It has been noisy in the nursery today with the added excitement of a new baby. Jenny, hoping to make Angie feel more girlie, loaned Angie her pink headband. So Angie and Hello Kitty would get along better I fixed up a Hello Kitty necklace to add to her jewelry. You can see her name bracelet on her wrist that Cynthi sent with her. I also positioned the cupcakes so one can see the "papers" they sit in.  Every one seems quieter and more settled in now.

 Big news! Meet Angie 

This is my newest reborn done by Cynthi Marie in Nevada! The kit was "Kimber" and all the pink clothes that came with her are adorable. She even has a lamb and Angie is one, also.
She is 18 inches long and seems a slightly younger sister to Jenny. In fact, Angie looks a lot like my second daughter, Bambi. I had not seen this likeness in the photos on eBay but here in the real I am making this connection.

Cyndi's way of signing the doll was to include this tiny sleeping baby that carries her signature, hugs, and good wishes. I was touched when I laid the little doll down while adding the lamb when Angie's arm dropped down and she laid her hand just like this. It seemed to me that she wanted to touch and keep in touch with her other mom, the one who made her so lovely. Thanks Cyndi for all the work and love you put into her!

That shirt with the words, "cute as a cupcake" reminded me today (when I could think again) that I had crocheted cupcakes last month so maybe they belonged to Angie. I did not get a good shot of the cupcakes but Angie is darling even though she seems a bit shocked to have a new Hello Kitty with a butterfly instead of her lamb.

Meet Suzy

Here she is with her new name and new clothes. I call her Suzy because she is so saucy and she looks as if she is licking sauce off her lip. She is tomboy which is why she likes her cap with the pom-pom which also covers her messy hair (missing with only the holes left!). I would love to get some shoes for her but she claims she feels better being barefoot for now. I could crochet her some booties but the idea of such a baby item for her appalls her so much that she sticks our her tongue when there is nothing to lick off her lip.

While I was photographing Suzy I felt eyes upon me. I turned and there was

the yet unnamed doll I had crocheted in January. She felt abandoned without a name even though it was only the day before that I put all my turtles, the bird and the mouse at her feet. I have been promising myself I would make her a sister and yet each day I pick some new project so she still sits on the unused wood stove all alone.

The new book with crochet patterns for animals arrived from Amazon yesterday and I at once found the perfect Easter bunny so I started right in on it. I was not happy with the arigumiru rabbits (you can see Sugar-bunny in this photo holding the Oreo cookie) from the Hello Kitty book.

Finally the blog and I got here! Amazing how well Google can hide things!

This little doll came in parts as a hurt reborn kit on eBay. The head has many little holes which showed how someone had tried to root hair but the effect was evidently so bad they pulled it all out. Thus, the holes remain and the price was only $4. I thought, from the photograph that the doll was bigger and so also ordered a body slip for the smallest doll but this doll was much smaller than that. So I crocheted a body.  I had to rip out the neck piece and redo that but otherwise it fit the arms and legs.

Sitting this doll is 6 inches tall.

Then yesterday I made clothes for him/her. The hat is made from leftovers from the wool I used for Dietlind's hat that Bambi had bought in Iceland. It covers the holes completely and sits perfectly on the little head. The pants fit too and I was relieved to be able to get them on this morning. The t-shirt was too big, too long, too bulky. I had used the cotton Sugar n' Cream yarn I had on hand but think I will need a softer yarn for the next try. The t-shirt will be either pink or gray - those are the only colors I have in baby yarn.  I love how the tongue sticks out on this face. I have not seen this on a doll before a fact that makes it even more precious to me.

In the autumn, thanks to surfing You Tube, I discovered a new kind of doll called "reborns." Doll-makers and artists had turned away from the dream of the perfect porcelain doll to the creation of vinyl or silicone dolls that best mimicked a real baby.

The dolls were painted with the idea of adding realistic colors but also making the skin soft and touchable as a real baby's. They added glass eyes, real hair and eyelashes. Nothing was left out. The babies could take a pacifier (often stuck on with a strong magnet) and have a fake (or faux) bottle with no hole.

They wore real Pampers and tiny baby clothes. booties. bracelets and headbands. These were wrapped in blankets, some coming from hospitals, with wristband and even oxygen tubes. During stuffing,  the body was weighted with pellets or glass beads so the butt and head were as heavy as a real baby's. The dolls were cuddly and soft, a bit floppy (hold the head securely) so they felt as if one was cradling a real child in one's arms. Many of the models were of sleeping newborns (less than 20 inches long) that caused cops to react when they found one in a closed car.

These dolls, ranging in price from over $100 to $2,000, were not toys for children, but collectibles for adults who could afford them and give them the care and clothing they needed.To display them properly one had to buy a stroller, bouncing chair or even a crib. Complete rooms were made into nurseries for the reborns.

In October 2014 I got my first one.

I picked her for her smile and bright eyes which looked so much as my firstborn, Heidi, did at birth. I asked Heidi what name she would have chosen if she wasn't Heidi and she said, "Jenny Wren" a name my mother had called me. So this baby is a combination of the baby-hoods of Heidi and myself. This photo is of Jenny under the Christmas tree with her nanny, one of my Steif tigers.

January, 2015

Jenny in her new stroller with a new outfit and her beaded monkey friend. Werner suggested she might want to listen to music during the long nights we left her alone in the living room. That oreo cookie in her lap is crocheted! - no crumbs.