...10.1...a whole new project...

...so...I was thinking I'd give each of our granddaughters a nice doll for their 5th birthday...as...from what I can remember that was about the beginning of my true doll-loving days...and about the time when I was able to take care of a doll...you know without messing up her hair or eyes or limbs...haha...

...so...I was surprised to find this doll (and the pony) in the unsaleable bin when I was dropping off some donations...Mom and I were talking about the fact that not all thrift stores do this...but I think it's a really good idea...even though they don't think they can sell an item doesn't really mean that no one wants it...so maybe the dumpster is not the best place for it...

...they're in the bathtub here...getting a good scrubbing...

...the pony is quite large...and has some marker marks on him/her and is just generally a tangled up mess...but I think I can 'fix' all of that...

...but the dollie is the real 'project'...someone has done a number on her hair...and she also has a few marks on her limbs...but she's otherwise in good shape...she can still stand up and her head is solidly attached and turns and holds its position...and her eyes still open and close...

...I did a little bit of searching and I think she's a Madame Alexander 2009 #60015 18" doll...

...and of course...I'm going to try and 'fix' her up...

...so the first thing I did was remove her stuffing...

...this is looking up through her torso at the connection for her head...I'm just trying to figure out how she's put together...so I can put her back...I really hate to take her head off...but I don't see any other way to reroot her hair as I'm going to need access to the inside of her head...

...so hoping that I can put everything tightly back together in the end...I just bent her head backwards and snipped the really thick and difficult to cut cord that holds her head on...and then I put all the little pieces of spacers and washers and crimps into a baggie for later reassembly...

...then I took the Man's clippers and shaved off what remained of her hair...

...so here's what she looks like...basically bald...each one of those little holes will have to be filled with a new plug of hair...and there's a glue or film of some type on the inside so I can't remove any more of the hair...but hopefully...it will help hold the new hair in place...

...and then believe it or not...there was also a wig...it was all tangled up...and it appears to be a doll's wig as I don't think it's big enough for anyone's head...

...see the tiny opening...so what I think was that someone was going to put this wig on the doll and ended up deciding not to and donated them both at the same time...luckily for me...

...I got it all combed out...

...it's a really pretty soft and slightly wavy brunette wig...it's got some reddish tones and some black in it as well...and it's actually too long for this doll though...I don't think I want hair down below her knees...so I'll be cutting it later...I'm sure...

...I put some rubber bands around it to keep it from getting tangled...

...and I'll just keep it in a ziplock bag...because I'm not going to be attaching the full wig to her head...I'm going to harvest little plugs of hair and insert them into her head the way they were originally...it may take a while...

...there is a special tool that people use for this insertion...called a reroot tool...but I looked at a photo of some online...and I definitely thought I could make my own...just using a wooden dowel and a medium sized needle...

...I just inserted the sharp end of the needle into the center of the dowel...

...and then cut off the dowel at a good handle size...

...and then using a wire cutter...I snipped the end of the eye piece of the needle off at an angle...not sure what's up with the colour of this photo...

...and then I snipped a hank of hair off the wig...and started the process of rerooting...

...but I found that it was a little bit difficult to get the needle poked into the hole...the existing hair and glue making that just a little bit too hard for the rerooting tool I had made...so I used my old dull seam ripper to poke a hole into the hair/glue in each plug first...and it worked perfectly...

...so this is the basic process...first I poked the larger hole with the seam ripper...then I took a few strands of hair and stretched them in between the cut eye of the reroot tool...leaving just a little bit of hair on one side...a half inch or less...

...and then when you push that into the hole...the short little end of hair springs away from the needle and you're left with a neat looking plug of hair...

...so now...I'll just do that a few hundred more times...haha...

...I won't be doing a daily update on this project the way I did with the Bride Doll and the Bike...but I'll definitely let you know how she turns out...and I've got roughly three years to get her finished too...haha...

~Have a lovely day!