Barbie's wardrobe - Shift Into Knit

I'm not a fashionista. I'm ... you could say... a wearer of clothing. I like my clothes to be comfortable and the right size and possibly not to have holes or spots (that part is not always easy if you have cats, just the other day I was shocked to find three in one of my dresses after my lady had a snuggle session on me).
There are features I love, like pockets in dresses or 3/4 sleeves, but beyond that, I'm fairly undemanding and not adventurous.
That doesn't mean I don't like to look at clothes at all, especially those that I would never be able to wear myself, due to money, my size, lack of occasion, etc. There are still ways to bring Haute Couture into my life, though. I mean Barbie and her friends.
I have always been fascinated by miniatures and Barbie's vintage outfits with their tiny zippers and buttons and buckles and accessories are incredible. This is my "fashion life", either through my own small collection or pictures.
(And yes, I do know Barbie's body isn't natural, I knew it as a child and I never strived to look like her ... if I had, something would have gone wrong).
Let me give you a glimpse in Barbie's wardrobe every, now and then.

You may wonder why instead of bringing you some light and airy outfit in this new heatwave I am, well, actually Barbie is "shifting into knit". No worries, you'll see.

Barbie has the same problem as me at the
moment, the fan constantly blowing hair
across her face. I should set them in
boiling water to keep them from straying, but
I can't be bothered in this weather.

I wanted to introduce you to a new model.
This is a Color Magic Barbie doll from 1966/67. Although she has the same face mold as the dolls before her, the difference is that there's nothing subtle about her with this bright hair.
Actually the Color Magic came in two different hair colors called Golden Blonde and Midnight Black.
The body was the same as that of an American Girl meaning she didn't have a twist and turn waist yet, but bendable legs.
Her face could either be "soft color" or "high color". Our model has a soft color face, the lipstick and rouge are lighter and the nostrils aren't painted.

What does Color Magic mean, though?
These beauties didn't just come with accessories like a headband matching their swimming suit, bobby pins, and ribbons, but also with two bottles of "Hair Color Changer A & B". A changed Golden Blonde to Scarlet Flame and Midnight Black to Ruby Red. It also changed the color of the swimsuit and outfits that were made especially for the Color Magic. B changed the color back. Or not. Too bad, but it didn't really work on the Midnight Black which makes dolls that still have black hair rarer. In fact, the black could change to red without even using the solution (a problem that the Julia doll has as well, you will meet her eventually).
There is also a rare platinum Color Magic. I have never seen her in person, but read that her hair didn't change at all.

A Midnight Black whose black hair has changed a little,
an ex-Midnight Black who has turned into a full Ruby Red,
and the Golden Blonde from this post.

Our Golden Blonde is wearing "Shift Into Knit".
 

I don't think Barbie will be sweating too much (another actual vintage doll problem, by the way) in this sleeveless knit mini dress which was manufactured from 1969 to 1970 as #1478.

It has a light red-orange top - which I think looks great with the hair - and a navy skirt. As accessories, there are a golden chain belt ending in a golden disk and a fringed scarf.
It was too hot to wrap it around the neck, I could even imagine Barbie to be using it as a headband during the day as she doesn't have her original one anymore.

The shoes that originally came with the outfit were chunky red pilgrim or red bow shoes. Unfortunately, I don't have either at the moment, so I gave Barbie some modern red high heels.
The scarf and belt are a little harder to find than the dress itself. Smaller accessories - like shoes! - just got lost much more easily.

Are you old enough to remember dresses like these?

For full disclosure, I edited the doll stand out of the pictures, but didn't change anything about the outfit.

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel in any way.


Sources:

1. Sibyl DeWein and Joan Ashabraner: The Collector's Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls and Collectibles. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
2. Sarah Sink Eames: Barbie Doll Fashion, Vol. II, 1968 - 1974. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1997
3. Color Magic Barbies 1966 - 1967. On: My Vintage Barbies
4. Iris Schmid: Color Magic Barbie #1150 1966, 1967. On: Vintage und Mod Barbies in Deutschland, Europa und weltweit 2 (in German, very informative post!)

Nostalgia - Traveling Treff

This post is inspired by two topics.
The first one is my love to Steiff's Treff dog, the second one is the fascinating (and frustrating) world of parcel delivery, hence the title.

