Category Archives: crafts

Baby Toys

books, crafts, home, play, , ,

It’s so much fun to watch babies as they do their scientific experiments. That’s always how I have thought of the work they do as they play. When nothing uncomfortable is distracting them they can work for long periods repeating tests on the materials in their lab to learn about the properties: how things taste or feel on the gums, what sounds they make when knocked together, and so forth.

Seventh Grandson is with us for a few days and I brought out my boughten baby toys, some homemade ones, and the usual kitchen gadgets and cardboard boxes that babies love.

This contraption made with leather and blocks might have been made by Baby C.’s own mother for her little sister many, many years ago. Or maybe for a nephew, maybe even by a different aunt. One of the children did set me straight on this but I seem to persist in holding to my Scrambled Maternal Myths.

Perhaps the project was inspired by the book, No Bored Babies. I love to give the book to older children in a family where a new baby has just arrived, providing them one more way to be involved in caring for the younger brother or sister. The author shows many ways to take inexpensive raw materials like cardboard or cloth and make toys appropriate for the increasing skills and changing interests of children in their first couple of years.

When children start playing outside by themselves they collect their own materials, the favorite being sticks. As I was getting ready to load Baby C. into his car seat, I noticed that his parents have thoughtfully already supplied him with his own First Stick, carefully chosen and sanded for safe science experiments.

Long Doll on the Straw

crafts, dolls, music

 The latest charming doll lady I saw was at an outdoor event where we sat on straw bales and listened to Patrick Ball play his mesmerizing Celtic harp.

On the row of bales right in front of us was this dolly, alongside her Little Girl and the Girl’s mommy and daddy. I couldn’t decide if she was a gypsy or a babushka, but she made me want to sew a doll and dress her in a flowered skirt and a blouse with full sleeves.

Beyond the Girl in the top picture you can barely see the harpist’s face up on the stage. I never got to see Long Doll’s face.

She was wearing a head covering like many other people that evening, because the wind was blowing through very cold! Yes, even in the Merry Month of May.

Once the Girl grabbed her doll and I got a blurry shot of her willowiness. But she was right away tossed aside.

Long Doll seems to have fallen right asleep where she landed.

I’ve Made More Doll Clothes Than Dolls

crafts, dolls, family

Three times I’ve made sets of clothes for store-bought dolls, not counting the ones I made for my own Barbie doll when I was nine or ten. (I can still picture those crude trial-and-error shirts and dresses that never fit very well.) It would be nice to make some more, and maybe I will, when I get the sewing room cleaned up. Well, then, why am I not in there this moment working on that? I’m tired, and need to rest a bit on my laurels, even though they are old laurels by now.

I did make clothes two years ago for a granddaughter’s Götz toddler doll. The doll is wearing her original outfit above.

I took my patterns from Joan Hinds’s Sew Baby Doll Clothes. First I sewed some overalls from a Hannah Anderson skirt I had found ages ago at the thrift store, and got the hat trim from my scrap bag–or I should say, one of my many boxes of scraps.

A checked dress started out as another thrift store find, a man’s shirt that B. decided he didn’t want. The fabric was in great shape, so I couldn’t throw it out.

Finally I made a nightgown with a pink fleece blanket and pillow to coordinate with both.

When I last saw this Doll Baby, she was dressed in one new outfit and had lent another one to her sister. They were lying together in their cradle, so endearing that I resolved to go home and sew more clothes. There were other scantily clad dolls lying around who tugged at my heart. But I went home and got distracted by other projects and haven’t sent any care packages to the doll family to this day.

Surprise South American Doll

crafts, dolls, family

I have made a few dolls in my lifetime, and my plan is to make at least a few more if God gives me the years. I’ll have to drum up the discipline myself, to go with my imagination. In the meantime I enjoy the ones I own, and want to memorialize them by posting their photographs here.

This knitted lady was given to me some years ago by the same daughter Pippin who gave me the last doll I wrote about. Rocío, as I have now named her, after a former neighbor, first gave me the impression of being from Scandinavian or northern territories, but I have been straightened out as to her ethnicity: she comes from South America–as Pippin calls it, “the llama/alpaca regions of the world.” That explains her sandals, which are like some I found today on a website that sells Peruvian dolls.

She is carrying her child in a sling on her back, and both Mom and Baby have hats with long tails.

Here you can see Baby Eva peeking out from behind her mother. I don’t know why I think the baby is a girl. Maybe because Pippin is a girl whom I used to carry on my back.

I persuaded the mom to lift her skirt a bit so you can see the detail of her knitted petticoat. That’s likely why she is looking so uncomfortably off into space.

This pose highlights her thick black braids that hang down. I did see online a couple of instances of headgear like hers on Andean dolls, but not one with her neutral colors, unusual in a land where bright colors are the rule, often contrasted with a black bowler hat.

You’d think Rocío’s black braids would have tipped me off that she is not European Nordic, but the truth is, I never until now examined her carefully or thought about her details–only fell in love at first vague impression.