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thanks, we've got a name!

Thanks to everyone who suggested names for the new small girl. Now I have a lot to choose from for my next doll naming need! After a few days of vacillating, I decided to go with Esther Hepzibah. (Yes, I know it's also spelt Hephzibah. But not in this case). Called Hepzi for short. Finally she has a few underthings. I embroidered her initials on her chemise. The chemise and pantalets are trimmed with featherstitching and handmade needle lace.

The pantalets also have three pintucks at the bottom.

Altogether I think she's getting happier now that she has some clothes. There is a matching petticoat, though it is not shown in the picture.

The needlelace was very easy--in fact it's just a series of spaced buttonhole stitches. For this set I did two rows of buttonhole stitches but you could easily do more. As I was working my way along the petticoat hem (all 15" of it) I was thinking "yes, and you could put more than one stitch in the stitch below to make it denser, or skip stitches to make a bigger hole, and build up patterns that way..." I'm sure it's been done. Is there an official name for this way of creating thread lace directly on the hem of fabric? Does anyone know of references for this technique? The only downside is what to do when you run out of thread. It seems like something that someone must have invented a tool for at some point in time, but I can't quite imagine what kind of tool but a needle would work.

peacocks done.

What would cause an ordinarily sober, disciplined knitter to stay up late, get up early, skip going to the gym and indulge in marmalade for breakfast?

Finishing a lace shawl. Finishing, weaving in, washing and blocking. It turned out fine.

The pattern is lovely but I don't know that I would knit it again. Double yarn-overs are not my favorite thing to work. I don't like the k1 p1 in the same loop business, and I don't like wiggling around the loops on the next right side row to make sure I'm knitting into the k1 p1 and not into the original yo. (Maybe there is a trick to this I don't know?) The pattern is well-written, though I can't help but wonder if there is a better way to handle the design at the edges. There are the standard 4 increases every other row for a triangular shawl, and at the outer edges and the center the pattern is pretty much whatever's left over from the feather shapes. It would be nice to have a smoother kind of break. Perhaps it's just not feasible in this pattern; I haven't tried to chart it out. On the other hand, I think the general peacock feather idea would make a great rectangular stole, started in the middle with the denser patterns and transitioning to the larger feathers on the ends. It would be nice too to attach irridescent beads in the center of the feather holes and on the crochet edging. That could get very much like a peacock.

Anyhow--I'm done! I'm done! Yippee!

bounty of books

It's getting to that time of year when there comes a need to choose books to travel with. Travel books should not be too big or heavy, but they can't be fluff on the interior or they are used up too quickly. I'm a fast reader and it takes quite a lot of printed words to get me through a month away. I'm not adverse to reading classics on a trip, but they have to be interesting enough that they are relaxing and help distract me from other stresses. Over the past few years I've come to feel a great fondness for give away books: those that are good enough to read, but not so important that they have to come home with me. I love reading a book on a journey, finishing it, and then leaving it for some other lonely English-speaking traveler to find. However, my miserly self demands that pristine books that cost over a certain amount shouldn't be treated in this way.

Imagine my delight, then, when walking into the office this morning I passed not one but three cardboard boxes on the floor in the hallway, all filled with old books free for the taking. Lots of them were not traveling books by any means (who wants to be burdened with a lot of theological philospohy on a trip!) but I found some fiction including Garrison Keillor and Charles Dickens. Free books can be discarded with no regrets whatsoever. There's more: this afternoon I passed a bookstore with racks of $1 books set up on the sidewalk and found another two or three, including one by Daphne DuMaurier which I've already read but long enough ago that it doesn't matter. DuMaurier should make perfect trip reading. Does anyone else remember when you could routinely get used paperbacks for $2-$3? And now used ones are $7 and up!

What I really want is to stay home and do crafty things all summer. But if I must travel, it's good to know I'll have plenty of discardable words to take with me.

peacock pant

I am so almost done with the peacock shawl I can hardly sit still. One more evening and a couple of old radio detective shows should do it. Four chart rows (making 8 knitted rows) and the crochet bind off. I can't stand it...

another small character

This morning I attached the arms and legs to this girl. She is made from the 9" Hannah pattern from Gail Wilson. The original dolls have painted heads, hands and feet. My painting skills are abysmal, so I decided I'd try some embroidery instead. The face and hairline are copied from the original, but simplified. The hair is embroidered in fine merino knitting yarn, in thick chain stitch all over. This doll has a different shape than I've ever seen before--in particular, the arm attachment is new to me. The shoulders form points and the open end of the arm is pushed up over the shoulder and sewn on all around. Above the elbows and knees the limbs are stuffed very softly. This helps her to sit well.

This is a great pattern, very clear and detailed. She turned out exactly 9" tall! Although I think her shape is a bit odd, I've come to like it. I especially like how round her head is, not at all like a pancake. Clearly I need to improve my face embroidery. To start with, next time I'll use a single strand of floss instead of double. But she is meant to be somewhat "primitive" and folksy, so I can live with it. Once I get her dressed in calico, I expect she will be right at home. I want to find some kind of bizarre early 19th century name for her. Something biblical...Mehitabel? Zebulah? (wilbs, any suggestions?)

a bit about sewing small

The monday afternoon project of a while ago was inspired by a book I loved as a child. Recently I discovered that it is a book well-loved by many other people--I always thought it was an obscure old volume that was forgotten by the rest of the world. The book is Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field. Hitty is a small doll carved out of wood on a Maine farmstead sometime around 1830. The book traces her travels and adventures. By one means and another Hitty climbs trees, takes a steamship journey to the tropics, lives with poor families and with rich ones. She is the quintessential travel doll and has a wide and devoted following. The original Hitty doll still exists, and now there are many reinterpretations of her in wood, resin, cloth, and other media. Though I love the story, the first Hitty doll that really spoke to me was this one. When I saw all the furniture and accesories with her, I nearly swooned. An entire little Hitty world.

