It's Hot Outisde!!! (and inside for that matter)

Ugh. It's hot. Really hot. Okay, so not as hot as the drought from last year, and we have had some rain, but it still feels really hot when your AC doesn't work because  your apartment complex office never replaced the AC before the heat hit like they said they would and therefore now in 100F heat, the AC is going out!!!! But, we are supposed to get a new AC on Monday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Mostly just one outfit to update on tonight. I've been busy working on some other stuff in the last few days around being hot so that I haven't done much work on princess dresses. I haven't updated because it's hot to hold the computer on my lap to be able to type. I could update on my iPad and be much cooler, but I can't post pictures then. :( Boo. I had just a little to finish of Mulan, and she's just almost done now! Well, her matchmaker outfit I mean.

Before I get to Mulan, though, just a couple of other pictures to share quickly. This first one is the start of a new cape, Belle's plain maroon cape. I was going to make it the fur edged one, but as I was looking at the pictures I have from the movies for the fur edged one, I realized it is made entirely different! So I get to design a cape later. :) I want to finish one of the capes with a pattern first though, just so I have a bit of a reference on how to make it work properly.

Here's the movie shot.

And here it is after one row. That's all that is done on it right now, lol. I worked on the next cape more than this one!

And here is why. It's Aurora!!! I've had a request (by the mom :) hehe) to finish up the blue dress for Aurora next. It is on my slate to work on this weekend as I can in low lighting due to the heat in my apartment. Tomorrow may include a trip to somewhere cool for a few hours were I can sit a knit and work on the dress and cape. Here is the movie shot with the cape around her shoulders. I have more pictures of her in the cape that I will be sharing as I make the cape.

And here is just after one row. I started this cape and Belle's maroon cape one morning before a long day at work so I could work on one of them in my two hour break.

And this is the one I chose. Not too much done from the look of it, but it's almost ten rows worth of knitting. Which considering I had to go get lunch on my break too, isn't bad. Pardon the messy background that is my truck.

And now to Mulan. On my other long day at work this past week, I set about finishing her shift. And I did! Here's a picture of her just before I had to go back into work. I cropped my coworker out of the photo since she was gracious enough to hold Mulan up so I could snap a quick picture. From this point, I just needed snaps in the back and to darn in the last tail.

In the last few days, I also set about finishing up the blue shirt for the matchmaker outfit. I finally put sleeves on it, lol. This is just after a couple of rows on the first sleeve.

And the same amount on Jasmine to measure. I tried to measure on Mulan, but since I have the multi-jointed Mulan, it was hard to get an accurate idea of where the sleeve was landing on the doll. Jasmine was close at hand, so she was elected. After just a couple of rows, the sleeve was ready to cast off.

And here it is casted off.

And the other sleeve casted off. (The wonders of photography, no need to wait. lol)

All sewn up and awaiting snaps.

And here is the shift all finished as well.

And finishing photos. These are after I have added snaps. Shift...

Blue shirt... (I love how the fit ended up on the shirt after I put the snaps on. It really pulled in the fabric, especially around the bust and waist).

Pink kimono. Which might be getting one more snap where the two sides overlap to keep them together. I'm going to wait and see how it fits after the wrap is done first.

And here is said wrap. In all it's messiness. Ends everywhere! But that happens with so many color changes. After I took this photo, I darned in all those ends. They were getting in the way. This is just a few rows into the bottom maroon section.

A little bit further and measuring on Mulan. With all the under pieces now having snaps on them, you can see how it is fitting better.

Last increase on the wrap. While it looks like the ends of the circular continue off the edge of the picture, they really don't. The wrap takes up nearly all the circular needle!!! I had to be careful not to loose stitches of the ends to take this last photo.

A close up of the bottom edging where I have started to cast off in small segments. I was trying to get the tapered look of the bottom of the maroon section.

And all casted off and on Mulan! I just have to darn in the tail end and put snaps on it. Because of the tapered look, the snaps will have to go down the side of the wrap, but it shouldn't matter to the fit.

