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Making Babies

I really don’t know what came over me, but I just knit a baby! ..not a funny shaped amigurumi baby, not a tiny toy baby, but a real full size creepy cute flesh baby with a belly button and a sweet little bum!

I joined in on a knitalong using the brilliant and delightfully beautiful Constance pattern from Rhiannon McCulloch (on Ravelry) also of Theatre of Yarns.com. I loved knitting this up, the design is easy to work, with amazing details. Short rows give baby contours and top stitches bring out the features. The pattern even includes instructions for the diaper.

She is worked flat and then seamed together, I will admit I felt a little daunted at the idea of seaming her up, what if she’s all wonky, what if I totally screw her up ..well it wasn’t bad at all once I got on with it, I just went through the instructions row by row and it was so doable not dauntable.

At some point during construction, my Constance became a boy, he looks like a little bald Benjamin Button / Charlie Brown block head and is so utterly & completely adorable.

All together it used roughly 450 yards of light worsted weight recycled cotton yarn, worked with 3.25mm needles and measures right around 23” from head to toe.

His name is Herbert ..herbie, bert or herb for short. ♥

Dressed up as a little man he kind of has a tiny bit of Bunsen Honeydew / baby time lord look about him too, his eyes follow you wherever you go!

getting colder

Soups on, the furnace has been checked, wicked good slippers at the ready, pumpkins harvested, carved, seeds toasted & all the roasted pumpkin mush made into pumpkin butter and yes, those specific slippers are that incredible, that I would link to them!

With the quick fall chill down, I’ve been busy making a few new potholders to handle all the warm pots, hot pans & whistling kettles that are a constant in our cold weather climate!

I love this little danish! Mine is a fatty, I increased the pattern up to 10 rnds and turned it into a folksy puff potholder. It finished just over 7” across in worsted cotton. (she explains how to easily make it bigger in the pattern). I think mine might be raspberry though.

Pattern: Strawberry Danish Cushion by Elena Fedotova.

It’s a cinnamon roll, stuffed ravioli, hot electric coil, frilly grandma toaster pasty (well mine is anyways) all rolled into one super wooly spark potholder!

I hand dyed 8 mini skeins to work up the hot colored coils, sewed them back to back all the way around to form the stuffed ravioli puffs, joined together the cinnamon rolls and edged it all out with grandmas pie crust frill, gave it a hang loop and called it done.

The Fire Blanket is beautifully dramatic, but more than I wanted or needed to do. It just so happened the motif (when worked double thick), made for a pretty perfect potholder, it’s heat proof because of the dense raised texture double thick bricks and happily the seams where you joined the motifs together, made it flexi-bendy and perfect for gripping hot pans.

Pattern: Fire Blanket pattern by Tanya Beliak.

This one is any size any yarn pattern, so it could be a potholder, or a dishcloth, or a little lacy thread brooch or a coaster, or think big a huge bulky rug or a blanket.

Pattern: Spiral Web Rug by Thomasina Cummings.

Unrelated to anything and completely NOT a potholder, is my Big Time Doily. Made in worsted weight yarn, using Liz Snella’s FREE Heirloom Doily pattern. Which was found in an old issue of workbasket (Vol.16, No. 7 April 1951).

I have grand plans of turning this into a cushion at some point ..maybe? A few more things of unrelated note..

#1 I finished mine with a regular knit bindoff.
#2 Measures 15″ unstretched & I didn’t have to block it! (hell yeah!)
#3 Lace is much easier on a larger scale!
#4 Now I have to make a back ..ugh :\

Now keep warm, don’t over do it raking leaves (yes you always do) and most of all use a potholder (Mr. Spatula Hands).

Doll Casual

Have I made the slip into creepy doll lady? Maybe, but I have yet to have human to doll conversations, take them grocery shopping or kiss them goodnight (so I think we’re still good). I am looking at this as my inner fashion designer screaming out on a miniature scale!

We just finished up the Autumn, yay I made something doll fashion show over in Good Things Together (Ravelry). There were lovely entries all around, fantastic prizes and bity stitches all over.

I kept my outfits pretty doll casual.

A punchy pair of check coolots made from a vintage Simplicity doll pattern, the pattern is from the 50/60’s but somehow mine came out so very vanilla ice/fly girl 90’s. Paired up with the forever classic tuxedo shirt. I made the tee using a modified (to fit her) version of the PUCHICOLLECTIVE blythe t-shirt pattern.

I topped it off with a tiny iron on transfer of my Ravelry bag design contest submission “having a ball ” OK, I didn’t talk much about this during the contest or even after, I wasn’t a finalist or runner up and in all probability not even in the top hundreds for the contest, so maybe the humor in a tuxedo BAG wasn’t for everybody, but I think I just brought the cheesy tuxedo shirt, to an eleven, I LOVE IT! Formal enough to get you in, without being too over the top.

Another t-shirt made using the PUCHICOLLECTIVE pattern, this time finished with little pankunchi.

I also whipped her up a mini Ravelry tote. She was feeling too lazy for pants!

I modified the t-shirt pattern from PUCHICOLLECTIVE yet again, this time adding length to make it into a t-shirt dress, complete with a magnificent neck bow made out of the same knit material for dramatic effect!