Let me tell you about Treff first.
From the very start of our Steiff collecting on, this bloodhound has had my heart. Although there are a lot of Steiff dogs I love, Treff has always been my favorite.
I couldn't even tell you why exactly. Is it the long ears, is it the cute nose? The color, the airbrushed details in the face, the eyes? I guess it's the whole package.

Over many years, a few of them made it into the collection, all of them sitting in different sizes from 4 to almost 20 inch (not in all nine sizes, though), in mohair and velvet. These are smaller ones, the big ones sit in the back of the cabinet and I'll admit I didn't want to move the animals in front of them.

Treff was a popular dog not just with me and therefore stayed in the Steiff lineup from 1928 to 1938, also standing up, as a ride animal, with a music box inside, on a pincushion -  and as a puppet on which I had had my eager eye on from the beginning.

I don't know if you have noticed it in the group photo, but their eyes don't all look the same.
The design was patented, the eyes are not just sewn on, but embedded and part of them is covered by the fabric for the distinctive bloodhound look.
As quoted by Steiff Gal, Steiff's US distributor Borgfeldt once wrote "the slanting, half-covered eyeball, which gives this dog’s face a particularly thoughtful, intelligent expression."
In fact, however, you see Treffs where the eyes don't look like that because the fabric has slipped behind the eye. I usually leave them like that because I don't want to mess with the eye and fabric to avoid tearing.

Can you see how the look changes?

I'm in love with the Steiff animal hand puppets and especially with the pre-war ones, and when a Treff finally turned up for sale after years, the ex got it for my birthday.
Probably only a collector will be able to imagine my excitement waiting for the parcel.

And that brings us to the wonders of postal services ...
Back then you didn't get emails and you didn't have live tracking. Delivery notices were still on cards being thrown in your mailbox telling you to pick the parcel up elsewhere although you had been home all day.
What was really disturbing in this case, though, was not getting a notice or a parcel, but then being told that the parcel had been delivered ...
What had they done to my Treff??

So I called the hotline. At least I didn't have to deal with a chatbot back then, but of course I still had to "number press" my way through to a human who then explained to me that I would have to call a sorting center in Munich.
I live 200 km from Munich. The parcel didn't go via Munich. "Doesn't matter, you have to call Munich". Once I finally had a person on the phone there ... you may have already guessed it ... "Why are you calling us?" "Heck if I know, the hotline said ..." "Yeah, you are wrong here, try the hotline again." With the help of a little whimpering and begging from me not to send me back there, they gave me at least the direct number to the right sorting center near us.

There I got to talk to a very nice man who had strange news for me. Yes, the parcel had been delivered today, yes, they had a signature from my husband. Stop, stop ... we always had both names on parcels because of our different names, but I had been home, not he.
I asked him what the name was and he didn't hesitate to tell me, so my next question was if it was difficult to read and he said not at all. I explained to him that it couldn't be my husband's signature for two reasons - he wasn't home and his signature was absolutely not readable because it didn't even have individual letters. He said he'd fax it to me (yes, it was that long ago) which only confirmed what I knew already.
WHO had MY Treff?

I was worried and angry because after all we are not only talking a certain financial but also emotional value. This isn't something easily available for replacing.
He promised to send the parcel guy by our house to see if it helped him remember the parcel and where he had taken it to.
When he called me back, he let me know that my parcel had been delivered to a town three miles from here. To a different person in a street with a different name who had seen - of course because the address had been correct and readable - that it wasn't for him, but decided to keep the parcel "just in case". What case? That the actual owner wouldn't investigate?
Of course, they didn't tell me the name of the person, but does it sound to you as if that was an honest mistake? I didn't even believe that person had the same last name as my husband.
At any rate, the next day Treff traveled to the right house and here he has been ever since.

Nostalgia - Frankenwolf and friendship

Let me tell you a bit about my girl Frankenwolf.
Frankenwolf has to thank my friend Jenn and a mutual friend of ours for her existence. Said friend - also a collector - had asked her at one time to take a Steiff puppet and a Steiff figure and turn them into a new creation.
That inspired Jenn to do the same with Frankenwolf.

Now that might sound quite gruesome to you, beheading two Steiffs and sewing them together, but of course that's just part of the story.
Let's have a look at Frankenwolf's donors.

