Kiss My Knits!

Meet Jennifer!
Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull for doll, panties, and dress. Crystal Palace cotton chenille for hair. Embroidery floss for face.
Needles: #3 for the doll, #2 for the dress
Doll pattern: Basic Doll from Toys to Knit by Tracy Chapman
Dress pattern: Me!
Turtlegirl76 suggested eyelets on the waist of the dress with an eye toward running a ribbon through. I decided not to do the ribbon, but I liked the eyelet idea.

Notes: This is the third one of these dolls I’ve made. This is not because I have any great love for the pattern. In fact, I think it’s rather poorly written, but my daughter seems to love these dolls. She picked out the color for the hair and dress. She specifically requested a dress, not a skirt and shirt, and asked for a purple heart. When the doll was done, she elected to find a scrap of Jayne hat yarn and make it into a hair tie.

At this point, I don’t have a whole lot more I can say about the pattern beyond what I’ve said about the previous dolls. Also, I’m tired and my wit has preceded me to bed. I’ll be joining it in a moment.

Here’s Emily’s original concept drawing. The main difference is that she picked out hot pink hair when we went to Charlotte Yarn, but I think that’s mainly because she felt like she had to pick whatever color they had, and that was the closest to red. Once she’d picked it, there was no swaying her to any other color. She also made sure to tell me early on that the dress should be sleeveless, unlike the drawing.

Emily chose the name Jennifer in the same way she chose her other two dolls’ names – by getting me to go to a baby names site on the web so she could pick one from a list. She tells me that Jennifer is older than Taylor but younger than Elizabeth. The three dolls have already had some pillow fights, so it looks like Jennifer is fitting in just fine.

Yeah, that Jayne hat’s not looking so silly now, is it? Man, that cracks me up. I might have to knit me one o’ them.

Speaking of Jayne hats, here’s the first of several non-orange Jayne hats. The color is a bit richer than the picture indicates. The person who commissioned these was concerned about the Lamb’s Pride itchiness, so I’m subbing Berroco Ultra Alpaca doubled. It knits up at 4 stitches to the inch on size 9 needles. It’s a little dense, but any bigger of a needle and it’s too loose, so I’ll stick with this. I’m a little concerned – by my calculations, this is 22 inches around and it’s for a 24 inch head. Is that enough negative ease? I worry about little things, and I always get nervous when they feel loose anyway. Of course it’s supposed to be loose on me, I don’t have a 24 inch head, but I still get nervous. The next one’ll be for a head 23 inches in circumference, and maybe I’ll snug it up a bit more. In my experience, people tend to measure their heads a little big.

Emily picked out the yarn for her doll. The body will be the same color as the others, but she felt compelled to choose the hair from among the colors at the yarn shop… so hot pink it is! I have a few more red options here at home which I will present to her, but I know from experience that once she’s picked something, she’s set on it. And that’s fine. It’s her doll, and if she wants it to have hot pink hair, then it will have hot pink hair.

I’m off in a few minutes to hit the post office to mail some Turino silk, then another yarn shop looking for a good green in Ultra Alpaca – with a stop at a coffeeshop along the way for a pick-me-up. Thanksgiving left me beat!

This morning, I was awakened by my daughter coming into my room and telling me, “Today, you need to start knitting me a new doll. This doll will have green eyes and red hair. And a pink dress… with a heart… that says “Elizabeth.” Note artist’s rendition to the right.

Because I was asleep, I muttered my stock response. “Okay, sweetie.” I wonder if she’s figured that out yet. Hmm…

This child couldn’t say the words “yes” and “no” at age 2 1/2. So even though this is an utterly outrageous request, I’m very thankful for it.

Do you have something in your life which might seem to be a negative that is actually something to be grateful for?

Elizabeth Taylor

Taylor, right, is the completed companion to Elizabeth, left. In spite of how it looks, they are the same size. Taylor’s head might be just a smidge bigger. I blogged extensively about my troubles with Elizabeth. Again, the pants would have been too long with the full 50 rows called for, so I did 42. Also, after seeing how much trouble Elizabeth has with keeping her trousers up, I only cast on 23 instead of 25. The panty pattern, at least, works like a charm.

There was a different shirt for Taylor, made out of blue Lion Brand Cottonease. This pattern had its own set of issues. Why would you call for decreases along the sleeves of a sweater for a doll? They’re not real person arms. They’re little sausages. They don’t taper. Instead of casting on 22 and decreasing to 14, I cast on 20 and did one decrease to 18 after eight stitches on the theory that it might make it a little easier to stuff the arms into the armholes. It worked fine. Just before I started the sweater, Emily asked for a picture on it, a heart. Turtlegirl76 was gracious enough to share some red Cottonease for that. I had to buy a skein of Baby Ull for the doll itself, but the yarn for the pants and main body of the shirt came out of my stash.

We chose Taylor’s name the same way we did Elizabeth’s, by going to a baby name site and perusing a list of the most popular girl names. She has trouble coming up with stuff from her own head, but having a list like that, she had no trouble selecting exactly the right name.

Seeing this picture makes me wonder if this was what was in her head when she bought that issue of Betty and Veronica yesterday. Hopefully they’ll be a good influence on each other, although with a combination name like “Elizabeth Taylor” I kind of doubt it. Well, Emily’s happy and that’s all that matters.

Comics, multicolored food, and knitting.

My daughter: “Today, a new girl came to class in the cafeteria! But we had to be very quiet in the cafeteria so she would appear. And she did! Her name was Elizabeth. She went to my class. And then a backpack appeared on her back!”

Further questioning reveals that her new classmate Elizabeth has black hair, a red shirt, and green pants. Hmm… where have I heard that before…

I’m so thrilled that she loves her doll enough to turn it into a new imaginary classmate. It makes all the trouble worthwhile.

Although I wonder if this means I’ll have to knit her a backpack.

I finished Emily’s doll, and it looks good. I put it in the car next to her seat so she’d see it when I picked her up from school. I was looking forward to seeing her reaction.

Unfortunately, when I got to school, Emily’s teacher was waiting in the car line with her. Emily got in and was entranced with her doll – or so I think, because all I really got was a vague happy and excited vibe and something about how her shirt was finished now, because I had to pay attention to what the teacher was saying. Which wasn’t good.

Apparently Emily didn’t wash her hands after using the bathroom on the way to lunch. The bathroom monitor reported this, so Emily was sent back in to wash them, which she did angrily, jerking her hands and doing a perfunctory job. Afterwards, she had a huge screaming crying fit that had her on the floor multiple times in the hallway on the way to lunch. The teacher had to call the vice principal to take the class down to the lunchroom while the teacher took Emily to her resource classroom.

She didn’t calm down there, but stayed upset for a good half hour of continuous full-on hysteria. During that time, the principal and the school psychologist were also called in, to no avail.

Obviously, we didn’t go to Starbucks, which is reserved for good behavior days.

Her teacher says that’s the first time something that major has happened this year. Which, considering years past, I suppose is progress, but it’s not as much as I’d like. I’ve put in an e-mail to find out what finally calmed her down, since I didn’t think to ask at the time. Usually it’s time and solitude that help, so if they were calling in more and more people, I can see how the situation could escalate. It’s understandable – I think anybody would naturally want to call in more people to help. I’m curious to see if they know what finally got her to break out of her cycle and relax.

I’ll post about the doll later. I’m a little discouraged at the moment.

Did I mention that by correcting the issue at the shoulder to follow the pattern exactly, another issue cropped up? That you’re increasing to the same number of stitches on each side, but you’re starting from a different number, so you have to do more rows on one side than another?

This pattern is a giant pain in my tuchus.