It’s that time of year again when my hubby and I venture out to play at the Faire…and no ren fair is complete without a hurried crochet outfit.
Let me backtrack. I have been super busy with graduate school (currently pursuing a Masters in Library Science), and crochet time has suffered, and by extension, my blogging time. I have crochet outfits I can wear, but I wanted something new. So of course, I started crocheting two nights before our planned visit.
Instead of starting from scratch, I pulled out an older crochet outfit I had made for Disney bounding. I never wore it though so I figured it would be perfect. I would simply add on to it and voila, I’d have a new outfit.
This is the original skirt I was working with.
Well, that turned into two furious days of crocheting nonstop.
I was hoping to have finished my Sally outfit but I’ve gotten very busy with my graduate studies, AND I needed a break from the tiny work. When I’m free to crochet, I’ve focused on the throw blanket for my daughter. It’s mindless and easy and just what I need right now.
But I did get started on the doll and here is what I have so far.
I like the progress and here’s hoping I can get back to her soon.
My daughter has requested a throw blanket that looks like lined paper and sent me a couple of examples. I have no idea why someone would create a blanket that looks like paper, and would have never thought of it myself. But once I saw it, all I could think was why didn’t I think of it.
Yarn
After looking at the examples, I had to decide about the yarn. I have so much yarn. Yarn is coming out of my ears. I didn’t want to buy more yarn. I had white and blue, but unfortunately, I didn’t have enough of any single white color. I was so frustrated because I don’t need to buy more yarn! My child was willing to buy it (and I will probably take her up on it), but I decided to play yarn chicken and see if I could make it work. I have two large skiens of off-white that are close enough to each other to give it a go. I’m hoping with the two of them, I can finish the blanket. If not, I’ll mix in some of my other white yarn. Then I’ll make her a brand new one with the yarn she buys. 😂
The Stitches
Then I had to decide on the stitches I wanted to use. This didn’t need to be fancy. I was going to go with just single crochet, but opted for half double crochet for the white portions and single for the blue portions. I also went with back loop and front loop on alternating rows for the blue. That was another thing I had to decide: did I want it to be double sided or have a front and a back side? I went with one dominant side.
I only did one row of blue so I was able to alternate my mismatched whites at the end of each block. I figured that that would create a pattern. No haphazard mismatch here! So far, it looks good. I can’t even tell the whites don’t match. 😁
Now that I have all my OMG LOL dolls, I decided to focus on one doll at a time so I can make super cool outfits for each and every doll without feeling rushed. If you’ve seen my previous posts, you know I have a bunch of dolls now. Some are new, some are used with full outfits, some are naked, and some are naked with no hands. Well, they all have hands now. My brother 3D printed them all!
It was Spirit Queen’s turn!
This isn’t Spirit Queen. She’s the model I use for trying out outfits.I didn’t want to mess up Spirit Queen’s hair!But the outfit looked really good on this one. Too bad she can’t keep it.
This is Spirit Queen!
I absolutely love how her outfit came out. Below is the outfit I was trying to copy. What do you think? I left off the white stripe down the sides. I didn’t think the crochet version needed it.
I wanted to give my husband something he wouldn’t expect for Christmas. We decided not to have wish lists last Christmas to shake things up a bit, but that left me wondering what I could give him. There are people I can make crochet gifts that I know would love them. He’s not necessarily one of them, but if it’s something he wants, then he’s all in. He’s into Star Wars and he often complains that his head is cold when we are at Disneyland so an idea was born, and I took a chance.
I found a graph on Pinterest that I thought would work. It involved using Fair Isle crochet and boy did it take me forever. Ok, not forever, just forever for me. I still finished in a couple of days. However, it was super frustrating not to work as quickly as I usually do. I kept messing up too.
First, I had to readjust the pattern because I used a thicker yarn. That wasn’t too bad, but it did require work and math and all that jazz. Then, I forgot to to repeat the pattern and had to undo hours of work. But after all that, and probably because I had to redo my work, I got better and faster on my second-go-round. I also messed up on the Tie Fighter design and then had to compensate and adjust the pattern again on the fly because there was no way I was going to start over a third time.
In the end, I was happy with the hat, and if my hubby didn’t like it or didn’t want to wear it, I could always wear it. That was my devious plan all along, because I love Star Wars too! But he liked it, so I guess it’s his afterall.
Check out the pattern here. I am not affiliated with this site.
Friends, I believe my doll buying craze is over. After my last post, I only bought one more LOT of dolls. I know, I know, I was supposed to be done, but it wasn’t my fault. Remember the the group of dolls on Ebay I mentioned in my previous post that had no hands, were naked AND one doll had damaged legs? The LOT one of my friends was happy I didn’t get and my son said I shouldn’t get? Yeah, that LOT. Well, our other friend (other enabler) came over for a visit and got to see my dolls in person. She was very enamored with them. She loved them all as I did, but this one–Moonlight BB–was her favorite.
Isn’tshe cute?
Well, the one with the damaged legs that I did NOT buy was Moonlight BB. My friend looked at the aforementioned LOT on Ebay and saw that other than the no-hands/no feet, she looked great. She walked down imagination lane with me and visualized how I could turn her into a mermaid. The price for 4 dolls was great–if I made a lower offer on them. She immediately told me to make an offer. I tried to fight her (for a few seconds) arguing (for a few seconds) that all other parties had said I should stop. She was never one of those parties.
I said, “So do it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So I should make an offer?” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
“Just to be clear, I should make an offer? Cuz if the seller accepts my offer, I have four more handless/legless dolls,” I said.
She just kept saying yes, get them. What could I do? I had to get them. I made my offer, and the seller accepted. I received them today, and they look great! But let’s not worry about those yet. Let’s look at one that came naked and that I have actually made some clothes for.
Here’s what happened: My lovely and wonderful husband bought me an LOL OMG doll for Christmas. He was walking through a store looking for a toy for a friend. I spotted a cute OMG doll and picked it up. I put it back but he noticed I liked it. He secretly went back and tried to buy it, but it was gone! He ended up getting another one he thought I would like.
I did love it!
But he also said I could get another one that I would get to pick out. Understand that what ensued all started because of this generous offer. He unleashed a crazy woman who couldn’t decide which doll to get, and I can’t be held accountable for what ensued.
My wonderful husband bought me the best gift this Christmas. He remembered me mentioning a doll from my youth and the fond memories I had of it. She was a “Hi Dottie” doll.
This is not my doll. Pic is from the internet.
My oldest sister had given me and my two other sisters a Hi Dottie doll when we were kids. I was the youngest (around 4 or 5) and I destroyed my doll almost immediately. I can’t remember how I destroyed mine, but I do remember that I tried to improve my dolls the few times I was fortunate enough to get them. I would chop off hair, nail polish the face (and body), and they lost their clothes on contact. Inevitably I hated the improved dolls.
One of my very favorite book series of all time is the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. After years of claiming I would make characters from the books, I finally did it. And here they are, in their very own photo shoot: Harry Dresden, Bob the skull, Mister the cat, and Mouse the temple dog.
Harry Dresden, at your service.
Ready to take on the bad guys.
Harry wouldn’t be able to make it without his crew.
I don’t know why I waited so long to make a crochet version of one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite book series. I kept saying I was going to make Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, but never got around to it…until now!
Instead of crocheting his head in the round, I went with making a triangle shape and then crocheting around that.
It works!I usually use buttons but went with safety eyes this time. I used a nail (to my husband’s dismay) to give his neck area some strength.Continue reading →
yochet 