November 9, 2025, Meeting

November's meeting was a little different. Our club has been collecting donations to contribute to Austin's Blue Santa program, which provides toys to economically disadvantaged children. We had someone generously donate her childhood collection of Madame Alexander dolls, mainly eight-inch Alexander-kins in the traditional dress of different countries. These were later dolls, dating from the 1970s and later, and although the dolls and their colorful costumes were in excellent condition, the original latex bands used to string them had deteriorated. Some of the dolls were wobbly and others were already coming apart. We certainly couldn't give them to little girls in that condition. So our November meeting was a restringing bee, with some members undressing or re-dressing the dolls, while others restrung the dolls with sturdy new elastic. 

Some of the restored dolls read to go to their new homes.

This was actually the second collection of Alexander-kins dolls donated to the club. This earlier collection was also in wonderful unplayed-with condition, but suffered from the same deteriorated rubber bands, and previously members Jenell Howell and Sharon Weintraub had restrung this earlier donation. Some of the dolls still had their boxes; for the others, Jenell donated a cache of extra Madame Alexander boxes and Sharon contributed white gift boxes, so every doll had a box and was ready for gift wrapping. Over 60 beautiful Madame Alexander dolls were donated to Blue Santa.