Who was your first Hitty?

Who was your first Hitty? Mine was a Robert Raikes version that I found at the UFDC Region 8 conference in Greensboro, N.C., in 2002. I was so excited to find that doll, named Hitty Genevieve (Gee), though her life story is a sad one. (More on Gee another time.)

My introduction to Hitty came on About.Com's doll-collecting forum in the late 1990s. Someone mentioned the book, so I bought a copy. (Need I say that books are also something I collect?) And like a lot of folks, I fell in love with that little wooden doll and her indomitable spirit. Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, to have a Hitty doll? Little did I know that hundreds of other fans had thought the same thing and that there was a whole Hitty world out there to be explored.

And even littler did I know that one Hitty almost inevitably leads to another, and another, and another.... My Hitty clan, called the Garden Spot Hittys, now numbers 37. The number will no doubt grow!

My greatest joy in Hitty, though, is the outstanding group of people I have met who share my fascination with this doll and all her permutations.

If you are interested in learning more, there are two wonderful sites to check out: www.hittygirls.com and www.hitty.org. Managed by a creative mother-daughter team, I can't think of two better places to introduce Hitty to new friends.