Steiff has a long history of making German Shepherd dogs, they have been around for over 100 years. Their ancestors, however, still had a bad image which was probably the reason why it took until 1956 before they appeared in Steiff's production.
The first Steiff wolf was a hand puppet named Loopy after the Latin "lupus" which means wolf. That's not surprising to me as there weren't just nice, cuddly puppets, but it could also be useful to have a "villain" (like our childhood non-Steiff devil who was my favorite with his red head). Loopy was produced from 1956 to 1978. He had an open mouth with four fangs and a long red felt tongue. It wasn't unusual for fangs and/or tongues to get lost during play eventually, though.

I always called the one on the right Grandma Wolf,
she seems to be a very happy wolf.

The wolf remained a rare animal in Steiff's line. There are two sizes of a standing Loopy - the smaller one has a closed, the bigger one an open mouth - which were only made for one year in 1964 (one of my personal favorites). Later wolves sometimes turned up as a companion, for example with a Red Riding Hood doll or a polar bear.
The puppet used for Frankenwolf was in very bad shape. Actually, it's surprising that it still had all the fangs. Before throwing the head away as well, though, this was definitely the better choice.

The body was taken from a Micki figure who had a different problem.
First a (very short) word about Mecki. He's a hedgehog who originally came from a German puppet film and became the mascot of a TV magazine where he got his own cartoon. Mecki's wife is called Micki, the children Macki and Mucki. The character had always been quite popular (to be honest, I have never been a fan myself), so Steiff got themselves the licensing rights and made their own versions of the whole family from 1951 on.
Now the early versions had a little problem. The heads were made from rubber which tended to dry out and deteriorate. Later versions were made of a different material.

Pictures by NoName_13 via Pixabay

Well, and Micki had the same problem, but her body was quite okay (even if she had lost her apron and her shoes are a bit scuffed).
Jenn also added a tail and different arms.

Frankenwolf means more to me, however, than just being a unique addition to my collection.
A few years ago I told a little about how I met Jenn. The ex and I were in the USA for the first time and got the chance to visit FAO Schwarz in San Francisco (which closed down over 20 years ago). Steiff made some wonderful and desired FAO Schwarz specials over the years some of which you can see in this video. We were like children in a candy store ... no, wait, toy store 😉

FAO Schwarz Manhattan, picture by Rob Young
 from the UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia

When we had exhausted ourselves (and our wallets just a little bit), we asked if there was something like an American Steiff club or a way to get in contact with other collectors. They didn't have any information on that, but they gave us Jenn's number (let me remind you that data privacy wasn't such a big thing yet back then and in this case I'm very glad about that). Jenn had repaired studio Steiffs - amazing lifesize plush animals - for them before.
Then we sat in our hotel room and the ex decided I had to call Jenn. I was so nervous. How do you explain best to a stranger that you got their number from the toy store because you are a German Steiff collector? I needn't have worried. After five minutes, she offered to show us around everywhere. I told her that unfortunately we were leaving the next day, and that could have been the end of it - but it wasn't.
We exchanged addresses and started writing each other letters, then we went from letters to phone calls which might show you how important this had become for us. This was before cell phones and texting, emails or chats.

The next year we went to the US again and that time we would meet Jenn in San Francisco and I would go home with her where the ex would join his conference was over. That was also when I fell in love with White Dude, by the way, the cat that the previous residents had left behind at Jenn's place and who went back to Germany with us as her own cats didn't want him there, little punks (I loved them, anyway).

That was almost 35 years ago.
We visited Jenn, she visited us, later just me. We have a lot of stories and memories, good ones and not so good ones because that's how life is.
I wish we didn't have about 5,800 air miles between us and could just hang out, have tea (or tap water that she insists on 😉) and cake, talk, laugh, and do fun stuff. The distance makes spontaneous dates just a tad difficult. Time difference and work schedules can also make it difficult to talk, but when we do, we get a lot of stuff covered.

When I said that Frankenwolf means more to me than just a toy, this is what I mean. Friendship. She does ... and my little gnome you have seen before does ... and the surprises Jenn got me on fleamarkets, the teddies she taught me how to sew, and the time she gave me a duplicate key to her place as a sign of her friendship which actually made me tear up.
Can someone please finally invent that transporting device that I need so badly?
But even if we haven't seen one another for several years, we think of each other, and I sure hope I made her ears ring now. As we always say to each other at the end of a call .... love ya, my Jenn.

