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.

Short 'n Sweet

Hard to keep up with a blog when there are so many summer things to do.

I had a short 'n sweet trip to Colorado to visit my sister. She is a newbie on the Brother KX 350 midgauge, and not having even seen someone knit on one before became a tad frustrated without any help. We managed to slip in some knitting along with trips to Denver to eat at a new restaurant called "Boa" and a great lunch at Chataqua, attendance at her nice church among other things. Here is the sweater we worked on. It's called, oddly enough, "Short 'n Sweet", a pattern by Mary Anne Oger in Knitwords #28. It's a size 4.
It's very feminine and dainty. A bit of a challenge for a beginning knitter, but I always think that taking on a challenge gets you to a higher level faster than just plugging along at the basics all the time.
Here's a closeup of the neck and you can see the neat rope-like edging.


My sister is now finishing up a matching size 8 sweater for her other grand daughter. I hope they appreciate all the love and hard work that went into these sweaters!

Our Machine Knitters Guild of Minnesota members are busy knitting entries to the great Minnesota Get Together (the state fair). We didn't have a lot of items in the machine knitting category last year. Afraid that they'll do away with the machine knitting category, lots of us are knitting up a storm and will enter several items. I have completed a few, but won't be able to show them on the blog for a month or so. Talk about raising your knitting to a new level! Everything and every detail of your knitting is scrutinized, so you have to try hard to do things correctly and neatly. Not so easy. But it's fun and I can't wait to see what my friends are submitting.

Got my copy of Knitwords #50 in the mail yesterday. Check out the website---lots of nice stuff and good articles. http://knitwords.com/ click on current issue


It appears that our Minnesota summer is also going to be remembered as short 'n sweet. The nights are cold and the days are cool, a scarcity of rain. Not so great for the garden. Maybe we'll have a nice mild and extended fall. One can only hope.

Summer has arrived in Minnesota

Sorta. It's been the most cloudy and dreary spring and summer that I can remember. O well, can't complain about what you have zero control over. Seems to be an occupation---complaining about the weather---that humans like to indulge in.

I've been gardening some. This is my main garden. Reduced from days of yore, more manageable for me. Looks probably the best now that it will look, although photos are always disappointing. I struggle with deer, shade and tree roots being so close to the dense woods. My favorite flower---for lots of reasons, is dahlias. Here is one of the first whose tuber was saved from last year. The color is yummy. Upon recommendation from my sister, I bought some SpraynGrow. Haven't used it yet, but hope that does well by my roses (other side of the yard). Hers are out of this world and I don't expect to ever have roses that fine. I'm jealous. I'm thinking the lighter pink one is as close to perfection as is possible. Reminiscent of Georgia O'Keefe.


Have been knitting up a storm too, but can't show pictures yet because the items are going in the MN State Fair.

PS Windows Live Writer crashed my computer, so I'm back to the regular Blogger software. grrrrrrrrrrr is all I'll say. Didn't want to recommend it after all.

Trying Windows Live Writer

This morning I downloaded the Windows Live Writer.  You are supposed to be able to post to your blog from this application.  Always takes a bit to figure things out, but it seems easy.

Here’s a picture of my niece’s daughter wearing a coat I made her out of a recycled sweater.  Looks like she found a piece of something that doesn’t belong. Given that it was about 90 degrees when we tried it on her, she probably wasn’t so happy to be wearing it.

Ok, after a 5 minute trial, I like this so much better than posting from Blogger.  I’m one of those who would rather create a post like you would type in a word processing program.  Don’t need to see the html tags.

I suppose there are lots of other things I can do, but so far so good!  I might even post more often.

If you are interested, here's where to get the program:
http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D85741BB5E0BE8AA!1533.entry

18" Doll Skirt

My friend Carol lent me her 18” doll so that I could design a shrug for Knitwords to fit her. (If all goes well, the doll and adult shrugs will be in the next issue.) I decided she looked indecent without a skirt, so I whipped one out. When I give her back she will look dressed. Doesn’t she look cute???? She needs a camisole or something for underneath the shrug, but we’ll leave that for another day. Recognize that pink yarn? I rescued it from the waste yarn bin to make the hearts and match the shrug. (I used it to make the shrug "prototype".)

Here’s how I made the skirt.

Machine: Standard gauge
Yarn: Bramwell 4 ply acrylic; small amounts white and pink (many other yarns can achieve this gauge)
Gauge: 7 st x 10 r at T 7
Other: ½ inch elastic, 10”

Directions:
Over 131 needles, cast on with waste yarn and knit a few rows at T 6 1/2. Change to main yarn and knit 5 rows. Use the lace carriage to transfer every other stitch, making the picot edge. (Or, transfer the stitches by hand.) Leave emptied needles in work. Knit 5 rows T 7 and hang a hem. Change to T 10 and knit one row to seal the hem. RC 000. Change back to T 7 and knit 3 rows. Set up the heart pattern and knit it for 3 rows. Knit plain to RC 40. Decrease the stitches by half, either with the lace carriage or by hand. Take off on waste yarn and rehang over every needle. Knit 11 rows T 7, one row T 10 for a turning row, 12 rows T 7. Hang hem, bind off. Thread the elastic through the waistband and sew ends to make a circle. Seam with main yarn to enclose waistband elastic and the back seam. Hide yarn ends.

Even with change of tensions for the hem, it tends to flip up. Steaming it judiciously helps, but acrylic melts so easily you need to be careful.

