Sasha Festival 2024 Day 1 - arrivals and gift exchange

The 2024 Sasha Doll Festival was held in Hotel La Tour, central Milton Keynes, UK from 20-23 June. it was organised by Petrana, with advice, help and assistance from Dawn L and many others. The overall theme was 'Embracing Sasha's Magic, Creativity and Friendship in England'.

The 2024 festival was local to us so we only had a 15 minute drive to the hotel, where my husband dropped us off with all our boxes, bags, dolls and display items. We arrived at the hotel on the Thursday afternoon to be greeted by several Sasha enthusiasts in the lobby, a wonderful meeting of old and new friends. Once we had checked into our room, we went to the refreshments area on the conference floor to chat with others, I handed over my donations to two of the 5 special doll raffles, helped JoAnn a little with setting up a Raffle doll display in the conference room and brought the festival journal down from Dawn's room on my trolley to Kim B who was setting up to run registration. Then it was time for registration, after which we entered the conference room for the gift exchange.

For the gift exchange activity, I had made a tweed skirt with a Shetland wool cardigan, wrapped it carefully and labelled it as instructed.

Melanie models the gift exchange outfit I made of a Shetland cardigan and tweed skirt

My daughter participated in the gift exchange, I watched and took photos. At previous Sasha festivals we have attended, the gift exchange has been done as a 'pass the parcel' activity in a big circle. This time, the gift exchange game was designed to encourage each person to talk about something Sasha related, our interest in Sasha, what we do with Sasha, which Sasha dolls we collect, etc. Janet had printed out cards with various topic options on them and the participants could choose which topic they would talk about when it was their turn. The first person was picked and chose a topic, talked for a few minutes, selected a gift from the bag and read out the name of the gift giver but did not open the gift. The gift giver became the next person to choose a topic to talk about and select a gift and so it went on. No one opened their gifts until the last person had spoken and received their gift, then everyone was instructed to open their gift. We found out lots of interesting things about each other and our dolls in this exchange of information and gifts, it was fun.

Janet explains the gift exchange activity

The gift my daughter received in the gift exchange game

Listening to Sasha stories during the gift exchange

Selecting a gift from the bag

Opening the gift

Wow - panda outfits for baby and toddler by Olga of Ukraine, donated by Kim O - thank you

Dressing our baby Nina in her Panda outfit

Baby Nina as a panda sitting with another baby dressed as a lion

Edmund wearing his panda hood and boots, Nina wears her panda onesie

The gift item we had donated to the game was received by Jane W.

After the gift exchange it was 'dinner on your own' so we popped into the centre to pick up a takeaway snack as we had our main meal at lunchtime when still at home. Then we returned to chat to others before going to our room.

Trudi, Trendon Elliott, Louisa, Melanie, Nina and Edmund in our hotel room

130 years since Sasha Morgenthaler was born

The Sasha doll groups on Facebook are celebrating 130 years since artist and doll maker Sasha Morgenthaler was born on 30 November 1893 in Switzerland, by sharing photos of our Sasha dolls with each other.

I have photographed a group of our Sasha dolls to celebrate the artistry of Sasha's dolls. There is a nod to her inspiration for the dolls in the form of Trendon Elliott wearing his evacuee outfit which I made for the recent Chat 'n Snap display, as Sasha was greatly moved by the World War II refugees who arrived in Switzerland and subsequently designed the various Sasha doll faces to be quite serious, they are not dolls with cheesy grins!

Her first Sasha dolls were the larger Studio dolls (20 inches tall), it was only later in the 1960s to early 1990s that her doll designs were recreated as 16 inch tall vinyl children and the 12 inch babies and 13 inch toddlers by Gotz and Trendon for commercial production. Our group is mostly Trendon (not the early Gotz as we don't have any of them) and our two later production Gotz toddlers, plus of course my only studio doll Trudi (1965).

Happy 130th Birthday Sasha Morgenthaler

Left to right: Toddler (Claudius) Edmund, (Caleb) Reuben, Studio girl Trudi on her chair, (White dress) Laura, (Marina) Florence, Toddler (Iona) Louisa, Trendon Elliott. Early Trendon babies left to right: Ebony, Davy with his pipe cleaner curled hair and waif Mabel (my first Sasha). They are wearing a variety of outfits by various people.

We won baby Ebony at the most recent Chat 'n Snap in the raffle. My elder daughter named her Ebony and said we should get her a little white kitten called Ivory, but I haven't found one yet.

Thank you to Sasha Morgenthaler for creating these beautiful dolls which have inspired so many of us to design and make beautiful clothes for them.

Chat n Snap 2023

A poignant theme of 1940s Evacuees was Dee's choice for the Chat 'n Snap this year. This was very topical in the light of wars happening around the world currently and fitting considering that Sasha Morgenthaler had been moved by the sight of refugee children arriving in Switzerland during World War II which subsequently influenced the Sasha doll face designs. 

