type of husband that while he encourages me in every way as a mother and home maker he likes for me to have a little bit of industry. For several years I sold tamales on Saturdays at a local farmers market. That was a lot of fun. I met lots of interesting folks and made a some extra money. For different reasons, farmers market became not doable anymore and I was looking for something different to do.

I had been learning to knit and could already sew and somehow or another I got the idea in my head to open an Etsy store to sell dolls and doll clothes. I still remember the feeling of selling my first item....


I sold another doll outfit and was super excited. Then I sold my first doll.


This is Gracie and I've made her two more times....excepting that I find it literally impossible to make an exact replica of a handmade doll. Once she had brown hair and flew with her grandma to Japan to meet a sweet little girl.

Gracie the Brown

And once she was supposed to be a totally different doll with curly hair but on looking through my sold orders on Etsy, the Little Miss decided she wanted a doll like Gracie and I didn't mind because Gracie the First is my most favorite doll ever.

Gracie the Third
I took off most of 2010 off. My husband was gone for a total of 6 months working with the BP Oil Spill way down south in Louisiana. During that time my oldest daughter met a wonderful man and within a 6 month span was courted, fell in love, got engaged and was married in January of 2011. They are now expecting their first baby in February of 2012 and I can hardly wait.

Back in February I was itching to get back into doll making so I started with a new dolly, Missy.
Since starting back to doll making I've sold 13 dolls and many doll outfits. I'm not looking to be a huge business. My dolls are made by me using my hands, sewing machine, crochet hook and knitting needles. I can't mass produce dolls and have no desire too. I enjoy the process of making a doll. If I felt I had to make a bunch or in a manner of speaking "keep up with the Jones" doll making wouldn't be any fun.

There is a verse in the bible that reads: 1 Thessalonians 4:11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands , as we commanded you;

I think of this verse when making dolls and when working around the house. I've often quoted it to my children who, at times have been too chatty or rambunctious during our work times.

I felt a bit melancholy today. When I first started making dolls I had no idea there could be contention, hurt feelings, accusations and in general, plain ill will in the doll community. Actually, I had no idea there was a doll community. I was ignorant and it was bliss. I'd been making dollies, expecting little girls and boys to play with them till they were dirty and worn from lots of love and fun.

I think my fellow doll maker  Little Jenny Wren said it best when she said in this blog post...

...thinking about how very strange this on line world can be
and that it is so much better to live most of your life in the real world and make real things
than live in a virtual world and not make much at all.

Mrs. Billet

I loved elementary school. It was fun with all the getting of new clothes, pencils, crayons and erasers. The familiarity of walking the school halls, going to the gym/auditorium for various events and playing dodge ball on the play ground were good things for me.

In the second grade I was placed in Mrs. Billet's class. She was a good teacher. I remember learning to write in cursive in her class room.

One morning as we children flooded into the room and into our seats we all became uncomfortably aware that Mrs. Billet sat at her desk with her head down on her arms weeping rather noticeably.
We all sat in silence wondering what to do.

One boy, Burt was his name, ventured up to her desk and asked her what was wrong.

Mrs. Billet sat up, straightened her shoulders, ran a hand through her hair and blew her nose.

"I will tell you." she said.

"Last night as I was driving home from school, something ran out into the road in front of my car" (seeing the shocked looks on her young pupils she quickly interjected) "I'm so thankful it was not a man or woman or a boy or a girl or a cat or a dog, but I ran over a chicken."

And with that she laid her head in her arms and began to weep again.

Burt stood there wondering what to do. He decided to sit back down.

We all sat and waited.

And waited some more.

Finally gathering her strength, Mrs. Billet, sat up again and took a deep breath. Very seriously she said to the class, "Children, I hope none of you ever have to know the horrors of killing a living thing."

I really didn't understand what all her fuss was about. I was familiar with chickens dying. Our neighbors, the Watson's had butchered a bunch of chickens. They'd chop their heads off, (and what horrifying fun it was to watch the eyes blink on a body-less chicken or watch a headless chicken run a few paces) dip them in boiling water and pull the feathers off. Chickens dying were a fact of life to me.

On another occasion we came to class and she handed all of us a piece of paper and told us to draw a big beautiful tree. When the assignment was finished she tearfully told how some men had came to her mothers house and had had to chop down a big beautiful tree that she would swing in when she was a girl.

Now, that I could relate to. I, too was a lover of big beautiful trees, especially of the Weeping Willow variety and would have been sad to lose a beloved tree. There was a beautiful Weeping Willow tree in the neighbors yard that we played under a lot in the summer.