And a new project. This one is for me. A really pretty halter top dress which I am testing for a fellow designer on Ravelry. She has graciously said that I can track my progress on the dress on my blog. I have till July 2 to finish it, which will be just in time to have a really nice dress to go out in for my birthday. I want to find a pretty shrug pattern that I make to go with it. The photos really don't do justice to the beautiful color of the yarn. It's a sparkle navy yarn. Here is my casting on. A crocked mess is what it looks like. The reason. It's on 11 DPNs! The dress (which is started with the skirt) will actually be worked in the round on a circular needle, but I have a problem casting on with that. The reason? I inevitably twist my stitches and have to start over. With a 450+ stitch count at the beginning of this skirt, I didn't want to chance it, and in working the jumper for my niece, I found that if I cast on with DPNs, I am less likely to twist the stitches. It does make for a funny looking picture though.

About halfway through knitting the first row, which is what I use to move the piece to the circular needle. If you can't tell because of the quality of the picture, the circular is the top portion and the DPNs are on the bottom left corner of the picture. The green cone thing is a tip protector to keep my stitches from falling off the other end of the circular while I knit the piece onto the circular. Even though the circular looks nearly full at halfway, all the stitches will fit onto it. It will be just like when I put the skirt of Belle's green dress on to the circular needles, crowded but very workable.

And after the first row and all on the circulars. I'll share another photo later on. I now have about 3 feet of skirt to knit, round and round and round, so it would be rather boring to update as often as I update with the doll dresses.

One last photo. So what do you do when it's hot because your AC isn't working and you don't want to turn on your lights because that would make things hotter but you want to work on your knitting? Why you knit by candle-light of course! Not real candle-light. That would be too hot. But one of those luminary bulbs you find at Christmas. I have two strands of five C4 bulbs (the types that go in the little ceramic houses, nightlights, etc) tacked up on the wall above my bed to use when I want a lower lighting at night to read or just to have on when watching a movie or whatever: one is green lights (the ones off in the picture) that is lower lighting, usually used for watching a movie or when my roommate is coming home late at night and I am going to bed so that there is a little bit of light in my room for her to see by to get upstairs; the other is blue lights, which are brighter and what I use to read. But the blue lights aren't bright enough to craft by unless I am using white yarn (which I currently am not, seeing as I was working on the halter dress). So I took out one blue bulb and put in the candle bulb. It nearly tripled the light! I can put in all five candle bulbs and it's nearly as bright as my bedside lamp (but also just as hot, the candle bulbs actually put out more heat than the other color bulbs). So....crafting by candle-light! LOL.

134 DAYS REMAINING!

Finally Updating

Long hours at work + stress from all kinds of things + being sick = not much crafting done

I do apologize for not having updated in a few days. I just really didn't get anything done on the dresses until today, so there wasn't much of a reason to update. What little bit of crafting was done this weekend wasn't on the dresses, but on a really cute jumper for my neice. Since I am testing the pattern for a fellow designer, I won't post pictures of it until I get the go ahead from the designer. I will, however, show you my gauge swatch, because the color I found for the jumper is just too pretty not to show off.

This first picture is the full gauge swatch, but looking through my pictures, I realized, while pretty, it wasn't really true to the real color of the blue, so the second picture is where I have just started the gauge swatch and was sitting in my truck, so it is sunlighting and is the true to the color of the yarn.

Just a little piece. A little bit more work done on Ariel's tail during the break I had at work on one of my long days.

And now to the piece that I've really worked on today, and that I hope to have fully finished really, really soon, Mulan's matchmaker outfit. This is probably my all time favorite princess dress! I've always loved kimonos. I'd probably get looked at odd if I tried to wear a kimono around in the States. :( I'm going to have to find an excuse to wear one someday (of course, after I get one, lol).

This piece has been traveling with me a lot, hence the many pictures with the shift on stitch holders instead of the needles, but in all honesty, it gets to be annoying to keep switching the piece back and forth from needles to stitch holders back to needles. I think I found a solution! These little coils are actually supposed to be used to hold a set of needles together in storage, in the case of DPNs, a set of five. But, put one coil on one end of the five (four in the shift and the working) needles and one coil on the other end of the needles and voila! Instand traveling needles! At least I hope. I need to try it out, lol.

Well, as has been the story for this piece, I got bored working on the shift again, so I started the last top piece, the wrap (while still not having gotten the sleeves on the blue shirt, lol). Here is just the cast on row. I snapped this picture really quickly Thursday morning before leaving for work so that I could have a reference picture on my green background for the work that I hoped to do on the wrap on my break.

