Life-size Crochet Doll Update

I think I mentioned that the kiddos are playing with the life-size doll a lot more this year, which means she’s getting really beat up. I don’t mind though. They seem to be really enjoying playing with her and that’s what I was hoping for.

However, her little shorts kept falling off whenever they dragged her (and I do mean dragged) from one place to another. As they were pulling her from her hair, caveman style, her shorts would go down. While they’re whipping her hair all around, she’d be losing her shorts. Enough was enough. I had to give her a little dignity. I worked up some shorts that would never fall off again. I found some yarn in our drawer and got to work. When done, I sewed them to her body. Those shorts aren’t going anywhere!

Do you like my new shorts? And where’d my glasses go?!

CYC Level 2 Certification

Initially I had planned to do separate posts about my progress on the second course of the Craft Yarn Council’s Teacher Certification program. Time got away from me, though, what with going back to work and being crazy busy with getting back in the swing of things. We’ve been back a full week now and I had a breakthrough moment with one of my 4th grade girls and single crochet, but I digress, that will be for another post.

Back to my swatching.

Swatches everywhere!

I have completed most of the required swatches for the program and have left the required lesson plans and the sweater for last. The sweater will be considered the final exam. I won’t go into the gory details of each swatch, only the more interesting ones but I will say that I made each swatch at least 3 times trying to make them perfect. Some required a lot of undoing and redoing to get the right gauge, but in the end, I was happy with the results.

Back at Work

I was going to write a post about how I’m doing on Level 2 of the teaching certification but I’m back at work and have spent the last week getting ready for the return of the kids on Thursday. On Friday, I got to sit down for a few minutes (and I do mean a few) and was crocheting shorts for the life-size doll. Why does she need shorts I hear you ask? Well, this new crop of Kinders really went to town playing with the doll.

You can almost see the pulled eyebrow.

Since they didn’t see me make her and since I haven’t been as concerned with her well being like I was last year, they’ve been dragging her by the arms, legs, hair and anywhere else they can pull her from. She’s about their size so I know it’s hard for them to pick her up. One of her eyebrows has been pulled out (I need to get around to fixing that). In the process of all this pulling, her shorts keep falling off. They were a little loose to begin with so I decided to crochet her some shorts that will be sewn in at the waist.

As usual, I got some curious kiddos coming over to check out what I was doing. They all want to help and so I let them. Here is their idea of helping me.

They were unrolling the yarn for me. LOL Normally I don’t let them tangle up my yarn like that but it being the second day for my Kinders, one of my little helper was a little sad and missing her parents. It made her happy to ‘help’ me so I let her do it. It was easy to wrap it back up when it was time to put it away.

It’s never a dull moment. 🙂

 

Craft Yarn Council – Level II

So I just received my email instructions for level II of the Craft Yarn Council’s program. Umm…it looks tough! I just glanced over the assignments and there are a few things in there I’ll have to learn in order to complete the swatches. Like what’s a Flame Stitch? I looked on YouTube and it doesn’t look at like the diagram in the assignment sheet! The instructions are confusing too. That’s ok, I think I figured it out.

Then for the final assignment, I need to follow the pattern for a baby sweater without deviating from the pattern and making sure the measurements match. I think that’s the part that has me the most nervous. I hate following patterns. Their is a second option: making your own design making sure to include all the requirements. Normally I would choose this option but making clothes isn’t my strength in crochet.

I can make clothes but I usually just measure off of my own body or the body of the person I’m making clothes for (which isn’t very often) so I don’t think I want to do that. I can follow a pattern so I will do theirs. I just need to make sure I follow gauge and we all know I hate doing that. LOL

I’ll probably have to buy yarn because the pattern and some of the swatches call for yarns I don’t think I have. I don’t think I have baby yarn in my stash, although I might actually have some. How sad that I have so much yarn I don’t even know what I have! If you know me, you also know I hate wasting money and although I love buying yarn, I hate buying yarn to make something I have no use for. {What a whiner}. I will make the baby sweater and then make a big baby doll to put it on. Or better yet, I will pick the size that fits the life-size doll at work. She will now have a new sweater. 🙂

Overall, I’m excited to start this level. It looks like it will push me to learn some new things and test my skills.

Here goes…

Confession time, I already started! That’s the flame stitch in the middle. That one gave me some trouble. The one on the left is giving me trouble now. I can sort-of cross stitch but the way they want me to do it is new to me. It’s a learning curve for sure. The bottom one is my practice swatch. I kept having to undo the cross stitches. I think I have it figured out now but we’ll see.