Years later, my mother and I were looking through school pictures and we came across my class picture from the 2nd grade. I told my mother that Mrs. Billet had been one of my favorite teachers and she commented on what an emotional woman she was. Apparently when my mother had went for her parent/teacher conference Mrs. Billet wept about some troubles she was having to my mother.

She still goes down in the teacher hall of fame for me. She was real people and I have decent cursive hand writing because of her.

Summer of 1972

From left to right, Me, my brother, Guy and my sister, Carrie.
I remember this day. I was 3.5 years old. My dad took us to Salt Fork Lake to swim and bought us ice cream. What a treat that was. My dad liked to take us swimming. Its one of my clearest, early memories of him.
What copper colored hair I had as a child. No wonder I love to make red headed dollies. :)

In Search of a Memory

When I was a kid my mother used to sing the chorus of a song to us that went like this:
Does your chewing gum lose its flavor
on the bedpost overnight
If your mother says stop chewing it
Do you swallow it in spite
Can you catch it on your tonsils
and heave it left and right
Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight.

Now, all my children know the chorus to that song and many others that she used to sing to us. Over the weekend I got to thinking about that song and thought I would look and see if it was on youtube. I knew there was more to the song than what she sang and its a funny song.



She also used to sing us the song "I Love You a Bushel and a Peck" so I went in search of this song too on Youtube and to my surprise found that Dorris Day had sang it. I sing part of this song to my children a lot. I wonder that they won't sing it to their children too.




Enjoy. :)

Echos From Yesterday

Today my son and I went and did the family grocery shopping. We had several stops to make and one of the stops included Walmart. As we came out of Walmart, I noticed a young mom from our church getting her four little children out of her vehicle. Her children are six years old and under. She loaded the baby on her hip, held the almost 2 year old by the hand and had the two *older* children walking close to her. It took me back in time just 13 short years ago, when I had 5 children under 8 years old.

Going to Walmart was a chore. I would park by the outside buggy corral. and leave the children in the car to go get a cart. I would bring the cart to the car and load the children in. I remember well leaning my pregnant belly over the seats and unbuckling little ones, releasing them from their car seats. The infant car seat would go on the front of the cart. The 2 year old would go in the back of the cart. The 4 year old would either hang on to the cart (with strict instructions not to let go) or hang on to the side of my skirt. The 6 year old was instructed to do the same...only on the other side. The 8 year old was on his own, under my watchful eye. Parking lots and children always worried me.

The main thing I dreaded was bathroom breaks. My boys were too young in my opinion to go into the mens bathroom alone, unchaperoned. So they all had to come into the ladies with me. I would take baby (in car seat) 2 yo, and 4 yo into the big stall with me. I can remember saying things like:

HEY DON'T LOOK UNDER THERE!!!! (meaning don't look under the panel into the next stall)
No peeking!
Don't touch anything!
Don't lick your shoe!

It was a chore just to go to the bathroom. Now days I have big children to help with little children and things don't seem so hard or so stressful. I've mellowed out over the years and the small stuff like that doesn't bother me too much anymore.

As I watched the young mom, I thought of my older children when they were my younger children. There was a time back then when I could hardly wait for bed time because I longed for quiet. But in the year of 96-97 that changed. The house we lived in was small and very drafty. We curtained off several rooms and the children and I spent lots of time snuggled in the living room with cozy blankets keeping warm. The winter was cold that year.I was pregnant with our 6th child. I spent a lot of time reading aloud to the children. Good read aloud books like, Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, by Margaret Sidney. One of my favorite memories is during the reading of Where the Red Fern Grows, looking up and seeing my 2 oldest with tears in their eyes because the second dog... Little Ann had died, she didn't want to live with out Old Dan. (getting a lump in the throat myself) We didn't have a TV. Reading was a good way to pass the evening. During that year I began to enjoy the close quarters with my children and I no longer lived for bed time.

Those were good days.

These days I enjoy my littles much more and enjoy the help I have from my older children. I wouldn't trade those days back then for anything though and I would do it all again. When I look back and see how God has been faithful to the promise in his Word, that he shall gently lead those that are with young...Isaiah 40:11, I smile. Things have not always been easy. Raising teenagers into adults is a whole new world. There have been some issues that I wondered if we would ever get through, and I will probably get there again, but we did get through! God is faithful. Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it.

All that to say, I hope that young mom knows the gold mine she has in her possession. I hope she is enjoying her children to the fullest. What a blessing she was to me today, walking into Walmart with her little children.