But as you can see, I didn't get much work done on it during my break. It's hard to knit when you don't feel good. :(

Now, the rest of the pictures are from this afternoon and evening. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were spent working on my neice's jumper and other crafts and projects. I even took time to actually cook dinner on Saturday night! Of course, it's rare that I have a Saturday night off from work to cook dinner, but that's another story.

Here is the wrap after a little more work done on it this afternoon. The wrap is worked from the top down, and it is the one piece which I am making one solid piece instead of the three pieces which it is in the movie. As a doll outfit, it actually would not stay on the doll if I made it the three seperate pieces. So, the navy top fabric, the maron bottom fabric, and the red tie at the waist are actually all going to be one piece.

Here I am measuring the same amount done on the wrap as the above picture on Mulan. I have the pattern written out for the wrap, but as with the shirts, I created the pattern away from the yarn and needles so I might need to tweak it a little as I am making it. Here I am seeing if I have gone far enough to put on the red line for the tie.

Okay, funny picture. What do you do to keep a ball of yarn which you aren't using currently but is still attatched to the project you are working on from rolling all over the bed and in your way? Well, naturally, you have the doll hold the ball of yarn. This probably would only work with the Mulan doll I have because she has all the posable joints.

This picture is just after I have finished the two rows to simulate the red tie which goes around her waist.

Just a couple of rows later. It looks like I'm making a team scarf or something! If you look closely, you can see just how little of wiggle room I have on the circular needle for this piece. I wish I could find a small circular in a length longer than 16". Guess I need to look at ordering one online, because I have more of these wraps to make for Mulan.

Same amount but on Mulan.

A little further. I was looking to see how much longer I needed to go with the navy before needing to change to the maron. There is still no snaps on anything and the only piece that is finished (other than the snaps) is the pink kimono jacket, so that is why everything seems a little bit bulky. I'm really please with how pretty she is turning out to be.

A couple more navy rows and then I switched to maron. This is two rows in on the maron and where I stopped on the wrap for the night.

And then I worked a little bit on the shift. It worked well to work on while dinner was heating up (leftovers from Saturday night), since I really didn't have to carry anything downstairs other than the dress and a working needle. There is very little change in the stitch count from start to finish (not counting the straps), it goes from 36 stitches at the beginning to just 55 stitches at the end. So this piece is mostly just measuring to know where to do the small increases. This is after the work I did while waiting on dinner. It's just almost long enough now. Only about 5 more cm to go.

And a few rows later. It's hard to believe how much difference a few rows makes at this point. The shift will reach her feet in the end and I hope to finish it really soon.

139 DAYS REMAINING!!!!! (and luckily I have most princesses started)

And now some rambling thoughts from me aside from the update of the princess dress project. Really a rant mostly. Pet peeves. Things that I have come to really be annoyed by in the last few days.

1. Stupid people - if you don't no what you are talking about or the situtaion or whatever, keep your mouth shut! You only make yourself look more stupid by trying to appear smart.
2. Busy stores - why is it every time I need to go to the store, it seems the entire town had the same idea? It doesn't seem to matter what time I go. It's always busy.
3. Yarn snobs - okay, if you aren't in the yarn crafting world, you won't understand this. Basically, a yarn snob hates man-made yarns, such as acrylics. Get over yourselves! Not everyone is a yarn snob. Not everyone can afford to be a yarn stob. Not everyone has the immune system to be a yarn snob. For example, the only natural fibers I can use are cotton and bamboo. No wool, angora, alpaca, etc. for me unless you want to see hives. Personally, I like the feel of most acrylics. They are soft, durable, and guess what: no dye lot! I'd like to see you match a 20 year old wool yarn in color to one today. I can still match acrylics from the same company from 30 years ago! The only thing that I have found that is consistantly softer than acrylics is bamboo. And bamboo, while I admit it is nice, is dry clean only. If an item made in acrylics gets dirty, guess what? Throw it in the wash. Throw it in the dryer. It's clean! And normally, you don't have to block it.

Okay, I'm done for now. I had to get those things off my chest. Hope everyone has a good day (or few) until I update again!

A Few Princesses

Okay, so coming up with titles for each of my blog posts isn't always the easiest, hence the really uncreative title for today's post. Since yesterday (Sunday) was my only day off, I really meant to get a lot of work done in the knitting world, but it didn't happen so much. Funny thing about upping your work hours. You get tired. Who knew, right? LOL. Every time I tried to work on dresses yesterday, I kept falling asleep with the needles and yarn in my hands. Ooops. But despite that, I did get a little bit of work done and some new outfits started.

