Real Life Can Be Such a Bother

Well, if you are one of my followers from Ravelry, you'll know that "real life" can just suck. Okay, you don't have to be from Ravelry to know that. But to understand the statement "real life," you probably have to be a Raveler. "Real life" is that pesky life you have when you aren't crafting. Yeah, yeah, if you're not a crafter, artist, writer, etc., you probably don't get it. But when "real life" becomes crazy, crafting goes out the window. And so apparently does blogging. I've tried to keep up with things lately, but, yeah, real life can be such a bother.

I do have a few things to update on the princess dress front. First, well, isn't really a dress, but a surprise. I love when Disney Store has sales. I was able to get something else to go with all the princesses. Well, really, just one, but here, look:

Yep! That's right! I got Beast to go with Belle since that is the little girl's favorite princess. And boy, was he a beast to get out of the package! I thought Barbie packages were bad opening. Not anymore. Disney Store wants to make sure that you can't get to their dolls. But me and my scissors prevailed!!! And this doll is really cool. He has a mask and coat that turns him from the prince into the Beast. Here's him all put together.

And as the prince. Unfortunately, the paws and the tail are part of the jacket, so he can't wear it as the prince.

And now to the dresses. Well, just a few pictures of two outfits. As I stated before, the mother had requested that I finish Aurora's dress next, so I have been, as real life has allowed, working on Aurora's pieces. The one I have gotten the most work done on in the last couple of weeks has been her cape, because it is portable and easy to work on with little counting. Here it is after having finished the last decrease on the hood portion.

And now completely done with the hood portion. As with Belle's cape, I'm still not sure how the hood is going to work, but that will have to be figured out after I finish knitting the piece. I find that I have gotten much faster at knitting than when I started working on this project, and I figure it will take me just a couple more hours of work to actually finish up the cape.

 And a little bit into the body with the increases for the shoulders. The really bumpy looking portion near the needle is the ribbing for the neck portion to bring the hood in.

Ah, Aurora's blue dress! I really hope to finish this soon, and now I have a great tool to help me: a very long circular needle in size 0! You can't get these where I live because we have no local yarn shops, just big box, chain stores. This circular came to me via a swap on Ravelry (arrived yesterday) and has already been put to use. Using a technique called the magic loop, I'll be able to work on the skirts of the ball gowns much quicker on the circular than on the DPNs. Of course, I only have one circular, so the DPNs will still be greatly used. Oh, and do you notice that the ugly white plastic stitch marker is gone? My swap buddy sent me a ton (and I do mean a ton) of new stitch markers, including some that are the Disney Princesses and their sidekicks (some of the princesses, not all). I just couldn't help but be nerdy. I've put the Aurora stitch marker on her dress. :)

About 10 minutes later, I already had a few more rows done. I estimate that the circular and magic loop technique cuts my knitting time by at least half! And, as I showed in making Belle's green dress once I put it on the circular, it displays much better on the doll. The circular also allowed me to easily turn the dress inside out and get all the pesky loose ends darned in even though I hadn't finished the dress! I'm really liking working with the magic loop technique now that I have figured out how to do it.

A quick snapshot this morning before going to work. Man, it looks like some kind of torture device! The skirt is a good inch longer in this picture than it is in the previous one on the doll. It's a good thing that the circular is making things quicker too. I've lost some time in working on these outfits lately. :( Hopefully, this will help me make up some time.

Okay, okay. I admit. Since I've been restoring the dolls that I have found at second hand stores and on eBay, I have kind of gotten into doll restoration. I found a few more dolls over the last couple of weeks. I found this one, who was completely Disney, no Mattel marks on her. I figured she had to be a princess, but she didn't really look like the only brunette princess, Belle. At least, she didn't look like the other two Belle dolls I have. But it turns out, she is a Belle doll. She is a Ballet Belle doll that was released exclusively in the Disney Stores a while back. Her hair is pretty messed up, although not as bad as the first Ariel I had to restore.

This is just swiping a comb through a small section a couple of times. It's going to take a while to get through all her hair, which is pretty tangled.

