Artigianati.com

A shipment of 60 handmade pocket dolls soon will be on its way to U.S. soldiers in the Middle East thanks to True Hope Evans, of Chagrin Falls.

The colorful dolls, knitted by Mrs. Evans and several of her friends at Hamlet Village, also are known as "undercover peace offerings" for soldiers to give to children they see on the street, she said. They're called pocket dolls, because they easily fit into a soldier's pocket and weigh practically nothing, she said.

She started the project over 1 1/2 years ago when she read an article about a woman in Atlanta making dolls to send to soldiers so they could give them to children they meet. She sent a box of 50 of her pocket dolls to the cause and decided to start her own program and asked some of her friends who knitted to help.

Mrs. Evans, 89, knows a little something about knitting. She and her twin sister, Athalie, both former models in the early 1940s for a national advertising campaign for Pepsodent tooth powder, learned the art from a woman they met on a train. Mrs. Evans knitted her way through her adult life, sweaters for her three children, dolls and scarves, and owned a knitting shop in Chagrin Falls. For 30 years, she volunteered at the Sassy Cat, a shop full of handmade items, such as dolls, kids' clothes, crafts and home accessories, with proceeds benefiting local charities....

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