Caroline, 30s. In childhood, I collected some almost OGs: Molly, Samantha, Kirsten, Addy, Felicity, and Josefina. Molly and Kirsten live with me now, the others are still at my parents'.
i know turn-of-the-century ideas about adulthood are vastly different than ours, but do you ever think about how young cornelia is?
like, it's her first christmas with her boyfriend's family. the girl that is going to be her niece is the age as her younger sisters. she's grown up with sisters who are sam's age, and yet she's somehow crossed into womanhood and they're still getting to enjoy their girlhood.
and you can see that it the christmas book! you can see this confusion (longing? nostalgia?) in cornelia as she experiences this last christmas as an unmarried young woman. she can't spend it with her sisters, but she can gosh darn spend it with another girl their age, and so these moments of cornelia's girlhood peek through as she's trying to bond with samantha.
she gets sam to make gingerbread with her like cornelia would usually be doing with her sisters. she goes sledding with her and gard, and cornelia has this moment where she gets so caught up in the joy of it all that even sam can see how young she is.
and then they're downtown, and cornelia spots a beautiful doll in a shop window and, just for one moment, she forgets that's she's too old to want a doll. except that “just a moment” lasts for days, so she ends up going back to buy the doll for samantha because that’s the next best thing to buying it for herself.
sam gets her doll, and cornelia gets a ring.
and i know that cornelia growing up and getting married is not a tragedy, but for some moments it feels like it is because it means that sam is next. and the womanhood that cornelia experiences seems joyful and privileged and purposeful, but it's still not girlhood. cornelia's not putting can telephones through the lilac hedge, or threatening the annoying neighborhood boy. cornelia's not starting schools in the tower room, befriending the servant girl next door, bedgrudingly practicing piano for an hour a day and then going to get gingerbread from the cook.
and, if all goes well, eventually neither will sam
From @zoomzoomfast:
#this makes me wonder about Cornelia’s own mother#like she has a grown daughter in her early 20s but also 3 kids under 10 at home#Anges and Agatha are 8/9#well Alice is 3 Cornelia’s son is colser in age to her own sister#so how old is Mrs Pitt and why did they make her sisters so young
Do they ever specify that Cornelia and the younger girls have the same dad? If Cornelia was young when her mother remarried she might be using her stepfather's last name.
Beyond that, though, long periods of infertility do happen; I have a friend with an adult son in his first job and a daughter in elementary school, whom she had almost given up hoping for.
Cracker Jack was a popular caramel popcorn and peanut food and every box came with a prize. Molly loved to collect and trade small toys from inside these boxes. Open the Cracker Jack Box and help Molly eat the pretend popcorn. She keeps her growing collection in an old cigar box. It includes two marbles, a ring, two tiny animals, a World War II airplane and three paper toys.
Details about Cracker Jack and how I made the collection under the cut.
What are Cracker Jack prizes?
Cracker Jack is a caramel coated popcorn and peanut mix that was first sold around 1896. It is a staple of American baseball games and other sporting events. It’s even mentioned in the song that plays at every baseball game, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, written in 1908: “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back”.
Cracker Jack started giving prizes in their boxes in 1912, and throughout most of the century, these prizes were highly collectable among kids. Most of the prizes are plastic animals and other trinkets, as well as many paper or cardboard items like games and collectible cards. Some even included tiny books or flipbooks or dollhouse furniture. It’s fascinating to look through the years and see how things changed, from metal to plastic, the different pop culture references, the war years, et cetera.
Frito-Lay bought the company in 1997 and changed all of the prizes to flat things like tattoos, stickers, and jokes. Not the same experience at all–that’s what I remember from growing up. And now they don’t even include anything but a QR code for an online game.
Research
To make Molly’s collection, I looked through the 1940s pages of a collector’s guide on Internet Archive to get a sense of what was available at the time. I took some things from the 1930s and 1950s too. I printed out some of the flat games and collected other items based on what I could find in a teeny tiny scale–these toys were already really small so it was hard to find things that are small on an American Girl scale. I also did some searching about how kids collected these, and someone said they were often kept in old cigar boxes, which might not be PC enough for PC, but I liked the idea so I made a cigar box out of a fancy cardboard jewelry box I had. (more on collecting and trading below).
I have ideas to add more prizes, like printing out movie star trading cards and coming up with a way to make pins–I’m picturing something like the doll Grin Pins.
Molly Lore (head-canon)
I can imagine Molly trading away all of the warplane cards and toys to her brother Ricky for dollhouse furniture, jewelry, animals, movie star items, and so on. There were, unsurprisingly, tons of planes and other war items in Cracker Jack in the 1940s. It seemed like Molly was always getting planes and Ricky was always getting stupid doll furniture! They both liked the games, though. Molly and Ricky gave any leftover prizes they didn’t want to Brad.
One day Jill decided she was “too mature” for Cracker Jack and gave her collection to Molly, which was more annoying than it should have been, because there’s something kind of not fun about suddenly getting things all at once that you’ve been collecting slowly. Molly invited Susan and Linda over to pick through Jill’s collection, each girl choosing one thing at a time until it was divvied up. At least sharing with her best friends and not keeping it all to herself made it a little more fun.
Resources:
This collector’s guide was instrumental in my research. It both gave me specific ideas and a general sense of the experience and patterns of the prizes. There were a few telling editorial remarks like this one about Barrettes on page 127: “Left a lot to be desired if a little boy got it. (Then again, I’m sure that many a little girl was disappointed to get a “war” prize).” This is what gave me the image of Ricky and Molly trading their prizes and both of them being happy about it!
Time Passages Nostalgia Company offers 20th century pop culture items, nostalgic memorabilia, Historic artifacts, cereal and radio premiums,
Although the search function is pretty awful, it is good for scans of paper prizes.