I could get into this doll clothes thing. The knitting goes really fast and you don't have to worry about her complaints about color, fit or style. She pretty much smiles through it all.

Three More Charity Hats - Easy, free patterns

No big projects this week, but am continuing to work toward my charity hat goal. I'm up to 14 now. Seems like it should be more, but those are the ones I can remember and account for. I thought in case you wanted some really simple patterns, I'd share what I made.

Green and white stripes, top left:
Machine- midgauge
Yarn – any that works with your machine, small amounts of two colors to make stripes
Gauge – depends on the yarn and tension you choose. At Tension 5, with Mary Lou’s Solo, 5.5 st x 7 rows = 1”. Makes a loose knit, but cooler, hat.
Size- mine fits a 3-6 month old. 16” wide x 7” high. You can make one with my dimensions and then adjust if you want a different size.

Directions: Cast on with waste yarn over 90 needles, hang weights, knit a few rows. Ewrap on over the waste yarn with color 1. RC 000. T 2, knit 10 rows for the rolled brim. Change to color 2 and T 5. Knit 8 rows color 2 and 8 rows color 1. Knit 6 rows color 2, 6 rows color 1. Knit 4 rows color 2, 4 rows color 1. Knit 2 rows color 2, 2 rows color 1, 2 rows color 2. Knit 2 rows color 1. (RC 54.) *Decrease by half by putting every other stitch onto its neighbor. Knit one row. Take off on waste yarn, rehang main yarn stitches, knit one row.* Repeat decreases one more time. Knit one row. Cut a matching yarn tail 10” and thread onto sewing needle. Gather up stitches tightly and seam the side.
Note: nice in cotton for a light weight hat.

Pink snowflakes, center:
Machine: Standard gauge with programming capabilities (electronic or punch card)
Yarn: Whatever yarn works for your machine, small amounts pink and white.
Gauge: At Tension 6, with Bramwell 4 ply, 7 st x 10 rows = 1”
Size: 20” wide x 8” high (teen or adult small); you can make one with my dimensions and then adjust if you want a different size. You will want to have a full repeat of the snowflake.

Chart for brim: 24 st x 23 r

Directions:
Cast on with waste yarn over 144 n, hang weights, knit a few rows at T 5. Change to main yarn and knit 24 rows. Change to T 6 and knit one row to set up pattern and then knit the 23 rows of pattern. Hang first row of main yarn to make a hem. Knit one row at T 10. RC 000. Change back to T 6 and knit 54 rows. *Decrease by half by putting every other stitch onto its neighbor. Knit one row. Take off on waste yarn, rehang main yarn stitches. Knit one row.* Repeat decreases one more time. Cut a matching yarn tail 10” and thread onto sewing needle. Gather up stitches tightly and seam the side. Make a pom pom for the top with the two colors. The long floats are nicely hidden inside the band.

Turquoise and white striped jester hat, lower right
Machine: Standard gauge
Yarn: Whatever yarn works for your machine, small amounts turquoise and white.
Gauge: At Tension 7, with Mary Lou’s Solo, 7.5 st x 10 rows = 1”
Size: To fit 6-12 month; 18” wide x 7.5” high; you can make one with my dimensions and then adjust if you want a different size

Directions: Cast on with waste yarn over 136 stitches, hang weights, and knit a few rows at T3. RC 000. E wrap with main yarn and knit 10 rows. Change to T 7 and knit 72 rows alternating 4 rows turquoise, 4 rows white. Knit 2 rows turquoise. (RC 84.) Take off on several rows of waste yarn. With right side facing you, hang ½ of the stitches, fold the knitting over so that right sides are together and hang the other half on top of these stitches. Knit one row and bind off with the latch tool around the gate pegs to make a seam that won’t pucker. Seam the side seam and hide yarn tails. Make a 4 stitch I cord at T10, bind off. Make and attach a tassel to the corner of the hat. Repeat for other side. Easy!

PS---I have about one ounce of that pink yarn left. It is going to waste yarn heaven. Finally!

Ribbed Baby Jacket

This is Debbie Bliss' hand knit pattern that I converted to machine knitting on the manual midgauge machine. You can find the pattern here: http://www.allaboutyou.com/craft/Knitting-pattern-ribbed-baby-jacket/v1
Some hand knitting patterns are easier to convert to machine knitting than others. This one was very easy. She even tells you how many rows to knit, which is unusual in a hand knitting pattern. So, I didn't have to use any math to convert length to number of rows. Makes one wonder if it really was a machine knit pattern to begin with!

If I were to knit it again, I would do a couple of things differently. For one, hand latching all that ribbing on my Brother KX 350 extended a 40 minute knit to a 5 hour one. I'll do it on one of my machines that has a ribber next time. Also, I should have picked up the neck and front stitches from the wrong side rather than the right side to make a nicer join between pieces. Is ok, but nothing you'd take to the state fair. Navy doesn't photograph well, but in person you can see that the place where stitches were picked up could have been smoother.

I'd say this is about a 3-6 month size. (I used the smallest size in her pattern.) The yarn is Caron Simply Soft, less than one skein. I used T6 and got pretty close to the pattern's gauge of 18 st x 24 r to 10 cm (4 inches). I temporarily pinned on a mini flower corsage. I think the sweater really is suitable for a boy or girl.

We had a guild "knit-in" yesterday so this is what I got done plus a charity baby hat. Machine knitters know the satisfaction of producing a lot of knitting in a short amount of time!