Nostalgia - Snails

"When Mr. Peter Knoppert began to make a hobby of snail-watching, he had no idea that his handful of specimens would become hundreds in no time. ... 'I never cared for nature before in my life,' Mr. Knoppert often remarked - he was a partner in a brokerage firm, a man who had devoted all his life to the science of finance - 'but snails have opened my eyes to the beauty of the animal world.'"
That's from the beginning of one of Patricia Highsmith's short stories about humans and snails, this one being "The Snail-Watcher", the other one "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" (both of which you can find here (although there are two versions for "The Quest")).

Highsmith loved snails and kept hundreds of them as pets. She took them along to parties sitting on lettuce in her handbag and she smuggled them into France in her bra because she didn't want to leave them behind in England.
I read both of her snail stories at a young age in an anthology, but "The Snail-Watcher" impressed me more, and the image my mind formed of the ending has its own little room in my head jumping out every time I see a snail.
If you know the stories, you can imagine why. Have I mentioned it being a horror anthology?

There are other snails in my childhood memories, like the freshwater snails in the ponds of the park near my home.

We used to walk around on the walls and look for snails (we always left them there in case you wonder). From what I remember, my guess is that they were great ramshorn and great pond snails. There were fewer of the ramshorns, and I was convinced that this made them the Queens of the Snails, so it was very exciting to see one of them.

Left: Great ramshorn snail
Right: Great pond snail
Picture by Se90 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Of course, we were also fascinated by land snails (not slugs, they creeped me out, especially after a big rain when the path up to the woods was covered with them, it looked like an invasion). The most common one you see here is the garden banded snail, but it was special to find escargots (which we call "Weinbergschnecken", literally "vineyard snails").
My friend and I once found two of them in the street and decided to put them in a safe spot in a garden, but the garden owner was outside and told us not to dare, so we left them on a wall (although they and other kinds of snails are no pests!). Afterwards, I worried a lot about their fate for quite some time, thinking we should have found a really safe spot. Sorry, little snails!
I would also like to apologize for being one of those annoying kids who sometimes poked your eyes to see you pull them in and for picking you up by your shell, we didn't know that it can hurt you.

Actually, I haven't seen any escargots in the wild in years, but snails kept inspiring me in my creative journey, in wire wrapping, needle felting, and bead embroidery.

And then there is Nelly of course.
Nelly came in two colors, blue and brown with spots, and a size of 10 cm. In the 60s, Steiff had a few designs that were only produced for a short time - 1961 to 1963 for Nelly - and were quite unusual for cuddle buddies.

Beside Nelly, there were for example bats and colorful spiders (and I could still cry over the story the lady from the toy store told us about not being able to sell them and throw them out instead of candy during the town's carnival parade, argh!).
When the ex and I got our first Steiff price guide, we immediately knew we wanted to have all of them, not for their rarity, but because we thought they were really cute (I still think that).

Nelly is made from cotton velvet with faux leather underneath and has a painted rubber shell and rubber tentacles/feelers whose ends were prone to break off as you can see on one of them.
Isn't this little pair adorable?

Did you notice something about them, though? With those shells they are no land snails and I never thought about that until today. I wonder why Steiff made that choice.

There you have it, my snail memories.
I spared you one when I inadvertently ste.... nah, let's forget about that.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot - Week 150

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

Something went wrong during the assignment of the Easter eggs to the new trainees Wilma and Otto ...

Are you ready for the Easter weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Our New Vista.

Ann from Our New Vista says: "Hi - I am a retired School Librarian who loves to read, cook, decorate, travel, and enjoy the good life with my amazing husband of over 40 years! Hope to share my journey of downsizing and enjoying life!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

I never made it to Hamburg myself, so I enjoyed the pictures Barbara took even more.

Mireille is showing us combinations using her denim overalls. 

Laura is sharing springtime dips.

Lemon and poppy seed - Esme is teaming them up in pancakes.

Amy made some adorable bunny cards.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

I'm not affiliated with Steiff in any way, I'm just a collector.

Too late

"We're too late."
"We knew it would be tough taking the fawns along, Master Gnome, but hey, it was a nice family trip even if we didn't make it. The thought counts, doesn't it?"

