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My friend Maggie introduced me to Hitty.

Hitty is a sweet little doll and main character in the book Hitty, Her First Hundred Years. I haven’t gotten hold of the book yet, but from what I picked up Hitty starts out as a bit of mountain ash and is carved by a family friend in Maine and given to a little girl and over the next hundred years she changes hands, meets famous people, and goes traveling the world until she winds up in an antique store window, which is where she narrates her story.

Of course our library wouldn’t have a copy, so it’s on reserve and I’m eagerly awaiting the call to tell me that it’s here.

hitty doll progress so far, just a hint of her nose has started to emerge

I don’t have any rowan handy, so I decided to make my Hitty from poplar. Google provided me with a few blank patterns to use as reference, so I drafted my own Hitty body but for the sake of simplicity I’m using Sara DeGroat Cole’s arms and legs straight out of the box.

Right now (as you can probably tell), I’m at the whittling stage. No fancy carving knives, no gouges, no rasps — just a nice simple pocket knife, some quiet music and a bit of time.