I'm very sorry that I have not posted lately. We lost our son Eric in May and we are grieving and trying to regain some normality in our lives. He got involved with heroin and it is a Destroyer. He fought it but lost the battle.

I am trying to keep up with at least some of the things I do, things that are quiet and calming. I like to carve, but I have not done much carving in the last year. I carved these two Hitty dolls beginning in June, 2010 and finishing them in 2011. I didn't work constantly on them, as you have probably deduced.

A little background info about Hitty: Hitty comes from the book Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field. It was a Newberry Award winning book in 1929.  The book is fiction, but the doll is not. She is  now in a museum in Stockbridge, Mass, I believe. http://www.hittygirls.com/research/hittyfaq.htm





Anyway, Hitty has many followers who wanted their own Hitty Doll, and so there are several Yahoo groups dedicated to this end:  Hitty Girls where people sometimes sell Hitty dolls, but mostly people make their own. Other Hitty groups that I know about are:  HittyKnitty, WoodenWorld, and Dollcarving and painting artistry. I've gotten a lot of help and learned a lot from being part of these groups; the people there are very kind and helpful to new Hitty fans.

So here it is three years after I began my first Hitty and I am carving a new one: I'm calling her my third doll, as others I've started are still unfinished. Actually, #3 Caroline, is not finished either, but she is much closer to being finished than the others.

 

This one was carved from a blank ordered from a carver named Maria who sells her blanks on Ebay sometimes. Her turned blank has a two-level head, a defined neck, and a body that needs minimal carving. I am hoping I can eventually turn out blanks of my own, as I have a minilathe that I plan to use for this purpose; other people evidently use these little lathes to make wooden pens. Not what I want to do with mine!! To each his own.

 

That's all for now. I'll let you see more pictures as I finish this Hitty. I think she is going to be my best one, and I'm thankful to have a Connie Hardt Hitty to look at as I carve her. I was lucky to get my Connie Hardt Hitty on an Ebay auction a couple years ago. Connie's dolls have their own look. I am too new to carving for my dolls to have "a look" of their own.