Marsha, they tried to make it in time for your "Style Imitating Art" post, but you know how it is.
"Are we there yet?" "I can't walk anymore." "Can I have an icecream?" "Carry me!"
I wish we'd live closer to each other, we would have had you covered for all your deer needs (even if they are European roe deer).

All roe deer are of course vintage Steiff (no affiliation, I'm just a collector), the gnome was sewn by my deer dear friend Jennifer, I love him so much.

Barbie's Wardrobe - Patio Party

I'm not a fashionista. I'm ... you could say... a wearer of clothing. I like my clothes to be comfortable and the right size and possibly not to have holes or spots (that part is not always easy if you have cats).
There are features I love, like pockets in dresses or 3/4 sleeves, but beyond that, I'm fairly undemanding and not adventurous.
That doesn't mean I don't like to look at clothes at all, especially those that I would never be able to wear myself, due to money, my size, lack of occasion, etc. There are still ways to bring Haute Couture into my life, though. I mean Barbie and her friends.
I have always been fascinated by miniatures and Barbie's vintage outfits with their tiny zippers and buttons and buckles and accessories are incredible. This is my "fashion life", either through my own small collection or pictures.
(And yes, I do know Barbie's body isn't natural, I knew it as a child and I never strived to look like her ... if I had, something would have gone wrong).
Let me give you a glimpse in Barbie's wardrobe every, now and then.

Today we make a little trip into the mod era. Actually, this time both our model and her outfit are from the same time period, 1967 - 1968, that is.

Are you ready for a party? This pretty (not so young) lady is.
She's a TNT Barbie with titian hair. TNT stands for "Twist'n'Turn" meaning she could not only turn her head sideways, but also her waist (like her British friend Stacey I wrote about the other day). She also had bendable legs.
Her straight hair with the irregular cut and the bangs came in four colors - "Chocolate Bon-Bon" (dark brunette), "Sun Kissed" (pale blonde), "Go Go Co Co" (brown/brownette), and "Summer Sand" (ash blonde). The titian is not an official color and isn't seen that often. It's still discussed if there are some genuine redheads or if it's always a result of oxidization.

Barbie is showing us a fabulous mod outfit called "Patio Party".
Mod designers sure knew how to combine colors.

Barbie is wearing a nylon jumpsuit in a multicolor paisley/floral print with very wide palazzo pant legs.
The asymmetrically colored overdress is from a midnight blue and a contrasting vivid green satin.
I chose this for her to wear because I think it goes great with her titian hair.
The high heels pick up the blue from both the jumpsuit and the overdress.
This hostess ensemble is in the tradition of older ones with the difference of the wide pant legs and of course the colors.

The only accessory is a pair of funky earrings. While the outfit itself - manufactured as #1693 - is one of those 1600s fashions that is easier to find, the earrings are hard to come by and can be replaced by reproduction earrings.
I got this outfit from the original owner, though, completely with earrings. Given how small and easy to lose they are, it is amazing to me that she still had them!

If you wonder why Barbie isn't wearing them, however, let me quickly mention the bane of the green ear. That may sound like the title for one of my early silent horror movies (or a book from the series of The Three Investigators), but it's just silent horror.
The vinyl of the dolls can react with the metal of the earrings and the green can really spread. Better not take chances at all as it's well possible you can't get rid of it!
Even without the earrings, it's such a cool outfit to wear to a patio party, though.

For full disclosure, I edited the doll stand out of the picture, but didn't change anything about the outfit.

Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel in any way.


Sources:

1. Sibyl DeWein and Joan Ashabraner: The Collector's Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls and Collectibles. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1994
2. Sarah Sink Eames: Barbie Doll Fashion, Vol. II, 1968 - 1974. Paducah, KY, Collector Books, 1997
3. Vintage Barbie Patio Party. On: Fashion Doll Guide
4. Vintage Twist'n'Turn Barbie Doll. On: Fashion Doll Guide

Nostalgia - How toys become real

A few weeks ago, I read "The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real" for the first time. The book isn't a children's classic here in Germany, but I had seen it mentioned every, now and then and figured it was about time to read it.
If you don't know it, here's the plot.

Not a velveteen, but an artificial silk plush Steiff
bunny from the 1940s (not complete, but in
wonderful condition)

There are different kinds of collectors.
Collecting can be about diversity of items, a shared detail, about the monetary value or the emotional one, about the perfect or the imperfect look, about color, about use, about rarity, about history, about sentimentality ... I could keep going on like this.

