Home Is Where the Dolls Are, Says Los Alamitos Teacher of Old-Time Skill

Rebecca Conrad is a modern woman with yesteryear yearnings, such as making dolls out of corn husks, wood and rags.

In fact, said the 33-year-old Los Alamitos mother of three, the sophisticated modern look in homes is giving way to the more traditional homey look. And the type of old-fashioned dolls she makes fits in with the decor.

Conrad teaches teen-agers and adults how to make dolls out of dry corn husks, rags and wood cutouts, a skill she learned mainly from library books. “I’ve never had any formal education in doll making,” she said. “I just seem able to make dolls.”

For some homeowners and parents, dolls are being used to decorate the home. “People are buying rocking chairs and putting old-fashioned dolls they make or buy into them as a way of turning their homes into a more traditional setting,” she said.

Conrad said the current baby boom helped promote that new look. “The parent of today wants dolls around the house for their children,” she said. “It gives them a sense of home and security.”

Her classes at the Los Alamitos Youth Center include the old-time skill of making wood doll cutouts and painting and dressing them in clothes. “We try to make many different types of dolls,” said Conrad, who goes deep-sea fishing when time permits.

She said the “satisfaction of making something yourself” is the important part of her class instruction.

“People get a great lift when they can say I made this with my own two hands,” she said. “Isn’t that great?”

For many people, the love of dolls lasts long into adulthood, said Conrad, who is planning on writing an instructional book with illustrations for future doll-making classes and hopes to form a mother-daughter class.

She said some students like the idea of reaching back to an earlier time in their lives, a time when dolls were important.

“I find most people don’t know what to do, and most are afraid to try making a doll,” she said. “It’s a good craft for anyone of any age because it’s time taken away from the hectic world we live in.”

Although she has been teaching doll making for just a year, “I don’t have any of the dolls I’ve been making,” she said. Most are given away as gifts.

She said she plans on keeping her collection of troll dolls.

“I try to keep myself busy with all types of crafts,” she said, noting that during her younger days she “was called ‘Fingers’ because I was always busy and doing something with my hands.”

The Friends of Los Alamitos-Rossmoor library will hold an auction of books at 8 p.m. Aug. 31, at the public library in the Rossmoor Shopping Center, according to Friends spokeswoman Xania Williams.

It will be a silent auction.

Fullerton resident Allen Deever, 29, who said one of his greatest fears “is that someone will accuse me of being normal,” just competed in Australia’s 2,100-mile camel race to celebrate its bicentennial.

He came in last to those who finished the race, which stretched through the Australian Outback to the eastern coast.

But his wife, Susan Deever, said just 13 of the 60 original camel racers finished the race. And because he was the most inexperienced, “The other camel drivers voted him the one most likely not to finish,” she said.

She allowed, however, that he is now more experienced than the other finishers, because it took him 911 hours to complete the race, nearly twice as long as anyone else.

The winner’s time was 460 hours.

But all was not lost. A film company in Sydney hired him to appear in a TV documentary about the camel ride.

Acknowledgments--Western Medical Center/Anaheim employees Colleen Murphy, Susan Barsdorf and Julie Ruhlander, all currently studying medically related subjects in nearby colleges, were presented scholarships totaling $2,000 by the center’s volunteer department. The money was raised through gift shop proceeds and special fund-raising projects.