How Gregor Became "Harry Potter"

Back in 2009, I purchased a 1970 dark haired Gregor waif from Jackie Kraemer at the first Rochester Sasha Festival. He was one of the smaller boys, and had a number of scuffs, scrapes, and dents on his body, a few ink "bruises", a nasty case of pinkeye, and a rather bad hair-do. Still, he had great face paint, and a sweet, if solemn expression. I picked him up, and as dolls will sometimes do, he "spoke" to me. Well, what could I do? I adopted him on the spot and brought him home.

Once we were home, I set to work with a BufPuff, Dawn dishwashing liquid, shampoo, and Oxy-10 to see about fixing the worst of the damage. He was a good sport about the whole process, and stood quietly and patiently while I worked on him. Eventually, I was able to remove most of the ink spots and the pinkeye staining with Oxy-10, and popped out some of the dents with a dip in very hot water. His hair, I discovered, had been cut rather short, especially on the back of his head, but I reasoned that sooner or later, I would get around to re-rooting the worst spots. After a few months, he was dressed and put into the doll room with the other Sashas and Gregors. He looked quite a bit better, but I kept thinking that something was missing. (Beside a stocking cap to flatten his hair, I mean!)

As I was surfing eBay one fine day, I ran across a seller that offered round doll glasses for sale, with gold or black wire rims. Hmm...I thought, maybe that's what the new boy needs. I ordered a pair of the black rimmed glasses, and when they came I tried them on him. They weren't perfect...I knew they'd need to be twiddled some for a better fit. Still, his eyes seemed to light up and he lost that "unfocused" look that had been bothering me. That's when he confided that his name was "Harry...you know, like Harry Potter." Well, that explained a lot! I mean, you'd probably be a little rough looking, too, if you'd been fighting Lord Voldemort!

Harry quickly became one of the favorites of the doll room, and a frequent visitor to the annual Sasha Festival. I began adding things to his wardrobe, some inspired by the costumes from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, some made specifically to go with Festival themes, and others just things that I thought were cute and looked kind of wizard-y, like the Halloween vest that he's wearing below.

After a while, Harry had a decent Muggle wardrobe, but he still wanted a Hogwarts school uniform and accessories. It wasn't until August of 2015 that I really started to get serious about working on it. My doll club decided to have a year long wardrobe challenge, where we would work on a wardrobe for one specific doll. I knew that mine would be for Harry, so after the August meeting, I set to work.

Stay tuned for more on how Harry's wardrobe took shape!