Fun with Dolls
December 31, 2008 at 7:50 am | In Crochet, Knitting | Leave a CommentAfter spending 10 years in the garage and only being recently and unexpectedly found again, the clothing of my collection of dolls I never really played with as a kid was in less than optimal condition. What a perfect excuse to do some fun knitting!
This evening dress is very simple: I cast on enough stitches to circle the body under the arms (28 stitches in my case) and knit in the round downwards. The skirt is created by increasing 8 stitches every fourth round. I used yarnovers for the increases, leading to a subtle pattern in the skirt. Increases in subsequent rows are done immediately before the previous increase, leading to a diagonal line of holes. I finished the skirt off with a crocheted picot edge, counteracting the tendency of stockinette to curl up.
I then picked up 11 stitches from the cast on to work the front of the dress, gradually decreasing down to five. The straps to close the dress in the neck, giving a back-free design, are done as a single crochet chain, and I worked a row of single crochet down the sides of the front and round the back of the cast-on row.
To make sure the doll doesn’t freeze when going out to her New Year’s Eve party, I started a scarf from the same yarn, to be sewn together at the arms in the “Sleeves” style from Versatility. This wasn’t finished when I had to leave, but my mom promised to finish it, so pictures will have to wait till I’m going back to my parents’ place.
Holiday Gifts
December 29, 2008 at 8:50 pm | In Crochet, Knitting, Lace | Leave a CommentNow that the holidays are over and I’m slowly catching my breath, I’ll try to catch up with what’s going on in the fiber department. We left the Waves of Grain scarf still blocking on the sofa in the last installment. After taking it off and admiring it, I decided the gift wrapping needed to fit with the contents.
I started by making an Irish crochet flower from gold-coloured thread:
The pattern for the flower is from Thérèse de Dillmont’s Irish Crochet Lace, which I found on the Weaving Digital Archives, which despite of its name has lots of goodies for all kinds of needlecraft. It’s the Third Wheel (fig. 17) on pages 9 and 10 of the book. Together with the red and gold wrapping paper it gives the present a festive look:
Since I couldn’t get any pictures in daylight before wrapping the present, I had to wait for it to be unwrapped again. My mom was really happy about this totally unexpected present, and I even managed to take a few pics in bright daylight over the holidays:
Of course there was more knitting going on over the holidays, but more on this in a later post.
Crocheted Bookworms
December 15, 2008 at 9:41 pm | In Crochet | 1 CommentWhile looking for something handmade to include in the Christmas presents for my nieces, I came across Michelle’s Bookworm Recipe. I immediately fell in love with those little fellows and had to make some, to live in the books for my nieces I’ve yet to buy. They work up really fast, it can’t have taken me much longer than 10 minutes to crochet one, and a few minutes more for finishing. They’re the perfect use for the odds and ends of variegated sock yarn I seem to be collecting.
While making those, I realized they might make the perfect project for a young child just learning to crochet. I remember the long lines of chain stitch that couldn’t really be used for anything my older niece produced one Christmas, but never really progressing beyond that. With this pattern, you could just have the child make the chain, and then work up the body yourself for the first few, giving instant success for everybody involved!
Since I think my nieces might want to make a few more of those for themselves or to give to friends, here’s what I did: After translating it into German, I printed the pattern out on a smallish piece of paper and mounted it on a piece of cardboard, so it doesn’t break easily. I included the picture of the bookworms in the corner. I’ll include this card in the present, and a copy will go to Grandma in case somebody needs help when I’m not around. It’s nice to see that at least one of my nieces seems to have inherited the fiber bug, and of course I’ll do everything to encourage her! 
Finishing my First Lace Scarf
December 14, 2008 at 3:34 pm | In Knitting, Lace | 1 CommentThings are moving considerably slower at the moment since I managed to break something in my right shoulder last week. But I still managed to finish Waves of Grain, the Christmas present for my mum. This project has several firsts for me: first project with laceweight yarn, first time knitting with beads, first time using kitchener stitch with a lace pattern, and first time blocking. I really wasn’t sure what I’m doing here, but things seem to work out just fine.
The project is worked in two halves starting from the ends and needed to be grafted together in the middle. The pattern recommends to knit a row with waste yarn on each side and then graft the parts together following the path of the waste yarn, but after trying this a couple of times and not succeeding I decided to take the waste yarn out and put the stitches on tow straight needles. I then used regular kitchener stitch to sew the parts together. After a bit of fiddling at the start that worked perfectly fine. Here’s the result in close-up (click to see details):
I then proceeded to give wet blocking a try. Here’s the scarf on my blocking board (usually used as a sofa 
) before blocking:
And here it is again after pinning it out. I used a big garbage bag to prevent the water from getting into the sofa.
Looks really nice, and I’ll be happy to give it away as a present. I’ll post a pic of the finished scarf later.
Canvas Box — Stitching finished
December 7, 2008 at 3:48 pm | In Embroidery | 1 CommentTags: Canvas Embroidery, needlepoint Box
I’ve finally finished stitching the side panel for the box I’m working following the Needlepoint Box Tutorial. I posted a picture of the lid earlier, but here it is again for comparison:
I used the same stitches in a linear pattern for the side panel, repeating some to get the appropriate width:
And here’s the joined panel, still without any filling:
I already turned the seam allowances to the back, so this is roughly how the boxes’ sides will look like when finished. Using a really dense stitch for the borders will help to hide the seam allowances when I start to assemble the box, and it also gives a finished feel to the whole design. The stitch I used is described under the name of Long Arm Cross-Stich at the ANG website, but is known under different names, too.
Now I only need to find the time and energy to finish this up, which is not going to happen anytime soon with Christmas just round the corner. But I like what I have till now, so I’ll definitely finish it.
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