As a collector of Steiff animals, I can say that a unplayed with vintage Steiff, possibly even complete with button, chest and ear tag which get ripped off easily by children's hands (no safety buttons back then), has something very special. It never fails to make me wonder how that is even possible. Has it spent the last 50, 70, 100 years or more in a cabinet, never touched? Has it been living in a bubble (I use the word "living" on purpose, you'll see why)?
I would lie if I said I don't know how breathtaking an old "new" Steiff can be. There are collectors who only look for those, and they are ready to pay the price for the (often) few chosen ones.

And then there are the others.
I'll never forget the fleamarket where I found this little fellow. I ran to drag the ex over to the stand to let him know I had fallen in love.

Now you might not understand how someone can fall in love with the obvious victim of a moth attack that has swingy limbs.
You might even think that this is a bit yucky or disturbing.
I, however, saw an 80 year old friend (over 100 now).

A child loved him so much that he stayed around although he had lost most of his fur, loved him so much that someone made the effort to give this little fellow new paw pads from white leather (now worn as well), sewn on very neatly and secure.
I remember how on edge I was as a kid when my own teddy had holes in his felt paw pads and I watched my mother sew on new fabric ones.

The child is probably not here anymore, but he is, and oh, the stories he could tell! Maybe he was like my teddy and saw his child grow up and get old before ending up at a fleamarket in Marin County just to be found by a pair of Germans and being taken back to within 60 kms from where he once came.

The velveteen rabbit is told: "Real isn't how you are made ... It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." ...
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Spoiler alert: The nursery magic Fairy turns him Real, a real little rabbit.

I have no doubt that this teddy became Real to his child like the velveteen rabbit to his boy because he was loved (even though he still has his shoe button eyes). Maybe he's still waiting for his fairy and I'll happily give him the spot with some other teddy friends to do so.

Because that's the kind of collectors we were and there are others like us. They don't just love the perfect ones, they love the loved ones, the played with, the "flawed" ones those we wish could tell us their stories, all of them, not just the good ones ...
Just saying.
Each of them has their own beauty.

From my children's book cabinet - Sue Barton

First of all - before you're coming at me now if you know the "Sue Barton" series, I know these are not children's books, but YA books.
There's a mix of both in what I have always been calling my children's book cabinet.

I never wanted to be a nurse myself. Nothing about it appeals to me personally. I can see my own blood, but not that of others, to start with. I can feel faint just from smelling a hospital on entering it. Mostly, though, I think I'm too soft ... or in other words, a wimp.
Feeling like that makes me appreciate nurses even more for being able to do this. I have been around one or two in my life (and haven't been happy with all of them, after all we are humans) and I'm friends with one or two as well.
So why have I read "Sue Barton" and why do I even own the books myself?
Oh, and if you don't know the series, who even is Sue Barton?

"Sue Barton" is the story of a young woman from student to staff nurse told in seven books written between 1936 and 1952 by Helen Dore Boylston who was a nurse herself.
Her books are among the first to define the YA category.

Boylston worked as a nurse in a field hospital during World War I and wrote a book about that experience as well. She stayed in Europe working for the Red Cross in different countries.
After meeting author Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder), they decided to drive from Paris to Albania in a Model T. They lived in Albania for about a year before returning to the USA, a book based on their journal and letters was published in 1983.

Helen Dore Boylston, ca. 1928

After losing money during the Depression, Boylston went back to nursing and then began to take up writing more seriously.
She based her Sue Barton books on her own experiences and real people she knew, she even kept some of the real names, but insisted on Sue not being autobiographical, but the nurse she would have liked to be herself.
Her aim was not to convey a romantic but a realistic picture of nursing, and her protagonist followed different paths during her career just like she had herself.

There are seven books in the series, "Sue Barton: Student Nurse", "Sue Barton: Senior Nurse", "Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse", "Sue Barton: Rural Nurse", "Sue Barton: Superintendent of Nurses", and the last two which followed some years later, "Sue Barton: Neighborhood Nurse", and "Sue Barton: Staff Nurse".

