Well, yesterday I had due the final draft of my biblical exegesis paper. While I had most of it done from the rough draft, I still had about 1,000 words to add to it in order for it to be long enough. That meant more research and more reading of articles. Boring articles. Put you to sleep articles. So what do you do when you have to read biblical analysis articles? Why you knit of course! As long as it doesn't involve counting - which the outfit I chose to work on didn't require counting, just an occasional measurement with the ruler. And guess what that exegesis knitting was good for? Yep, a completed dress!
I knew it wasn't going to take long to finish up Belle's Christmas jacket and skirt outfit (her tree hunting outfit, not the actual Christmas dress). The jacket was done other than snaps and elastic on the sleeves. The skirt was worked in a straight line and sewn together, basically just a swatch. So as I was reading my biblical analysis articles, I knit away on the skirt, which needed to reach about 12 cm long to be long enough on the doll.
So, this picture is just after I started my exegesis knitting. It's not very long. I'm using the end protectors to make my DPNs like straight needles because my only set of size 3 straights is being used.
Just stopping to measure the length. I bought one of these sewing rulers (I know they have a certain name, can't remember it right now) the other day. A lot easier to gage with the little sliding deal on it.
And a little further, measuring against the doll. I'm making the skirt longer than what the pattern calls for so that the jumper won't show underneath it in case the skirt will actually fit over the jumper (which is what I am hoping for, since that's how it is in the movie).
I won't bore you with any more measuring pictures (okay, so I didn't take any more measuring pictures either). Here is the skirt off the needles, ready for sewing up.
By itself, the skirt looks like a mini-skirt, lol, but I promise, it's not a mini-skirt on the doll.
After I finished my exegesis paper, I set out to crochet on the furry edging. Though reading the articles and crocheting at the same time would have worked, I wasn't going to try it with the furry yarn. Plus, by the time I finished the skirt, I was on to typing on my paper. I need more arms and hands, lol.
Yippee!!!!! The skirt did fit over the jumper! Now just to put the snaps on the skirt and the jacket.
All bundled up!!! She looks really warm and still has to get her cape to go over it all! The sleeves are too long, but I bought elastic today to fix that problem. Once I have the elastic in, I will take final pictures.
And now to the miniture crocheting. In addition to making the dresses, I really hope to be able to make the friends that go with the princesses. Since I'm still new to knitting, and I'm not sure how I could get the friends small enough to be compatible to the dolls doing them via knitting (besides not knowing how to make up the patterns in knitting which is what is going to happen for most of them, I think), the friends are going to be crochet. I knew that crocheting them in yarn was going to make them too big to really be compatible in size to the dolls, so I had to come up with something else.
The friend I decided to work on first was Pascal from Tangled. You can see him here sitting on Rapunzel's shoulder at the end of the movie. As I was browsing patterns, I found one for a chameleon, which is why I am starting with him.
Tiny friends mean a tiny crochet hook. I'm using a size 10 steel hook (1.3 mm) - that's smaller than the needles I am using for the dresses for the princesses! Here's the start of Pascal, this is the beginning of his head. Yes, it is very tiny. Tiny friends means not only a tiny crochet hook, but also a tiny "yarn" medium to work with. Even crochet thread was going to make the friends too big, so I had to figure out something even smaller. I went to the next thing that I could think of that was thin but strong, and no, it's not sewing thread.
It's DMC floss that is used in cross-stitching and needlepoint! Here are my supplies sitting on my craft covered bed. I was just going to use the DMC floss as it is, the six strands in the thread all together, but even that was going to end up too big compaired to the dolls (I didn't take a picture of that), so I had to make even the DMC floss smaller (which, thankfully, is easily doable).
So how did I make it smaller and still have enough thread to work on Pascal without tangling the skein (because if you have ever worked with DMC floss, you know there is no way to pull the entire skein apart into its seperate parts without it tangling so bad you have to cut the knots out)? Well, it was a process. First, I cut off a length, approximately a yard.
Then I seperated it into its individual strands. If you are counting, yes, there are only four laying there. I am crocheting with two held together, so after pulling out four strands, there was no reason to seperate the last two, which is why they aren't in the picture.
Then I put two strands together to tie the parts together to make a longer strand. Please ignore the pasty leg background - I really need some sun. I tied the two ends together using the slip knot method that I used all the time as a kid to make yarn necklaces. I never would have thought to use the method in crochet or knitting, but someone on Ravelry posted a YouTube video of it as a joining method, and it works really well!
Once you pull the knots together, it makes a really strong join.
So strong that you can snip the ends of the yarn very close to the knot, in fact, even closer than what I have here, I just couldn't get that close with the DMC floss with the scizzors I was using. If this works for Pascal, I'll have to find my cross-stitch scizzors so I can make the joins even cleaner.
Once I did a few sections like that, I took and wound the thread up on a bobbin to keep it from tangling while I worked.
Okay, now back to Pascal. Here's a little be more of his head done. This is where I stopped last night before I had to go to bed to be able to get up this morning for work.
Sad to say, I didn't get much crafting done today because of a migraine, but Pascal seems to be a quick make Here is a little bit further on his head.
And this is how tiny he is. His head looks like a cap for my finger!
And one last picture for tonight. Pascal's head is nearly finished here and you can see, the bobbin is bigger than him!! I think this will work, just as long as the friends will hold their stuffing!
167 DAYS REMAINING!!!!!
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