I don’t know whether I’ve told you Henny’s story properly, so I will now. Henny is one of my ‘keeping’ dolls. I’m not a big doll gatherer, I try not to fill our flat with stuff, so my dolls have to be really special (or design prototypes) for me to decide to hang on to them.

There are many reasons for this to be a good moment for me to tell you about Henny. Firstly, Henny has just had a new Spring dress that she would like to show off. The fabric is one she chose at the Knitting and Stitching Show a few weeks ago; Liberty Tana Lawn fabric no less, a girl with expensive taste.

Henny has many connections with the Netherlands. Her name is a Dutch name chosen in memory of a friend from that country, and also chosen because Henny was finished at the Netherlands-based ‘European Waldorf Seminar’ last year. Henny’s hair is the first weft I made myself, and I machine stitched it in Maureen Broeder’s wonderful workshop. Check out her beautiful dolls here: Poppenliefde

Knowing that I would be taking pert in this workshop, I took a newly-made but bald Henny to Holland with me, ready for this precious new learning to provide her with some hair. At that stage she looked like this, and was feeling rather sorry for herself:

Most of us in the workshop just managed to finish making the weft in the time allowed, but no more. We were so excited by this new creation that we also wanted to crochet our new wefts into wigs and present them to our patiently-waiting dolls. So we settled down in the conference-centre lounge after dinner, stocked up on refreshments and sat talking, laughing and stitching togther until far too late at night. It was wonderful. Henny has one weft-sister living in Europe somewhere that shares some of her hair, as I had more weft than I needed and this doll had not enough. We couldn’t leave a fellow doll with a bald patch at the top, so Henny’s spare length of weft was donated.

Here is another one of Henny’s weft sisters who was finished along with her that night, made by the talented Fioen: Fioen

They even have matching clothes from another workshop that day; sewing underwear with Daria Gosset (see her sytlish work here Petit Gosset ).

The second reason for all of this to resurface in my mind right now is that planning and organising for the next European Waldorf Seminar is almost complete and the booking will open soon. It’s just so exciting, I can hardly wait! It was really such an amazing sharing and learning experience uniting dollmakers from all over the world. You can find out more about it here: European Waldorf Seminar

And I also have a third reason. Henny is going to be a member of my project support team whilst for a doll sizing chart I am working on. When she is not too busy swinging on our front gate.

This sizing chart will help me to be consistent with my finished doll sizes, but also to help in another, extremely exciting, doll-designing phase I am embarking on.

But more of that later…