Dee and her husband Paul created an incredible backdrop for a fictional St Ippolyts railway station (the nearest railway stations are Stevenage and Hitchin, there never was a branch line to the village of St Ippolyts) with young evacuees arriving in the countryside from bomb damaged London. More and more Sasha children arrived wearing 1940s clothes, carrying their gas mask boxes (and in some cases actual miniature gas masks made by their owners!), suitcases, teddy bears and parcels. Our blond boy Trendon Elliott joined the bewildered throng of evacuees. I brought along the Evacuees room box (1/12th scale) which my elder daughter and I had created when my younger daughter was born. I placed it at the end of the display, near our doll.

I gave my daughter the camera to photograph the scene as I knew she would do a better job than me and she did! I think she enjoyed getting some individual photos of some of the dolls and their accessories, the details achieved were incredible.

Trendon Elliott and his teddy bear joined the growing crowd of evacuees at the station

St Ippolyts station welcomes evacuees

Evacuees with their suitcases, favourite toys and the amazing red gas mask

Evacuees amongst the fresh produces and luggage trolley

Mostly girl evacuees in this photo

Warmly dressed evacuee Gregors and Sashas

Mostly boy evacuees in this photo

Sasha evacuee in her stylish coat, hat and handbag

Even her suitcase and boots matched her outfit colours

Trendon Elliott in his Argyll sweater and peak cap at St Ippolyts station

Dee announcing that the sales tables were now open

No philtrum Sasha evacuee

No philtrum Gregor evacuee (I understand he forgot to pack spare underwear)

Sasha evacuee at St Ippolyts station

This evacuee reminded us of Lucy from Narnia

Sasha evacuee with a friendly kitten

Evacuee kitten?

I think that kitten likes this evacuee, maybe she smuggled her kitten to the country on the train

Gregor evacuee

Very tidily dressed evacuee Gregors and Sasha

Gotz Gregor evacuee

Trendon Gregor evacuee

We had brought some other dolls to the Chat 'n Snap to go in the general doll display. For the first time my newly restored Sasha studio doll Trudi attended an English Sasha event, sitting comfortably on her chaise longue sofa with her quilt spread on it and a vintage book about the countryside to read. Alongside her a couple of want-to-be-Sasha course dolls sat down to chat (I don't recall who they belonged to). At the foot of her sofa, our toddlers Louisa and Edmund stood patiently alongside Miranda. Nearby was Laura and Nicholas James with Heilan Coo. 

Trudi (centre) with the two copy Sasha dolls and our toddlers

Trudi, Louisa, Edmund and Miranda

Trudi relaxing on her chaise longue and quilt

Miranda at the left, other visiting dolls, Laura and Nicholas James with Heilan Coo

There were plenty of other visiting dolls, including Dawn's recently refurbished wobbler.

Dawn's wobbler

Re-rooted babies playing together

Two Sasha girls

Molly and Heather according to their name tags

Some of the visiting Sasha and Gregor dolls

All the visiting Sasha's near the St Ippolyts sign

Four friends under the window 

A mixed group of friends

Sashas, toddlers and baby

Gregors in classic shorts and shirts, Sashas in smocked dresses

Colourful outfits and hair for this group of Gregors and Sashas

There were several sales tables and we prowled around looking first before making a few choices (my daughter was a sensible influence in helping prevent purchase of more dresses as our Sasha girls have more clothes than we do!)

General view of the sales tables with the St Ippolyts station of evacuees in the background

There was an adoption area too - for people to put dolls they wanted to sell (with the price) and for others to choose then find the owner to pay.

Adoption corner

There was a giant raffle, with 5 dolls (the draws for these took place at intervals throughout the raffle) and lots of other prizes - the raffle is always epic in length and towards the end if a ticket was drawn, the winner was asked to take 2 or 3 items to clear the table of prizes a bit quicker! We won an early brunette baby girl with 2 additional outfits, plus several other prizes.

Raffle prizes

More raffle prizes

Yet more raffle prizes

Raffle prizes including 4 of the 5 dolls

Raffle prizes including the wardrobe

The five raffle dolls (we won the brunette baby)

During the day we had lots of conversations with other Sasha enthusiasts, including some who were new to collecting Sasha dolls as well as plenty of familiar friends.

At the end of the raffle there was a special presentation to Dee and Paul to thank them for organising the Chat 'n Snap events from 2013 onwards (only a break in 2020). Dee had previously said this was the last one, there will not be one in 2024 because the Sasha Festival is taking place in England that year, however she said there might be a Chat 'n Snap in 2025 because she had an idea for a theme...

Tricia thanks Dee and Paul while Vanessa and Janet prepare to present them with gifts

Dee with her flowers

When we were tidying away at the end, I brought our evacuee to the rest of our dolls who were displayed beneath the St Ippolyts sign and took a group photo of them.

Trendon Elliott the evacuee in front of a sign for Norwich the Cathedral route

Our Sasha and Gregor family (with Heilan Coo) who attended the Chat 'n Snap 2023 in St Ippolyts

Thank you to Dee, Paul and all your helpers for a superb day (apparently over £1010.86 raised for charity at this event), we had a very good time and it was lovely to catch up with the Sasha community again.