Raggedy Diana

As a young girl, I loved to play with dolls. For brief summer afternoons, I would convert my entire bedroom into some kind of massive doll party. From ruffled baby dolls to the hip and swinging Barbie, they would all be partaking of the festivities I planned for them.

BUT...there was a huge void, a vast emptiness, an aching cavern, a vital missing link...there was NO Raggedy Ann at any of my parties or anywhere else for that matter. That was not because I didn't nag the socks off of my mom for a Raggedy either.

Every type holiday that rolled around, I was asking for a Raggedy Ann doll. I would even ask for a Raggedy Ann doll for May Day or Secretaries Day or any other obscure holiday I could decipher on our calendar. Mom looked for Raggedy Ann but never could find one. There must have been a Raggedy shortage or something. I mean could there have been a shortage of rags?
Long story short, one summer day, my mom and one of my sisters got the idea to make me a rag doll. They used a real doll head but cut off all of its hair and then, glued on strips of an old sheet which they had torn to shreds for my doll's new  raggedy hair. Mom sewed a body out of some remnants of blue jean polyester type material and stuffed it with quilt batting. This doll was truly ragtag but I loved it!

I wish I still had that homemade doll. I have often wondered what happend to her...Diana, that is. That is what I called her. Raggedy Diana. Never imagining that someday there would be an elegant princess by that name, from that time forward she was the princess of  my dolls forever garnering the most coveted spot at all of my summer afternoon doll soirees.