Gallery

Granny Gracie-Jo Anna

My Granny Gracie-Jo Anna has become my Avatar, representing me on my computer and many other places. She was carved in the summer of 2010 from basswood, and when I finished her, I realized that not only did she represent my favorite Great Aunts - Grace, Josephine, and Ann - she looked a lot like I knew that I would in about 20 more years. Thus, she appears on every page of this site. She is me. The dolls below are presented in the sequence in which they were carved so that you may see my progress. None of these dolls are for sale.

Hitty Sunny

This is the first doll I ever carved. Poor little Sunny doesn't get out much. She's not very attractive, but I keep her to remind me how far I've come since 2007. I was untrained and had no earthy idea what I was doing with a knife in one hand and a chunk of birch in the other. It was a pitiful attempt at carving, and I'm lucky she looks as good as she does.

Ida Ruth

Hitty Ida Ruth

This is the second Hitty I carved, again with no instruction. As you can probably see, she's not a big improvement over Sunny, but she does have a more rounded appearance and some slightly better facial planes. She seems to have more spunk than Sunny, and served as the camp nurse at the first Camp Wanna Do I held for Hittys in the summer of 2009.

Lily Emiline

Little Lily Emiline, named for my grandmother, Dilly Emiline (no, that's not a typo: I really did say Dilly) was the Hitty I carved at my first Janet Cordell workshop in March 2009. Janet always says there are three faces in every blank, and this
Hitty found them all. She taught me that Hittys could be tiny and that I like them that way! She currently lives with her carve sister, Lily Too, at the home of my youngest daughter.

My first Bitty Hitty

This Bitty Hitty (approximately 5" tall) lives
somewhere in the Midwest and was not with me for long. She was carved as a Swap on HittyGirls and in return, the other person carved one for me. I think I finished her soon after coming back from my first workshop. My poor swap partner. I'd never carved a small doll (well, smaller than Hitty), and you can see I'm still doing that watermelon mouth we all love to hate. I hope this little one fares well, wherever she may be.

Lily Too with her carve sister, Lily Emiline

Lily Too & Lily Emiline

When I came home from carving Lily Emiline (on the right in this photo), I worked for the same law firm where my youngest daughter still works. We sat back-to-back, and after showing off Lily Emiline, I turned to face my computer again, and from behind me a soft voice quietly said, "I want a Lily too." And so was born the idea of a sister Hitty. She was a birthday gift to my daughter in 2010. They aren't twins, but you can probably see the family resemblence.
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Miss Hickory

In May of 2011, I decided I wanted to carve myself a Miss Hickory doll. Usually these have hickory nut heads, but I wanted mine to be all wooden. I begged Janet Cordell for a blank, and although she had no idea about
proportions for this one, she somehow managed to cut and send me the exact butternut blank I asked for. This is my girl, all dressed up in her Ladies Aid sash with badges for all her good deeds. Ha!

Hitty Lexie

This little girl carved in March 2012 has had more adventures than some, rather like Real Hitty. Lexie had accompanied me to meet friends at a doll shop and somehow managed to escape ... in the parking lot. Fortunately, she was discovered by an employee who knew to whom she belonged. She was rescued just before a car pulled in where she lay and sent back home for a scolding. Lexie has one other "claim to fame" that none of my other Hittys do - her head moves.

Grampa

Grandpa

Gramps (Summer 2011) was carved to be a companion to Granny Gracie-Jo Anna, but alas, he has languished in his virtually complete, yet unpainted and unassembled state. His limbs are still temporarily attached with paper clip wire. His boots were my first of that nature, and I channeled Robert E. Lee as my model. His beard is undercut so that he can wear his long johns and overalls....some day. Granny says she hasn't missed having him around, so I'm in no rush.

Door of Hope style

Spring Jewel (an all wood Door of Hope style)

This is the largest doll I've done to date (March, 2012). Spring Jewel is all wood, and stands about 9.5" tall. She is modeled after the wonderful Door of Hope dolls, which were carved from pear wood but with cloth bodies. Her head moves and she has a bun at the back with red and gold chopsticks you can almost see beneath her hat.

Skye Penny

Skye Penny w/Hitty Lexie

Skye Penny (Dec. 2012) is quite a bit taller than little Hitty Lexie, as you can see. Penny is not quite 9" tall and elastic joined with a swivel head. She has a high pony tail styled in what I always called "banana curls." Today's hair ribbon of choice is red to go with her dress. Penny is a modern girl, and meant to be played with. I play daily. She lives in my kitchen, along with her entire wardrobe, and she loves to change her outfit. I'm so pleased with her that I will probably carve another one of these. She wears the same size clothing as Skipper and Blythe dolls, though Blythe is very tall with a VERY large head (my Sasha's inherit the Blythe hats that come with Skye Penny's outfits).

The unfinished Becassine & other dolls in progress

So much wood, so little time

This is a shot taken 3/5/2013 of the typical mess on my kitchen counter, rather than in my studio. Sigh. One works where one can. The saddest sight is Becassine, a fully jointed doll, who needs only one part sanded and some assembly/eye paint. She's been waiting patiently in her zip-loc since March 2010.

Hitty Lucinda

This little witch has gone to live with Beth Anne Hall in Haymarket, VA. She was carved for the 2013 Carve-a-Hitty Witch Swap sponsored by Hittygirls. She is fond of the color purple. Photo by Beth Anne Hall.

