A Dolly Aside #2
If you’re new here, hello! I’m Jeni Hankins, a songwriter, maker, and rescuer of things from the trash. I was born in Appalachia in Southwest Virginia and the roots of my music are in my childhood there. If you found me through my weaving, you can read about how I found my child-sized loom in the trash. If you found me through my antique dolls and rescues of teddy bears from brink, hello from the bears and dolls. Thank you all for stepping through the looking glass into my music, sewing, knitting, art studio, and doll and bear hospital.
I post a new song here each month and you can hear the January and February songs, by clicking on that month.
This is a long letter. I was just in a long letter mood.
Now………
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Lost dolls.
One of the things that I love about the internet, social media, and Notes here on Substack is how many real life friends I’ve made. I was that kid who always wanted penpal in France who never had a penpal. Now I live in London and, because of actually meeting thousands of people on tour over the last fifteen years or so and meeting even more people online, I write to “penpals” every day. I am ecstatic about this – so much so that I’ve had to lay ground rules for myself because I won’t get any songwriting, knitting, or doll surgery done if I write to my penpals all day. Penpal time comes only in the afternoon after I’ve put in a good day’s work. Penpal time is a treat.
One of my penpals is Sara who lives in Texas. She saw a post that I made about my doll Betsyand she wrote to me with a doll who needed rescue – a little Madame Alexander baby doll who Sara had found in the bottom of a bin at Goodwill. Sara had confidence that I could help Bonnie (we named her together) in my doll hospital. So, she wanted to give Bonnie to me. Sara sent her and Nancy Drew, too, all the way from Texas to England. In the parcel, she enclosed the most beautiful letter about her lost dolls.
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And here are Nancy Drew and Bonnie. I love them so ridiculously much because Sara sent them to me and because I think I can actually help them to dolly health.
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Sara also sent a knitting pattern for a doll skirt from Piecework magazine, a collection of tiny tin teacups and plates, a fortune-telling fish, and this fortune-telling stick.
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The whole thing about my imaginary childhood French penpal is that I was sure that she would be able to see inside my soul. Sara is like that. To say that her package of wonders made me cry would be an understatement. I was like Alice in Wonderland crying a big pool around myself and flooding the dining room. That’s what happens when penpal dreams come true.
I say all of this because some people might think, “Well, they’re just a couple of ragged dolls and you and Sara are grown women. Honestly!” I’m here to tell you, in the last year of writing about my doll and teddy bear rescues and auction finds and doll clothes knitting, I have met more adults with doll stories than you can fit into a Play Doh barbershop, a Barbie Dream House, or a convention center.
It turns out that Facebook groups are the last bastion of the special interest hobby groups and you only have to spend a few days on “The DO IT YOURSELF Doll Hospital GROUP - NO SALES (9,800 members)” or “Collecting, Restoring German & French Antique Bisque Dolls (8,400 members)” to discover that this doll love is a serious business of the heart (and for some, the wallet). And don’t you go re-stuffing your pre-1960s teddy bear with unauthorized fluff because you will fall afoul of the moderators of the “Teddy Bear Restoration Group” – 30,300 members and growing.
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Dolls are serious little busybodies of friendship and pinky promises. They fly their capes in the face of isolation and internet baddies. They are feisty little agents of good on a charmed mission.
I’ll tell you a few penpal stories so you can see just how busy they’ve been at my house.
I’ve become the biggest fan of 26thAvenuePoet (Elizabeth) ‘s poems. I am seriously vying to be her fan club president and to mint club badges with persimmons and brooms on them in her honor. Elizabeth and I met online because of my best friend Stanley Bear. Turns out she has a plushie best friend too. We are both writers, but we found each other through teddy bears.
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My penpal April Mensinger saw a photo of one of my antique German dolls on Substack Notes and commented on her precious doll teeth. I’ve always loved dolls with teeth. April and I bonded over doll teeth. Last week, she shared the most wonderful photo of her dolls in response to my Happy Valentine’s Day Note.
