Waiting for Grace: Meet Sari

Happy Saint Lucia's Day (December 13th). My poppet Ingabritia is holding Sari, the doll from Kirsten Larson's collection. 

In Kirsten's Surprise, Kirsten is finally reunited with her beloved rag doll Sari on Saint Lucia's Day. Sari had been packed in a giant trunk for the family's trip overseas from Sweden to their new home in America, but the trunk was not immediately brought to their temporary home at Uncle Olav's farm.

The Sari doll body is made entirely of cloth and soft batting and is very light and squishy. Her face is made with a few simple stitches of colored thread and her hair with braided yellow yarn.

While the dress hems are sewn, Sari's shawl and bottom edge of her apron are left unhemmed and the loose edges made to look like fringe. Her shawl appears to have been glued into place (I do not want to pry it up to look underneath for any stitches). For these reasons this rag doll is best as a prop or display rather than heavy play.

While Sari's cloth body is a light off-white color, her feet are made in a contrasting red fabric, giving her the appearance of wearing red stocking or red boots depending on your imagination. This feature alone delights me to no end for its simplicity as well as for its range of open interpretation in play.

The Sari doll is an easy to overlook accessory from Kirsten's world, especially considering the original price in the Pleasant Company catalogs was $16 for this tiny cloth doll. However, that price looked like a bargain after questing for a Sari doll in pristine condition this summer. Since the face is hinted at with so few stitches of the embroidery needle I was particularly interested in finding a Sari with a symmetrical face and eyes. 

I love this little piece of Kirsten's world because of how the story of Sari captures the love of a girl and her doll. It was never a matter of how expensive or fancy the doll was--Kirsten played with real dedication even with her substitute straw doll--but about the story telling and bond created through playing together.