Hitty Happy (my namesake)

This little girl won a ribbon at the Land 'O Sky Doll Club's Luncheon, "A
Dolly's Holiday With Hitty," held at The Cedars in Hendersonville, NC March 29,
2014. She lives in Fairfax VA with Cheryl Mahoney who named her after me.

Hitty Lenoir was born in March, 2014, in Loudon, Tennessee. She is carved from a Judy Brown blank of Maple and is fully jointed (independent movement of arms and legs). She now lives with Mary in Suffolk, VA.

Little Hitty Perdita MissChevious was supposed to go live with Susan in California, but she somehow magicked her way across the Atlantic ocean to Lorraine's in Hertfordshire, England. We do not know how she did this, but since her intended mom was called out of town for a while, she decided to sojourn with Lorraine and the Hittys of Rose Cottage for a while. The magic continued. Hmm. Her adventured can be seen on the blog, Hitty at rose Cottage. http://hittyatrosecottage.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/hitty-mischievous-arrives-on-her-travels.html. She hopes to be home with Susan in California for the majority of 2015. Or we think she does.... We can't be sure.

Hitty Merrin-Katz (above) was named for a friend's daughter (age 14) and two of my granddaughters (ages 8 and 12). We were all together in Pennsylvania carving, and I loved this little girl so much I named her after the three young ladies (one Merrin and two Katys) and kept her for myself. She's had several adventures, including a car trip to SC, a car trip to Arkansas, a plane trip to Seattle, WA, and a boat trip to Victoria, BC, where as you can see by this picture, she had afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel. She's a good traveler and a lovely Hitty companion. She is fully jointed, so her arms and legs move independently.

Huck the spider

NOT a doll!!

I don't always carve dolls. I had the idea that I would carve a whimsical jointed spider, who I named Huck. The stick you see at his back is the peg holding his jointed abdomen onto his thorax. I may want to hollow it since it's quite heavy. I know carving a spider sounds like a crazy thing, but he's really cute in person, and a Spider is the mascot of the University of Richmond where I got my MA and where I teach/tutor. He is just the right size to give Hittys rides on his back, and I learned a ton about jointing doing him. He also inspired me to dare to
carve a crow. Sometimes, I carve just for the fun of it.
Crows are highly intelligent birds, and I have a collection of crows, figurines, paintings, etc. The crow, whose name is Strut, is still a work in progress, as this picture will show. I titled this one, "let them eat crow," for obvious reasons. You have to have a sense of humor if you want to play with large chunks of wood and long, pointy, and very sharp knives. I'm hoping to finish Strut in the spring. There is a lot yet to be done, as you can see by the rubber band holding him together. He should be well baked by then.

Strut update: September 2015

The NCIS crew

A favorite TV show has been NCIS with Mark Harmon as Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and Pauley Perrette as Abby Sciuto. I carved Abby first - I think in Spring 2013 (I never dated and signed her) - and I finished Gibbs in December of 2014. I plan to do Ducky as a third character, but that will be the end of the series for me. They are my favorites (you can see that Abby even has her own laboratory). Abby's boots, which everyone asks about, are carved with applied straps and buckles. She's pretty smug about them and her neck tattoo, which is a replica of the one used on the show. My dear daughter-in-law miniaturized it, and I colored in the spider to make it show more, though that's not the way it looks on the series. Just a bit more artistic license. The one issue with Abby is that I thought I was carving a different doll, and was on day three before I realized I wanted her to be Abby ...alas, by then, there was no way to put back wood I'd carved off, so she has one large, single pony instead of the traditional two. Both have jointed heads and hips, and Abby's arms move up and down, but Gibbs' arms rotate all the way out and around. He's so lucky.

Carving for Wanda (a swap)

Sometimes, I exchange a doll with a friend, and this doll was a trade with my friend Wanda. The doll by herself is my carving and below are the two dolls together, Wanda's on the left, and mine on the right. Hitty friends forever.

Custom Hitty

This girl, named Willow Dawn by her mom, was a custom order. She is my first "blond" Hitty with violet eyes. I rather like her. She's carved from a Judy Brown blank (probably basswood with birch limbs), and although they don't show, she has white anklet socks and slip-on flats. Willow Dawn lives in Washington State and enjoys her travels with her adoptive mom, Bren,

Farkleberry Doll Carvers Anniversary Carving

A lovely April 2016 week near Winslow, AR in the Boston Mountains yielded me this little cutie. Most everyone else in our group who carved a "Berry" went for some adorable, wispy hair, but I really wanted the pigtail look since

I envisioned my girl to be the outdoorsy, sort of a tomboy kid. She is dressed up for this portrait, but she's trying to show you how she's going to be queen of her world. Some random shifts and changes along the way had me calling mine Hitty Berry Inconsistence, but my friend Terri nicknamed her "Inky." You might be able to see better in the photo below that she's had her braids dipped in the inkwell...we don't know who might have done this.

Her head is jointed, her arms rotate, and her legs are independently jointed so she has more movement. Welcome to the world, Inky.

She currently has what I would call slipper feet, but she's going to undergo the knife and have bare feet carved at some point. All the better to play. She's currently waiting for me to make her some overalls. I see tree climbing in her future.

Spotted 9/29/17 on eBay! I'd forgotten about this little one, who was traded to another carver back in 2015. What fun to find her up for auction...er, searching for a new home. She sold on 10/03/2017 for $283.00