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April wrote, “Happy Heart Day Jeni to you and all who you love
Here are my little friends from the attic
Left to right: Kitten (I think I was five or six when she came into my life) Ruby Begonia- which I thought was the most beautiful name in the world…given on the day of my birth by my dad…she purses her lips in a kiss when her tummy is squeezed… Miss Peep- whose right leg squeaks…on her lap a small bear found at a rest stop while traveling….Katie Rose made lovingly by my grandma…she's stuffed with stockings.. All well loved as you can see ❤️” – April Mesinger
“Ruby Begonia.” Yes, that name. I remember being obsessed with certain beautiful and romantic names when I was a kid. I was another Jen, Jeni, Jenni, Jenny, Jennie, Jennifer out of several in each school grade. Oh, to be named “Vanessa” or “Clarice” or “Persephone.” I’d read a lot of Greek myths by the time I was eight or nine. I gave my dolls all of the glamorous names I adored.
Dolls don’t even have to be three-dimensional to bring us joy. I was totally obsessed with paper dolls and, remember these, Colorforms!
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Earlier this week, my penpal Charlotte Rains Dixon wrote about that snow day feeling where “the whole day stretched before me with nothing in particular to do. I could fill it with whatever I wanted.” And I said, “that made me think of how watching relentless British rain from my window gives me that cozy feeling and the day draws in on itself. I feel the potential stretching out before me. Suddenly I’m back in my childhood room with coloring books, Barbies, and paper dolls.”
Then my penpal Phyllis Stengel piped up and said something so delicious that I wanted to stop everything I was doing, fly to meet her in real life, pull out some old catalogs and magazines, and set to work on our paper doll world. Phyllis wrote: “Oh my goodness, I played with paper dolls too 💕 I used the Sears Roebuck catalog to cut out items for my paper playhouse, like beds, kitchen appliances etc. It was so fun to create. I had a real doll house but the paper one was so easy to add, update or make a neighborhood 🤗.”
I mean, WOW! Let’s do this now. And just for good measure, here’s an actual super cool paper doll of ME that my friend Amity made and sent to me in London from Southwest Virginia once when I was really sick with an infection. She had a handkerchief for a dress, but she mostly stands around in her cute undies now.
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And back in the three-dimensional world, here’s an actual knitted version of me that my penpal Deborah in Australia sent to me. Where did we meet? On Instagram when we both took part in the same collage project. Penpal happiness.
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But what happens when it comes time to pass on our dolls? We don’t want them to be LOST. Folks talk about this worry a lot on the doll groups. Several wonderful doll and plush friends have come to me because their childhood friends were perhaps getting a bit older and weren’t sure of what would happen to their special doll on down the line.
Monkey May came to me from a penpal on Instagram because she wasn’t a favorite with her doll mother’s family. She’s our only resident monkey here and has made best friends with Henrietta, the emotional support chicken I knitted.
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Penelope was in pieces with no hair, but her doll mother who goes to my church in real life saw pictures of my doll restorations on Facebook and finally felt she had found a safe place for her childhood doll. Penelope is looking so happy now and, since she’s a walking doll, she has the run of my studio.
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Dolls are dolls. Dolls are more than dolls. Anyone who has had a friendship with a doll, bear, or plush octopus knows what I mean. I’m really excited that my penpals and friends know that I know and that some of their special friends have even come to live with me.
I want to let you know that I see you – doll and bear, paper doll and plushie, favorite rock and best piece of string lovers. I see your doll that someone gave away, your doll they said you were too old to keep, your doll that got smashed or taken apart, your doll that was left in a hotel room when you went on vacation with your family, and your dolls in Venezuela who have missed you all of these years.
If you’re feeling like, hey, I might want a friend or I’d like to share a friend, check out these folks in the UK who are re-homing plushie friends (they are coming to the USA this year). No affiliation, I just admire what they do.
If you’d like to send me a story about your doll, bear, or plush, I would be delighted. I’ve been consciously collecting doll stories since I began putting together a slightly disheveled, but beloved virtual doll library (mostly conceptual at this point) for my community art project at Penland in the summer of 2022. Feels like this letter and your notes, letters, and “brown paper packages tied up with string” are all part of that. Thank you for being my penpals.
I am sending you kindness and friendship, always, your penpal and your friend,
Jeni
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Substack Notes where I post pictures and thoughts plus excerpts from other writers whose work I’m enjoying.
My shop where you can buy real albums that you can hold in your hand.
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My articles for Modern Daily Knitting.
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