I decided to try to make my own Hitty-scale doll. The difficult thing about Hitty is that she is quite small, only 6.25 or 6.5 inches. Not quite as small as dollhouse scale, but almost. I didn't have any rag doll patterns for such a small one so I made up my own. I've made two prototypes so far and am getting happier with how she turns out. The first prototype I don't have pictures of (except the rough pieces shown in the earlier post). I made a few changes and came up with this:

The height came out right; she is just six and a quarter inches tall. Jointed with buttons at the shoulders and hips.

Her feet have flat bottoms. I prefer that to the sock-shaped kind of feet you find on many rag dolls, with no soles. She also has what I modestly believe to be a very nice profile for a rag doll

With a real chin, a head that is round in all dimensions, and a shaped bottom. She is stuffed with wool roving. In my early doll-making days I used polyfil and I must say that once I tumbled to the fact that, as a spinner, I know where to get lots of wool roving, and that wool could be used to stuff things--I am never going back. Wool is unbelievably nicer.

On the next version I think I may make some changes to her hips so that her legs hang differently; I also have an alternate body pattern that would allow for simple hinged arms and legs. I haven't decided which I like better. I enjoy figuring out how to shape things with darts and curves. One challenging thing about making cloth dolls--at least from my inexperienced perspective--is that there is always some part that is less than lovely. You don't get, or at least I don't yet get, a nice unobtrusive line through all joints; there's always some part of the body that begs to be covered by clothing. Which is fine for a doll that's going to wear clothes from 1830-1840, but a interesting puzzle in some other cases. It's a lot of fun to rediscover my childhood love of making stuffed things.

studio saturday morning

works in progress

filing system for works in the queue.

lace challenges

In a moment of weakness or insanity or both I joined the summer Amazing Lace knitalong. Weakness because I love knitting lace and the notion of a whole bunch of people working on lace and sharing it makes me want to be included. Insanity because adding another thing with deadlines and challenges, however casual and fun, could make my delicately unbalanced life teeter even further towards the brink of being unmanageable. But it's just knitting, right? It will help me focus my summer needle endeavors.

As I understand it, the goal is to set a lace challenge for yourself over the course of the summer. I knit a lot of lace anyway, so I could just continue meandering along with my current backlog of projects. Or I could try to step up the pace a bit: finish not one, but two shawls this summer. (Thus decreasing the pile to be knit to only 8 or 9). I could go really crazy--knit three or four!

This should be done, no doubt. But the word "challenge" keeps niggling in the back of my mind... it would certainly be challenging to knit a lot. But I'm hankering for difficulty of a different sort. Knitting one fine wool lace shawl is much like knitting another. Mind you, I'm not saying it's all easy or anything to be sneezed at. I love it, but it's becoming comfortable. I want to stretch myself a little more, see what other avenues I can explore with lace and knitting.

On the left is the shawl I've been working on lately. It's the Peacock Feathers Shawl in fine merino wool. I think I'm using size #2 or #3 needles. In the middle is a cone of 20/2 perle cotton. I have lots of this in various colors. The large cone on the right is linen singles. Here's a closer look at the three yarns:

You can see that the cotton and linen are a little thinner than the laceweight wool. Not only that, but cotton and linen have no stretch and no "poof". The cotton is not a finer version of your soft squishy cotton knitting yarn. It's basically thread, no give. So is the linen, only more so, and with the added quality of a lively wiry mind of its own. There is a strong tradition of knitted lace edgings and table items made from cotton thread, but I've never tried it. I think I rely on the softness of wool to forgive some of the imperfections of my knitting--a sloppy decrease here or there, deviations in tension. I'm not sure how I'd handle knitting with such unforgiving fibers. So that's exactly what I'm going to do.

My challenge is to knit some linen lace by the end of the summer. My wool shawl(s) will be like pacers, teammates to keep me in shape and familiar with lace. The cotton will be practice for the ultimate test: knitting linen lace. The finished article will be taken from a vintage pattern book of some sort (I haven't decided which one yet). I'm not aiming for anything huge, just something to show I can do it.

Now let's see... where did I put those #000 needles?

another one

The third new skirt. Not that I'm keeping track. The pattern is one I recently adjusted; a simple hip yoke and circular skirt. I'm pleased to find that it fits! Even without having made a muslin. Phew. Another basic pattern for the files. I love coordinating prints and couldn't resist these when I found them on sale. The ruffle fabric is vertically striped, though it is somewhat hidden by the fullness of the ruffle.

The striped cloth was also used for the piping around the yoke

I think this gives a nice touch and ties the whole thing together better than simply having the skirt in one fabric and the ruffle in another. There is more of the stripey cloth leftover, so I'm thinking a top might be in order... a quick review of existing blouses and sweaters hasn't turned up a great match for this. Never fear, I'll find a way to wear it--the colors make me happy!

p.s. in the top photo, it appears that the back hem is longer than the front hem. It is. It looks sloppy on a hanger, but perfect on my body. Just in case you thought it was a mistake :)

a week out of the office

I cannot tell you how much I love not coming in to the office.

Making a mess (again) on Sunday

a small Monday afternoon project

Tuesday's skirt

a new pinchushion for Wednesday

and a new dress too

Thursday's spoils from the discount fabric store


a new skirt made Friday afternoon

and a little bit of knitting for Saturday and beyond.

aaaaahhhh. Now that's what I call a good week.