The first two books see Sue and her friends Kit and Connie train at a famous hospital. She falls in love with young doctor Bill Barry and gets engaged, but insists on working as a nurse before getting married.
In the third book, Sue and Kit work for the Henry Street Settlement as visiting nurses in New York. Bill, who has taken a job as a rural doctor, has changed his mind about waiting and wants to get married as soon as possible which leads to a breakup, but not for long.
When his father dies, Bill has to postpone the wedding. Sue wants to be near him and organizes a job as a rural nurse for herself in the fourth book.
Sue and Bill get married at the start of the fifth book and Sue works as the head of the new hospital's nursing school, but isn't sure she's right for the job. The marriage gets a bit rocky, but at the end Sue is pregnant with her first baby and resigns from the school.
In the sixth book, Sue and Bill have three children. Sue regrets having given up nursing, but finds her experience also helps her in the family and around the neighborhood. Kit is now head of the nursing school.
The final book sees Bill taken ill. He has to stay in a sanatorium for months, so Sue needs to go back to work and care for her now four children with the help of an old friend. Bill recovers, and although the end is open, it still seems to hint at Sue going to give up working again when he comes back.

In Germany, the books were first published as a three volume edition in the 50s. More editions followed, but only later as the series of seven volumes. I remember how surprised I was when I first saw the seven paperbacks at our book store because I thought I had missed something until I read the descriptions.

Susanne Barden - Hinaus ins Leben
 (Sue Barton: Student Nurse/Senior Nurse)
Susanne Barden - Weite Wege
(Sue Barton: Visiting Nurse/Rural Nurse)
Susanne Barden - Reifen und Wirken
(Sue Barton: Superintendent of Nurses/
Neighborhood Nurse/Staff Nurse

I hated these covers and treated myself to a set of the edition I knew from my childhood as a birthday gift this year.
So sentimental, I know! The newer covers, however, always made me think of dime novels from the medical field (which takes me back to the shelf where they kept all the pulp fiction in the grocery shop of my childhood, so funny what we remember). I even liked the old font better.
Aren't they pretty?

For this post, I compared parts of the first books in English (which I found on The Internet Archive) and German, and the translation seems to stay true to the content for the most part, but is rather free in regards to the style.
There have also been some smaller cuts to the text. Maybe the reason for that was them turning seven books into three. I still don't approve and wonder why they felt they had to make the series a trilogy in the first place.
Sue Barton becomes Susanne Barden and a few of the other names are changed as well (which I only understand in one case in which the name has a special meaning).
What surprised me was that Fahrenheit wasn't changed to Celsius because that's something I'd have done. 68 Fahrenheit meant nothing to me as a kid.

My sister was the first one to borrow the books from our city library and she liked them (although she also didn't want to be a nurse), so I read them as well. That must have been around the second half of the 70s.
I don't think I really thought about how old exactly the books were, in the 70s they didn't seem that dated to me yet, after all I had absolutely no knowledge of nursing and you could have sold me anything.
I then bought the books for my collection as a grown-up. Of course it became clear to me then how old they were, but by now it was just a vintage read, anyway.

My favorites were the first one and a half German books (English 1 to 3) and the last third of the third book (English 7). I enjoyed the others as well, but not as much although at the time I never gave it much thought why that was. Do you already suspect something?

When I read the books again for this post, it was so obvious to me. Unlike others, I wasn't a fan of Bill.
My favorite books showed Sue as an independent woman who was following her dream and was good at it (okay, maybe a bit too good to be realistic, but it's fiction after all), and Bill wasn't featuring in them very prominently. Sure, he was the love interest, but for me romance wasn't the important part in these books. I think he lost me when he got really pushy about the marriage although he had promised Sue before that he would wait.

In one book, Sue called Bill "too serious, I sometimes think" (or something like that, I only know the line in German).
To be frank, to me he sometimes seems more like a spoilt child, no matter what a wonderful doctor he is, while Sue comes over as a lot more mature.
Boylston never got married, by the way, and neither did Kit in the books who is one of my favorite characters.
Then, however, I remind myself again of the time those books were written. The 30s were a time when women started to gain independence, for example in professions like nursing, but the 50s when the last two books were published wanted to see women back in the home, at the stove, and caring for husband and children.
At least, Sue could prove that she was able to survive without the man in the house.

