18" Doll Clothes

Husband thinks I've gone off the deep end to be making doll clothes. Don't know why I'm doing this, even though there's no grand daughter to knit for, but it's fun. Sometimes you just need a mindless project that goes quickly. There's the urge to knit, but not ready to do something substantial.

This outfit is for the American Girl Doll-sized doll. I nabbed a copy cat at the local Michaels and only paid $10 for her with my 40% off coupon. The skirt pattern is available in an earlier post (June 10, 2009) and it's the same doll. The shell is improvised. I measured the doll, did a 7st x 10row gauge. The only nifty thing I did was to come up with easy edgings for the neck and armholes. I hung the armhole/neck with the RIGHT side facing me, knit 8 rows reducing the tension from 6 to 3 over those rows then bound off. It looks like a garter stitch but is really just reverse stockinette. It rolls a little, but with steaming is presentable. Might even look ok on an adult sweater. Here's the schematic if you want to knit one in your gauge: These dolls have kind of an odd shape---heads are huge so you have to make the neck opening really large. I did a shrug for her in the current issue of Knitwords, if you happen to be a subscriber. It's the same shrug that is in the June 9 post.

Other than this, I haven't done much knitting since the MN State Fair stuff. A friend and I delivered our things plus a friend's items last week. I think there will be a better showing for the Machine Knitting category this year. Stiffer competition too! If you live in the area, be sure to check out our display. It promises to be a good one.

Daughter and boyfriend just left after a week's visit. They saw friends, did a lot of interesting things, helped us around the house. It's always a big adjustment when they leave. Wish they didn't live so far away!!!

The garden is winding down. Nights are already cool to cold and some plants are not happy with that. I have 3 mini tomatoes on the vine. Planted too late this year. You'd think I'd know better after all these years of gardening. With the cooler weather, the urge to take on a bigger knitting project will overtake me I'm sure.