Hairy Maclary Scalps

Makielab were kind enough to send me a couple of samples to play with, one pre-drilled scalp and one pre-marked but not drilled scalp.  I've dyed the latter brown and those results will come later, but here is the pre-drilled attempt!

Here is the original scalp Makielab sent me

This was a test to see how well we could root a Makies skull cap.

With the size of the holes, I would not recommend this for saran hair. The holes would def need to be smaller and the holes would need to be closer together.

My experiment was using Mohair.  I bought a packet of yadeno-mohair from Retro dolls here in the UK for rooting Blythe at Blythecon last year.

I used a 1mm crochet hook, the mohair and a hair brush like this They are available from Retro Dolls but I already owned one.  A bowl of water is also needed as the hair needs to be wet to root

Sorry I don't have picture step by step instructions but this is what I did.

The strands were approx 16cm in length when I pulled them apart so I inserted them in the hole doubled, so the length wet was approx 8cm

I wet the strands and then pulled them out, squeezing excess water, then laying them down on a waterproof board and gently brushed them to start separating the strands. I then dunked them again and started separating the strands so I had wet strands approx 1-2 mm in diameter. I then squeezed out the excess water and repeated this until I had about a doz strands to start with. I found this useful as I had a varigated color combination in my Mohair so I wanted to mix the colors throughout evenly.

I started by sticking the crochet hook from under the skull cap and hooking it around the middle of the wet strand and pulled it through about 3/4 of the way so I could put a small knot in the end. Once knotted, I pulled the strand back out again. I repeated this process until I used all the desired holes I needed.

Here are the results

Looks nice with a cap on...

For you Duckie - HAHAHA!!:D:D:D

Back view with hat

Picture without the hat, You can see that it is a bit sparce on the top

The back doesn't look too bad

Top view

You can see some very sparce patches

The cap finished - front view

The cap finished - Back view

Underneath where I have knotted-

Length of the hair

So you can see from the pictures, it wasn't necessary to root all the back holes. I had done this previously on my first attempt at rooting shown here -Hair Root Tutorial - But the weight of the wool made it top heavy for the doll to stand.

The top two circular rows I think are fine but then the bottom two rows are too far apart hence causing gaping holes. I had to use thicker strands which kind of made it harder to knot in some cases to give a more even covering but I'd be able to use thinner strands if the spacing was better.

Conclusion. I think this is a great idea but for mohair we need -

A: I think the row spacing could use 7 rows instead of the 6 printed
B. The spacing of holes on the rows after row 1 & 2 need to be the same spacing apart as row 2.

For Saran or Kanekalon rooting the holes would need to be much closer together

I would also like to see a part line as well :) either on the right or left side popping in a couple more holes in between the rows for about 5 rows?