And the full curl worked through. Her ends are frizzing like the Ariel's did, but not as bad. I think it's because I am using an actual flea comb to get the finer knots out of it.

And Cinderella. With her hair falling down. So, what did I do? Took it down the rest of the way. (And yes, I have several Cinderella dolls now. But there are several blond princesses with several outfits each, so it's alright. She'll be purposed to model for the other princesses too).

Half way down. I decided to keep the glittery tendril done up; maybe use it to wrap around the hair once I'm finished with it.

Once it was all down, not even combing it would tame Cinderella's hair - she was a wild child!

So I tried using a cool perm on her, just to help tame the hair. What I mean by "cool perm" is that I didn't use boiling water, which makes it permanent. All I did was wet her hair and then rolled it around the straw rollers to dry, in hopes of taming the hair to go in the right direction.

Here is after a day of sitting in my bathroom drying. Hair is still a little crazy, but at least now it was all going in the "down" direction and I could do something with it.

Being too short to braid or anything else, I just combed out her hair and put a terry cloth rubber band (that's such a misnomer) in it to tame it all back into a ponytail. I'm going to leave it like this for a while, and once the hair conforms to the new style, I'll use a small dental rubber band to secure the ponytail and wrap the glittery tendril around it.

And this poor doll was decapitated when I found her!!! It's another Rapunzel doll, with very tangled hair! But before I could even start on her hair, I had to get her head reattached to her body. It's not as easy as it was when I was a child. When I was a kid, doll heads easily popped on and off the bodies, which aided in dressing the dolls, but now...they have this piece in their heads which secures the head to the neck, making it near impossible to get the head off, and just as impossible to get it back on. Probably took me about thirty minutes to secure her head. Once reassembled, I went to work on her hair. (Oh, and shockingly, she still had her purple dress with her too!)

Putting it into little braids as I finished each little section.

A little more done, from the back.

And all combed out and ready for a wash. She is still currently in the restorative state, having had her hair washed and drip dried (yeah, all that hair has taken about two days to dry) and awaiting styling.

And now, the little jumper I was working on for my niece. It turned out really cute, but I don't think I will ever work with that cotton yarn again. It worked up pretty and soft, but I found it hard to work with because the yarn itself had absolutely no give! It was rather difficult at times working on the lace. Here it is modeled by a baby doll from when I was a little girl.

Just a progress shot on my halter dress. You can finally start to see the color in the piece. It's a bit longer now than it is in this picture, which is good, because I have less than a month to finish it. Gulp!

These next two pictures are of yarn that I hand dyed with Kool-Aid! Who knew, right? I'll be doing a post soon documenting how I dyed them because everywhere I read said you couldn't do Kool-Aid dying on cotton yarn, but this yarn here is Peaches & Cream - a 100% cotton yarn!!!! Hehe. Bless my days in Girl Scouts.

And just a couple of last pictures of little projects I have done. This is my monster chunk made from the scrap yarn from my niece's jumper. He didn't take long at all to make. He's name is Blueberry. LOL.

And this little guy I crocheted up really quickly for a coworker of mine who was graduating high school this year. Her favorite color is blue, and her school graduates in red caps and gowns with gold tassels (school colors). Isn't he cute?

A Tiny String, A Little Bit of Yarn, and Some Hair

Well, seeing as Tuesdays are my long days at work, I really didn't get much done today. Most of the pictures I have tonight are from last night after I had posted my update. I did get a miniscule amount done on one outfit tonight after work while I was trying to get my leg muscles to quit cramping. They have been complaining about the increase in my work schedule, but they are just going to have to get used to it.

Pascal

I did do a tiny bit more work on Pascal last night before going to bed. Not much, but I finished his head, other than stuffing it. It looks like a little mitten, lol.

Jasmine

The one outfit I did manage to get a little bit of work on today after work was Jasmine's red pant outfit, mostly because it is just straight stockinette stitch. No counting. No putting in garter stitch on the edge. Nothing. I am designing the pants. I hope they work.