Here is the google doc I used to collect the pictures I wanted to print in what seemed an appropriate size: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/196ByHxFQ8G21VbtBmT5H2ZCmigQnAYsUfbzru0buivM/edit?usp=sharing
i went looking for a 1:48 scale Victorian dollhouse for Samantha, but the kits are ridiculously expensive. And I'm not sure if I'm talented enough to put it together. So, for now, I printed out a façade instead on cardstock and slapped it on a box I had. We now have an opening dollhouse for <$5.
I printed out wallpaper, rugs, and flooring and want to separate the box into three floors but didn't get that far yet.
Here's a nice story I learned in the Norwegian ski museum:
In 1895, polar explorers Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen were having a bad time. Their expedition had faced some hardships and they were forced to stay on Franz Josef Land in a little hut they built out of mud and stones. In their hut, they slept for circa 20 hours a day, and spent the remaining four hours watching the northern lights or reminiscing about the comforts of home and the books they had read.
After several months of this, and nine months of sleeping in the same sleeping bag to stay warm, on New Year's Eve, Nansen finally gathered his courage and asked Johansen if they should start adressing each other with the informal you.
This is where the story ended in the museum, so unfortunately, I can't tell you whether Johansen answered yes or no.
I can't even. After living in Minnesota, land of Norwegian and other Scandinavian immigrants, though, for almost 20 years, I can tell you this: I believe it.
I've been trying to be better with spending time with my collections when I get the urge, as a self care thing. Sometimes I'm like "but what am I going to DO with them??" I try to remember that looking at my things counts as quality time and there is no "wrong" way to enjoy my dolls. I also sometimes feel guilty that I don't make as many crafts or outfits as I'd like.
Lately I've been enjoying looking at pictures of people's collections. Some are more organized than mine, or more complete than mine (although damn I have a lot). But my collection is still valid and still gorgeous. So today I took photos of what I currently have from Josefina's collection.
Not pictured: meet outfit and school outfit which are both at my parents' house. And Josefina herself, who is also at my parents'.
It is important for EVERYONE to know how to help ANYONE. Not everyone can give them selves their medicine under every circumstance. Be educated, help out.
In the last year, i have gotten about five new violent allergies from foods i used to be able to eat. Next time i eat a fruit, my throat could close. I may not be able to inject myself. My boyfriend and i played with my trainer pen for like 30 minutes. He knows how to inject it. I know how. This is important.
As someone with food allergies I feel like everyone should know this. Especially for those who are physically or mentally unable to stab themself with a needle for whatever reason (such as myself who has an extreme phobia of needles), others around them need to know how to administer one in case of an emergency.
Another tip! If their thigh isn’t exposed don’t panic! The needle will go through fabric as long as you don’t try to push through a seam. Seams are too thick for the needle!!!
Highlighting the bit about holding it in place for at least three seconds (I usually practice five seconds, just to be safe), AND THE PART ABOUT CALLING AN AMBULANCE.
The epipen does not CURE the allergic reaction, it just hits pause. It gives the patient an extra window of time for the ambulance to get there. It’s not an indefinite pause - it’s just a temporary one. 15 minutes, if I recall correctly. So GET AN AMBULANCE THERE ASAP.
Note the time you gave the epipen. In sharpie on the actual item if possible. Give to paramedics.
You can give a second dose 5-15 minutes after the first one if symptoms don't improve (and the person carries a second epipen) and paramedics aren't there yet.
A spoon's only objective in life is to make soup go upwards, and it knows this. That's why when you put one under a running tap it blasts the water way high. The spoon thinks there's suddenly TONS of soup to deal with and it freaks out.
I have this idea to make Samantha a vanity set. I even wrote a description in old-PC magazine style.
Vanity sets were matching kits to help girls and women prepare for their days. Arrange Samantha's seven piece silver set neatly on its tray. This set includes tools recognizable today like a hand mirror, hairbrush, and comb. Use the hair receiver to collect Samantha's loose hairs. Finally, Samantha has a shoehorn, button hook, and glove stretcher to help her put on accessories.
I'm not quite sure how to proceed, except I have the idea of getting a child's silverware set and somehow building the handled things off the handles of the silverware so they match?
I made this skirt/jumper combo for Molly based on the Pleasant Company pattern for her school jumper, which also provides a skirt option. I bought the cutest corduroy with wee wale in both red and navy awhile ago and finally got around to making something from it. I added the jumper straps and they are removeable so now she has two different outfits. I just put a little bit of velcro inside the waist band for each strap.
I really thought I got this idea from a book somewhere, but I think the page I'm thinking of is this jumper from Molly's World, which talks about separates but not convertible dresses/skirts so...either there's another page somewhere or I made this up completely.
So here's a concept I've had in the back of my mind for a while. I was thinking: "What if AG wrote follow up books aimed at adult collectors who grew up with AG?"
The books would basically consist of the girls we already know and love and follow up on thier life all these years later. I decided to make thier new age in these hypothetical books exactly 30 years old.
It would show how they have grown, what they would be like as adults, if they have started thier own family or not, ect.
If AG were to do this I'm not sure how many characters they would include. Likely only the original 6 and maybe Kaya and Kit too. But for the sake of this post I included everyone. Here is the new dates they would represent at 30 years old:
Wow those last two really showed how recent thier stories are in history.
Anyway it is interesting to see how some girls dates overlap with other girls original dates.
It would very cool to see how the perspective would be different between an adult woman's eyes vs how we see it already in the original story. (for example, Kits perspective as an adult in the 50s after growing up in the depression and living through the war vs maryellens childlike view on it, or Rebecca living in NYC in the 30s, maybe as a actress vs Kit living in ohio as a child, etc)
So what do you guys think of this idea? Would you read it?
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