A retrospective of baby hats

When I starting knitting enthusiastically, about four or five years ago, many of my first projects were baby hats. Baby hats have the combined attractiveness of being a smaller, manageable project, yet have so many possibilities for different stitches, patterns and shapes.

One of the first I made was the Classic Cap pattern from Amanda Keeys Baby Beanies: Happy Hats to Knit for Little Heads.

 My next hat was the Neon Brights pattern from BabyKnits Hats & Booties: 15 Matching Sets for Noggins and Tootsies by Edie Eckman, Bonnie Franz and Debbie Ware.

Followed by the Elf pattern from the same book.

After these hats I decided to explore the worlds of stranded knitting and intarsia!

It was Easter time and I got a bit ambitious for my first project. I decided I wanted to knit a little hat with some Easter chicks on it for my god daughter. After realizing that cross stitch patterns could basically double as knitting patterns, I found a cute little picture that I thought would work for a knitting pattern. I made myself some graph paper and mapped out all the colours to use. Using a basic hat pattern given to me by my husband's aunt, I went to work. As it turns out, while doing stranded knitting, carrying all those colours of yarn behind your work can make for a pretty bulky project!

The results were good, but I decided I needed to do something with fewer colours. My next hat was this cute little train pattern that came with the basic hat pattern from Auntie Marion.

For my next hat, I wanted to do another, more colourful pattern, but wanted to avoid the bulk of all the carried yarn. For my next hat, I used the intarsia technique instead. It worked well, but I had to keep a lot of little balls of yarn around. I wound the yarn onto clothes pins to keep track of it, but I it was a lot of work for a little toque! The elephant pattern came from 1000 Great Knitting Motifs by Luise Roberts.

All of the hats were knit with acrylic yarn from my collection.

A Wardrobe for the Dolls

Doll clothes are a great way to use up the little balls of yarn left over from a bigger project. I decided it was time to explore the "designer wardrobe" part of Arne and Carlos' Knitted Dolls book.

The leftovers from my first pair of socks became a sweater.

I used the yarn from my leg warmers to make a skirt.

A ball of wool that came in a mixed bag of yarn from the Village Green Thrift Shop was made into a dress.

Some acrylic yarn from my collection made a lovely lacy nightie.

Sally the Eco Fairy Hybrid Doll

I'm one of those knitters who is constantly thinking one project ahead. The first time I knit something, I like to stick to the pattern, but I'm always thinking about how I can slightly change or tweak it to make it a little different or better the next time. After knitting a couple of Arne and Carlos dolls, I started thinking about how I'd like to try making a doll that had more realistic proportions, mostly the same as the other dolls, but a little bit different.  Recently a friend showed me the pattern for the Sally the Eco Fairy doll. The doll is adorable and I love the cute little pointed fairy ears! As a pattern, I like the proportions and the shapes of the hands and feet, but the directions are to knit each part of the body separately and sew them all together at the end. One thing I love about the Arne and Carlos pattern is that the doll is knit all in one piece. I decided to try and adapt the pattern by knitting in the style of the Arne and Carlos doll, but in the proportions of Sally the Eco Fairy. It was a little challenging at first because Sally's limbs are knit from the thigh and shoulder down, whereas the Arne and Carlos limbs are knit from the fingers and toes up. I eventually figured it out something that would work. I made a slightly smaller nose and opted for eyes that were sewn on instead of the more complex inserted eyes from the Arne and Carlos pattern.  The experiment was a success!

All the materials for this project were from the stash in my closet. The body and hair are acrylic and her dress is Bernat Handicrafter Cotton in Sage Green, Soft Violet and small variegated ball of an unknown colour that was in my collection. The pattern for the dress was inspired by this variation of Sally the Eco Fairy.

Yarn Bombing!

I've always found the statue of the girl walking the dog (located in front of Ecole Victoria School on Broadway Avenue in Saskatoon) a tad on the dreary side (no offence to sculptor Bill Epp). This fall I embarked on a month long project to provide a little colour to life of the girl and her dog. I finished everything late last night and got together a dedicated team to help me execute my plan. Here's the before and after pictures!

These are pictures of the items pre-installation.

I knit the dog sweater from this free pattern but the feature insert was taken from a different dog sweater pattern also available for free on the internet.

The sweater pattern is the Adult Surprise Jacket, a variation of Elizabeth Zimmermann's infamous Baby Surprise Jacket. The sweater is knit in such a way that the finishing seams run up both sweater arms making it ideal to sew onto a statue that doesn't have both arms available to slide on a sweater sleeve (the girl is holding the dog's leash in her right hand).  I put the sweater on the statue backwards in order to accommodate the girl's backpack. I used a crochet hook to join the sleeves with a single crochet stitch, making a short chain across the back to connect both sides of the sweater.

The hat was knit from the Slouchy Hat pattern from MelonHead KnitWear. The leg warmers were a simple k1p1 for the ribbing top and bottom, with stockinette stitch in between.

I took this photo of my team doing the installation.

Walk, bike or drive by and enjoy an extra little bit of colour on Broadway!

Knit Clary Fray doll

For this one I really had to embrace my inner young adult fiction geek.  While I was knitting my Arne & Carlos dolls, I was reading the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare.  During that time, my mom gave me a bag of yarn filled with odds and ends she no longer wanted. In the bag was a ball of bright orange yarn that reminded me of the description of the hair of the main character, Clary Fray. That ball of yarn inspired me to knit a Clary Fray doll. In the books she has curly hair, so I decided to knit up the orange ball of yarn, wash it, and then unravel it to see how it turned out. It was perfect.

I knit Clary out of 100% acrylic from collection, changing colours to give her the appearance of black boots, jeans and a pink shirt. I had every intention of knitting her a more complete outfit, but other things came along that grabbed my interest, so she remains as is on my fireplace mantel for now.

Melanie

After acquiring smaller double pointed needles, I decided to try knitting a doll to the scale suggested in pattern.  I also wanted to try doing one of the more complex suggestions for the dolls, in this case, stripped tights. Using 2.5 mm needles, I knit Melanie!

I used blue and green alternately, three rows at a time, to give her striped tights. Unfortunately, I didn't realize how much the colours would blend together, obscuring the striped effect. In the future I will use brighter colours with more contrast to highlight the striped effect. For Melanie's hair, I used a ball of variegated green yarn with a gold metallic stripe running through it. I think it gives her hair a bit of an underwater seaweed look that may inspire me to knit her a mermaid outfit!

Melanie's dress is knit from a left over bit of Kertzer On Your Toes variegated sock yarn in the colour Beach Print (75% superwash wool, 25% Nylon) that I bought here in Saskatoon at the Wool Emporium.

Sasha is the Second

After my success with Nancy, I was eager to knit more dolls. For my next doll, I kept the formula the same. Same size needles, more acrylic yarn, but this time the hair was left over Lion Brand Homespun Yarn in the colour Painted Desert (100% Acrylic).  There wasn't enough left to do a full head of hair, so I attached yarn around the hairline to create a pony tail.  The result was Sasha!

Using the Arne and Carlos Knitted Dolls patterns, I made Sasha a skirt from left over Red Heart Heart & Sole sock yarn in the colour Watercolor Stripe (70% superwash wool, %30 nylon) and a sweater from random acrylic yarn from my collection.