Here I am measuring the pant leg against Jasmine, because what I had written down and what was measuring on the doll was not matching. Yes, I know it's pants and I have it laid out as a skirt. Since I am working the piece flat, laying the pant leg across the front of both legs was just the easier way to measure the piece.

A little ways further, measuring with the sewing gauge. Just about 4 cm to go (or roughly 12 rows).

This is the same amount done, just measured on the doll. It would work for shorts right now. :)

Tangled Hair - Aurora

Well, before going to bed last night, I thought I would get a little work done on combing out Aurora's hair. Here it is untouched. I thought it was going to take forever, it looked so matted.

But, like the dolls before, it really was just matted and not really all that tangled. I guess that Ariel doll I started my doll restoration experience with was an exception, not the rule, to Disney princess dolls and messed up hair. This is after not even five minutes of work and I'm already about a third of the way through.

As I kept combing out small sections, I noticed the back of her head looked bald, but she didn't seem to be missing any hair plugs. I hoped it was just how her hair ended up matting in clumps that was causing this look.

And it was. Here she is after about ten minutes of work, tangle free. But her hair was very gunky, so she was in desperate need of a wash.

Just a front shot before washing.

This morning before work, I took Aurora off the side of the sink to style her hair and it looked like I had never even combed it!!!! But at least it wasn't gunky any more. And it wasn't tangled, this was just the odd curls that she dried in.

Her hair isn't long enough for a braid, so I just pulled it back into a pony tail.

Front shot of the finished doll.

A Trio of Dolls - Cinderella

After the dolls I have aquired, I have ended up with three Cinderella dolls, which is a good thing in figuring out their hair. Two of the dolls are by Mattel (the right two) and the other one came from England with Megara, so she's from a different company, though her head stamp still reads Disney, and that is why she looks different.

The first doll I received first (far left) and combed, washed and braided her hair. I was a little upset because it looked like the hair had been cut and the seller did not disclose this in the buyer info. The other two came in the same doll lot and are the same model. The middle doll in the picture had hair that was still nearly perfectly styled, so I put another layer of hair spray on her and decided to keep her hair styled as she came. The far right one has the same hair style, but it is drastically falling down. So, I am going to take it down and see if the hair has shorter sections (which it looks like it does) to try to determine if the first doll's hair was cut or not.

Here is an individual shot of the first doll. I lifted up her braid to show the shorter/cut section.

You can see it a little better in the side shot. Her braid is much thinner than any of the other dolls. She definitely has the least amount of hair.

This is the doll whom I decided to keep styled hair on. It's a really fancy updo that I don't think I could replicate.

Here's a side view. It's really hard to show the detail on blond hair with a camera flash reflecting off the doll. Maybe I can get I better picture in the sunlight.

This is the last doll. I just took a picture to compair to the one above to show how much her hair was falling down already.

A Treat for Me - Esmarelda

So, I have to say, one of my favorite Disney heroines is not a princess at all. She didn't even marry a prince. She married the captain of the guard. She's Esmarelda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And her doll was in the lot of dolls that my sister helped me get!!!! Once I have gotten along far enough in the dress project that I can work on a little something for myself, I am going to make her gypsy outfit. But right now, her hair is a mess (big surprise, right?). Her hair is somewhere around the length of Jasmine's and fairly thick (though I don't think as thick as Megara's hair is). Here's a before picture.

And a back before picture. I haven't done much work on her, and she's probably just going to get a little bit of work done on her at a time. After I took this picture, I found a twig caught up in all that mess!

And the little bit of work I got done. I know it looks like a good amount, but not compaired to the thickness of her hair. She will also have to have a wash afterwards. I'll have to do some research as to how her hair is styled in the movie so I can style it after it's all done. Since this is a doll for me for display and not a dress for a child to play with, I will be doing the outfit in crochet thread and her hair will be styled and then she will be displayed as a OOAK doll. I might even have to get a display case for her, because I don't want her getting ruined after I finish her up (especially since her doll is a little hard to come by - not as hard as Meg, but still not as common as the princesses).

166 DAYS REMAINING!!!