Honor to Us All

Yeah! I've finished another dress. Actually, I had it finished last night, but I hadn't had a chance to take the pictures until tonight. This one hasn't really taken that long, but it's been a long time coming. It's Mulan's Matchmaker outfit, and I have to say that this is my absolute favorite princess dress!!!! Squeeeee!!!!!

Okay, okay, I know, you want pictures. Here they are. :)

These first couple of photos are just finishing photos, but not finished photos. Here, I have gone back and added the detail in to the blue shirt, the little beads on the right shoulder of the shirt.

And finally with it all together, all ends tucked in, all snaps sewn on (there's only 12 snaps in the entire outfit!).

And now the finished photos. I took one of each layer of the dress. This is just the shift.

With the blue shirt...

Pink kimono jacket...

And with the wrap. I also made the little sheer wrap piece she has around her arms. I didn't want to take forever on that little piece, so it is actually crocheted instead of knitted.

I won't comment on all of these photos because they are the same as above, just with the movie shots with the doll photos. I'm still amazing myself how close these are looking to the actual outfits.

And one last photo. Yes, this is still just the shift, but on a craft doll. If you don't recall, I completely designed this outfit myself. I really liked what a simple dress that the shift was, so I wrote up the pattern and placed it for sale in my Ravelry design shop. And I've already sold a pattern!!!! It wasn't even up for 30 minutes before someone bought it! I'm psyched! I'm in the process of having other patterns tested to put up for sale soon. This is the picture in the pattern. I put the dress on a plan craft doll so it looked more neutral of a design. I also apparently had better luck in this picture with the light not glaring off the white yarn.

And I'm going to leave you with the video of the making of this outfit. It's kind of long because there is nearly 100 photos from this design! There were so many, I couldn't even get them all on one song. So, the video is set to "Honor to Us All" and "Reflection." Enjoy!



It's All About Aurora

I actually managed to update fairly quickly again. Aren't you proud of me? LOL. Not much to report today, but I do have a few pictures. I spent the day working on Aurora. Mostly I tried to get some work done on the blue ball gown, which I did, but I did do a little work on her peasant dress and her cape. I really do think I'm getting faster at knitting, which is a good thing.

First up is her peasant dress. I really only did two rows on her peasant dress, because I was 1) focusing on her blue ball gown and 2) I was being a total nerd and wanted to get a Disney stitch marker on the dress.

Here the dress is after I added my selection of stitch marker. Since I only have one Aurora stitch marker, I decided to use Chip. Isn't he cute?

Here's a close up of him.

But I decided I needed Chip for something else (you'll see in a minute), so I dug in my princess stitch markers and placed Tiana on the peasant dress since currently I don't have any of Tiana's dresses going.

After a while, the small knitting needles start to cramp my hands, which is one reason I have the capes going. They are made on larger needles than the dresses (and no, I don't just mean in length, but that helps too). Again, I decided to replace the boring ring stitch marker with a Disney stitch marker, again from the tea set stitch markers I received from my swap partner. This time, it's the creamer dish.

Here's a close up of the creamer dish stitch marker. I love all the stitch markers that my swap partner made me. Not only are they one-of-a-kind, but they are fun and cute, too. :)

As I worked on the cape, I realized that the increases happened in a pattern, and I really got tired of counting them out every right side row. So I was going to place stitch markers to mark the increases, just using my boring old ring stitch markers and leaving the creamer dish for the marker to remind me to garter stitch the three edge stitches on the wrong side row. Well, then I realized a problem. While, yes, the increases happened in a patterned, regular interval, they didn't always happen the same way (i.e., all on the left hand side of the stitch marker, etc.), although each individual increase happened the same way on each right side row. So what did I do? Well, Aurora went for tea with Belle's friends of course! It was perfect. There was just the right amount and differing kind of stitch markers in the little tea set to be able to mark all of the increases and for me to be able to know which type of increase to do where. For you knitting people that follow, here's what I did (and so I can look back at this post and remind myself in case I forget, LOL): the creamer dish and the sugar bowl are for the garter stitch on wrong side rows; the two Chip stitch markers (which is why I had to remove him from Aurora's peasant dress) mark increases which need to happen on the outside of the stitch marker; the plates mark the shoulder increases; and the spoons mark the middle increase section where I need to create an increase on the inside of each stitch marker. I love the ease of it! It cuts the time needed for an increase row in half!

Here's a close up of the sugar bowl, Chip again, the plate, and the spoon stitch markers. Aren't they just cute!

Here's just to show the length of the cape on Aurora herself. Just barely past the shoulders, but I think that now that I have the stitch markers in place, the cape will make up pretty quickly.

And the blue dress. It's working up so much quicker now using the magic loop. Here's where I started today after last night's work on it. At this point, I'm about a third of the way through the skirt.

And after tonight's work. I'm now about half way through and it reaches to just past her knees. It finally looks like a dress and not a Catholic school girl outfit! I'm loving using the long circular to work up the skirt. I don't think it will be too much longer until I finish this dress, which I know will make the mother happy. :)

112 DAYS REMAINING!

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?