I agree with a blogger, though, who wrote "I think the author sold out to the publishers on that one."
Granted, when Bill is telling Kit he will be coming home soon and wants to surprise Sue, she's sure Sue will give up working, but Bill wonders if she won't be missing it. Kit says that it's up to her and him to decide and Bill replies that it's up to Sue. It's just that I got the feeling from it that he hopes for her to quit and I don't seem to be the only one. Maybe we don't trust Bill to have grown up enough to understand?
As it is the last book, I guess we can decide ourselves what Sue is actually doing next.

I can't really tell you why I love reading these books, but every, now and then I grab them and still have fun with them, still feel Sue's passion about her work, still get annoyed about Bill and am still glad I'm not a nurse (as should every patient).

P.S. I seem to remember having seen Boylston's other series about actress Carol Page in the library or elsewhere, but don't think I've ever read them.
I have also never read Cherry Ames, another popular series about a nurse. Actually I had never even heard of her before researching for this post and couldn't find a German translation for the books.


Sources:

1. Katherine Ashenburg: Rereading: Sue Barton and Me. In: The American Scholar 72(2003),3, pp. 137 - 141 (closed access)
2. Deborah Philips: Healthy Heroines: Sue Barton, Lillian Wald, Lavinia Lloyd Dock and the Henry Street Settlement. In: Journal of American Studies 33(1999),1, pp. 65 - 82 (closed access)
3. Rebecca M. Douglass: Middle Grade Monday: Helen Dore Boylston. On: The Ninja Librarian, November 1, 2021
4. "lunacat101": Helen Dore Boylston (1895-1984), Part I, II, III. On: Authors' real lives, January 3, 2015 - April 5, 2015 - September 19, 2015
5. Travels with Zenobia - Paris to Albania by Model T Ford : A Journal by Rose Wilder Lane and Helen Dore Boylston. Ed. by William Holtz. Columbia & London, University of Missouri Press, 1983

Random Saturday - It's a small world ...

We all have our stories, I'm sure.
Meeting someone in a foreign country and they are from your hometown.
Meeting someone and learning you are somehow related.
Meeting someone away from home and finding out you have the same friends.
Stories like that.

Just recently, my sister and I added a new one to our repertoire.

Of course, our town has changed quite a bit since we were kids and keeps changing. Old houses get torn down, new ones built, there's construction, shops close down, new ones open up, a shop building gets transformed into flats, etc.
Sometimes I will walk somewhere and try to remember what a shop was called that used to be here or what the building looked like that used to be where there's a big hole all of a sudden.
Even as a child I have been a fan of old photos, and in these moments I think it's a pity we don't have more photos from around town.
There have always been people taking pictures, though, and there have been postcards, and some of these turn up on social media, on websites selling postcards for collectors, and on eBay.

Every, now and then we go through them and in very rare cases, we even get one - like the one I'm going to tell you about now.

My sister called to say I should have a look at that one postcard of our "Stadthalle" (which literally translates to "town hall", but your "town hall/city hall" is called "Rathaus" here, it's a place for plays, concerts, talks, antique fairs, balls, which can also be rented for big weddings) and its park.
As kids we were in the park a lot because we lived almost next to it, playing, reading, looking for tadpoles.
It was interesting to see how small the trees to the right still were back then, how different the paths looked, the flowers around the little springs were missing, the building still had the clock and the old logo ...

The seller also had a picture of the back. I edited private information out even though the card is from 1976.

In translation, the text reads:
"Dear Mrs. ...!
Thank you very much for your kind Christmas and New Year wishes which I warmly return. I live right next to the Stadthalle ^xx now. It's really nice! How are you? Are you all well? Kind regards! ..."

I read out the signature to my sister and still wondered why that name sounded so familiar to me when she said "What??".
The name had been familiar because she had had a neighbor with the same name ... living next to the Stadthalle ... in the same house as her ...
That's when I noticed. The card had been written in red, but there were those two black x next to the word Stadthalle, and there was a black x on the vertical line with the postcard printer's name and what we both had missed before, there was ... no kidding ... my sister's address!
Her neighbor had sent this card!

That means the postcard went to Austria in January 1976 and almost 50 years later it came back to Göppingen via a postcard dealer in Berlin, back to the same house where it was probably written ... in the flat where another family member of mine is living now!
I have to admit I got goosebumps a little and yes, of course we bought it.
Seriously now, what are the odds?

Do you have a story about the "small world"?
If so, I'd love to hear it!

P.S. See the number I circled in? Our zip code, you would think ... wrong, it's a typo, our zip code was 732 then!