Valley of the Dolls...Part 1

I have been creating up a storm over here, getting ready for some upcoming art shows.  I have been especially excited about making dolls.  I'm not sure why, as Kate is way past the baby doll stage, even if she never was in that stage.  But, regardless I have spent endless hours creating various types of handmade dolls, all under 6 inches in height...One of the dolls that I have been perfecting are my Waldorf Dolls.  Lately, I have been making this itty-bitty babies, full of beans...

Truthfully, they are not all that much easier than the limbed Waldorf-style, as I find the head and face to be the most difficult part.  But, it sure is cute and the materials are much less.  So I'm thinking of making some more for the next round of shows....

woof...woof...woof

I've been stuck on a new fascination over here...I have been reworking some vintage toy patterns and breathing new life into them.  Ever since I made the Waldorf Doll last year and the many crochet amigurumis years before,  I have been fascinated with drafting and creating three dimensional stuffed goodies.  To help learn the process and technique, I dug up this oldy, but goody:  a 1970's dachshund pattern.  I reworked it a bit and came up with the Dachshund 2013.  I'm thinking it as a start for this year's craft fair line up...

Winter Shawl Explosion

It all started innocently enough.  While at one of my local independent yarn shops...,  I feel in love, I mean LOVE, with a skein of Noro's Taiyo Sock Yarn.  It had subtle striping of teals, grays and khakis...absolutely perfect for my mood...Ironically, just the night before I stumbled upon a great shawl pattern via Pinterest using sock weight yarn...I say it's ironic that these two events coincided with each other, destiny, I like to think...But then again, I have heard before that there is no such thing as coincidence...Was it a coincidence that after seeing Neptune Tears, I found myself driving to my favorite yarn shop, and just "happened" to stumble upon some gorgeous yarn-that I don't need...Well, I don't think that is germane to my point.

Anyhow, I snatched up two skeins, and went to work using the Neptune's Tears pattern from Ravelry and my Taiyo sock yarn...One week later, I had this...

While I love the pattern and the yarn, I'm not crazy about the wild blue stripe.  But then again, that's Noro's charm.

Then next day, as my Neptune's Tears shawl lay blocking, I happened to find myself in another one of my favorite yarn shops...and again I was bitten by a lovely lace shawl on display, The Elise Shawl.  This pattern can also be found via Ravelry.  Again,coincidentally(?). I spied a beautiful, but coy skein of fingering weight Malabringo Rastita in Iris. This skein screamed  for my fingers to knot it up into this beautiful lace Elise Shawl.  You got to feel this stuff.  SOOO silky.  And because I don't live in Russia or the Antarctica where 100's of shawls would seem somehow appropriate, this shawl would be for my mother.  So ka-ching, I got down to work.  And a week later, I came up with this:

Then as a treat to reward myself for standing in line at the post office to post my Mom's shawl, I again, found myself at my local yarn shop.  This time Elsebeth Lavold's Silky Wool winked at me.  I tried to play hard to get, but I wanted to try my hand at something a bit more structured, an exploded lace pattern from Doris Chan.  After a bit of math to determine the proper amount of skeins, and then a whole lot of knotting, I came up with this (the picture doesn't do a justice):

For the grand finale, I'm working another Elise Shawl up in a creamy ivory in Lavold's Silky Wool...  All this to say, if you know me personally, don't be surprised if you receive a shawl for a special day in your life...I'm hooked at the moment....