Doll-A-Day 2023 #163: Betty Curtis Girl, and That Good News!

   Okay. Here we are back to the Betty Curtis kids. Yesterday we saw the boy, made by NIADA artist Betty Curtis, (and you can see their grandparents HERE.), and today we're looking at the girl.

She's a little over three inches tall.

 She has beautiful ringlets, in what is probably mohair.

Like her brother, she has a stockingette face over a molded shape.

The fine lines in her painted features almost make me think they are decals.

She has sort of mitten hands, except they are those baby anti-scratch mittens, because they have no thumbs. She also has a wire armature and stockingette legs. Like her brother and some other Betty Curtis dolls I've seen, she has a thread around her ankles that I think is supposed to be the top of her socks?

She's wearing a lace slip, and the edge of her dress is stitched on the outside, like her brother's shirt collar.

  She has little faux leather shoes.

 

 As I said, she has a wire armature, so she can be posed.

She and her brother can even sit down. The dog looks like he wants to get loose and run instead.

  Unlike her brother, She doesn't have a Betty Curtis tag. This leads me to think they were probably always a pair.

  Those are today's dolls. 

  And now for that good news I talked about yesterday. I have two pieces of good news. One is that we haven't seen much of our third cat, and Ken can't get him to come up from the basement, but yesterday I got him to! I had to go in and see my boys, and the usual two came out when I went into the kitchen. I spotted the treat container, and as I always did, shook it and 'kitty kitty'ed and called Arky by name. It only took a second, and there he was! He wouldn't come any farther than the kitchen doorway, and he wouldn't take the treats from my hand like he used to. But he did come up from the basement! And he ate a couple of the treats I tossed to him, before going back down to the basement. It's a start! He gets so wild once he manages to get down to the basement. I don't want to shut them completely out of the basement though, because if it gets really hot, they can always go down there to be cool. But he came up for me!! Yay!!!

  The second piece of good news concerns the lost camera memory cards from our trip last Fall. I brought a little tub from the house that contains a lot of little things from our trip. In it I found a memory card. I knew it was too good to be true that it was one of the cards from the trip, because I knew that I had my main card, and Ken's in my bedside table drawer. So those were the ones Ken got from the house and lost. But Ken had his computer on when I found it, and asked if I wanted him to pop it in and see what was on it. He did, and I saw pictures from our 2015 trip to England. But then I saw some from the recent trip. After we went to dinner and came back, he looked at what he had on his computer, (without the card), and there were ALL of my trip pictures from the missing card! That means I got ALL of my pictures back! Because I still have the card I put in when that one got full! (It covered basically the evening before, and the last day of our trip.) I have a bunch of flash drives that were also in the tub, so he can put them on one of those, and I can have access to the pictures, and have them saved in case Kens computer has some kind of disaster, which his computers inevitably do. So I am thrilled! It means we also have all of Ken's pictures from London on, because that's when his camera stopped working, (since recovered), and he used his phone, and my camera for some things. So yay!!!

  That's today's doll. See you again tomorrow!

 

  

Doll-A-Day 2023 #78: Mirren Barrie's Diana

   Today's doll is Diana.

  She was hand made by Mirren Barrie. You can tell this, because Mirren Barrie dolls always have a little pocket sewn into their underclothes, with all their information on it, and containing a little paper with all the details.

This one has her pocket, but is missing her paper.

This doll was made, as you can see from her pocket, as a souvenir doll for the 25th anniversary of Niada, The National Institute of American Doll Artists. It was a convention doll, handed out at the Naida convention in 1987. Apparently there were 201 of them made, and this lady is number 137, all information you can read on her pocket!

  Her face is hand painted hardened cloth.

  Diana has an elaborate hair style.

And she has some schnazzy shoes.

 She also sports some jewelry and a nice belt.

  Huge puffy sleeves, like the ones on her dress, were a thing in the 1830's, and were kept puffy and standing by stuffing them with little feather pillows, or putting little wire cages, made for the sleeves, inside. Can you imagine walking around with that crap in your sleeves?!

   

  She has a few under layers, but not as many as a real life lady of the era would have had. That would have created too much bulk on such a small scale body.

Her hands have stitched fingers.

  She would have had a huge hat too, a purse, earrings, and a parasol. You can see another Diana, who has all her accessories and her paper, HERE.

   Mirrren Barrie, (I keep wanting to say Helen Mirren!), was a Niada doll artist. Originally from Scotland, she later settled in Vermont. She specialized in historically costumed dolls. I swear I have posted Mirren Barrie dolls on the blog before, but I can't find any! I know I have more. I got some at an auction, by accident. My others have their papers. I hope they survived the flood in our downstairs room, like this lady did.

  See you again tomorrow!