Since I now had a Belle doll free, I placed the pink dress on Belle (after working a few rows on it, of course). It still amazes me how much these dresses are actually looking like the dresses in the movies. People keep telling me I have a real talent, but it's really hard for me to admit that. I don't want to sound arrogant. Is that bad?

Okay, before some of  you think I have been working on Tiana without posting pictures, the answer is no. This is not one of Tiana's dresses. This is Mulan's shift on Tiana. The reason? I think that the pattern I am coming up with for Mulan's shift will work as the basis for both Tiana's white diner dress and her white wedding dress, but I wanted to compair. So what do you think? (hey, comments are welcomed, I know there are at least a few readers out there).

And before putting the shift  back on Mulan, it was put on the needles and worked on for a little bit. Just about 8 or so more cm left on it before the shift will be finished.

A picture of my bed Sunday afternoon. Full of dolls and needles and chicken scratching patterns, oh yeah, and one very jealous kitty. She is still not sure what to do with me crafting all the time when I am home. Here she curled up in the middle of the green blanket which I have been using for picture backgrounds!

Ah, a new dress. White doesn't really give much of a clue as to who it is for other than it is a more than likely a wedding dress (which it is). Another dress I am having to design, it belongs to Cinderella. After working the blue top on Mulan, I figured out how to make the overlapping collar layers, which is all that was keeping me from Cinderella's wedding dress. This picture is just a couple of rows in.

And a few more rows.

And at 3 cm, which is where I thought I would start the overlapping sections. I was using the bodice I made for Aurora's peasant dress as a reference for this dress, and the first measurement I have on that dress is 3 cm, so I thoughts that's where the pattern would break off. I forgot that the 3 cm measurement on Aurora's dress was for the black portion before the little V-dip of the beige! Oops. So obviously by this picture, 3 cm was not long enough. I kept going to 5 cm. LOL.

And here it is at 5 cm. Much better and ready to start the shapping of the collar.

First row into the collar portion with a portion of the right side (facing) cast off, which is the portion that has the under-lapping section.

Back on Cinderella after making the arm hole to meausre where the shoulder protion would land.

The first section is jusst nearly complete here. I just have to cast it off the needle.

And cast off the needles.

Starting the second portion of the top of the bodice. I wanted to make sure that the overlapping portion would look correct.

And with both sides finished and cast off the needles and pesky ends darned in. All that the bodice portion needs now is sleeves and then I will head to the skirt.

Another princess started. This pattern I am also designing, after a little inspiration from an amigurumi pattern (that's knitted or crocheted toys and animals, like the Pascal I have started to make). I know it isn't a dress, but I figured, I have the colors I need and Ariel's wardrobe just wouldn't be complete without her tail and signature shells! (which from what I have seen in the stores, you can only get Ariel as a mermaid with her tail attatched and not removable. What a shame. The Ariel doll I had when I was a kid had at least three tails. Her green one; a purple (?) one; and a white/wedding one. Such a shame girls today don't have that). I am starting at the base of the tail in order to keep the tail seamless. Making the triangular tube seems pretty easy. I still am not sure how to do the triangular fins.

A little bit further and with the first end darned in, closing up the small hole in the bottom of the tail.

And a little bit further. The ring is merely to mark the first DPN and not neccesarilly the start of the round.

Same portion as above, just with Ariel's legs inside it.

And one last outfit/princess started. This time it is Pocahontas. After a false start and a too short around outfit, I finally got things going for her signature outfit.

Measured on Pocahontas. And running into a tiny problem. Pocahontas is an older doll. Which means her body is a different shape. It's the older shape with the wider chest and impossibly skinny waist. The outfit fits both her and the newer dolls (Ariel got to be my model as she was near by from me working on her tail), but if I find the current Pocahontas has the new body (seems she can only be gotten from the Disney Store or Parks or such), I might have to move the snaps on the back.

And a little further. You can just barely make out a ridge on her mid chest. That ridge is for placement of the fringe after the knitting is done.

Off the cirucluar and on the DPNs for working in round. You can see I have changed colors to make the belt which goes at her waist.

And back on Pocahontas after finishing up for tonight. This outfit shouldn't take too long as it doesn't even reach her knees. What will take the longest is putting on the fringe.

146 DAYS REMAINING!