Monthly Archives: January 2021

Hello and Brrr!

Hello from “Winter Wonder Land”. Winter weather in northern Illinois has finally caught up with the season we are currently living in. It is COLD and our landscape is covered in piles of frosty white. It’s taken this long for it to finally feel like winter, which is when I start dreaming of… yes, spring!

Last week was filled with lots of knitting and no finished projects to show you yet. However, I still managed to make a short YouTube video showing my work for the week.

This week I am working on embroidery for the two doll cardigans I was knitting last week. I have also just published a free pattern on Ravelry for one-piece knit hearts. The pattern is written for fingering weight yarn, but is easily adaptable for any weight yarn with appropriate needles. This handful of hearts was made with fingering, sport, DK, worsted, chunky, chunky/fingering, fingering/lace mohair. The width is easily changed too. It’s all in my video and pattern.

A few of these hearts were made years ago as sachets, but the lavender smell is long gone. I was thinking of stringing all of together them and turning the lot into a garland. What do you think? Do you have any ideas?

The pattern and be found here. And the accompanying YouTube video is below. Enjoy!

I hope you are having a great week! Hugs from here! 🤗 Take care my friends. ❤️

My Work the Past Week

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Hello, my friends! I hope you’ve had a cozy week. We’ve had some snow this week and temperatures that allow for wintery walks. All good! For me the week flew by as it usually does. I started two new projects, so I have two things in progress in my studio: a new ensemble for my Boneka 10″ Rose and a cardigan for Linda Macario’s new doll, Didi.

Thanks to all of you for voting for your favorite fabric either here, on my Facebook page, or on YouTube. Number one, a fabric by Brenda Riddle Designs got the most votes, so that is the one I used for Rose’s new dress. You can see all of the fabric contenders here. I actually like them all and really couldn’t decide!

I picked out a dainty white lace to peek out from the skirt’s hemline.

I still have the hand stitching of the bodice lining to do and the snaps to add, but all of the machine stitching is complete.

Next I started on Didi’s cardigan. Linda wanted a dark red or brown in a fingering weight and I didn’t have that color in my stash, so the first step was dyeing yarn. She sent me fabric swatches so that I could get a color that highlighted both fabrics. I mixed brown, warm red, and yellow to achieve this beautiful shade of warm brown. I think it works beautifully with these two fabrics.

I chose a single ply merino yarn for Didi’s sweater. I love the way this yarn feels. It’s so soft! It shouldn’t be long before I can start on the embroidery.

I also have a few new videos on YouTube in case you’d like to watch my week in progress. I separated in studio work from other life stuff, so two videos. You can pick one or both to watch. I also redid a little stop motion video I made years ago of the Little Darlings. I originally had it on Facebook without music. Now it has music added to it. Here is my YouTube channel page. I hope you enjoy.

Wishing you a great week ahead! I hope the new week is good to you. Sending hugs! 🤗❤️

Something New for Penny

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Hello and Happy Weekend to you! I hope you are doing well and enjoying this time of year when the holidays are over.

I’ve put together a short vlog depicting my makes and other life stuff that happened this past week. Not included in the video is how we spent almost an entire day taking all the ornaments off the tree and carefully wrapping them up–tubs and tubs of ornaments. The tree was as crispy as a cracker, and the branches were sagging to the ground–such a sad state for a once beautiful tree. 😦 I am not sure why it dried out so quickly this year; perhaps the heating vent in that room is a powerhouse vent. We also put away almost all the other decorations; I still have my Snow Village up.

Penny’s new ensemble is complete and she is happily modeling it for you. Yes, it is done and I didn’t have to reknit the cardigan. Thank you for your support and suggestions for it.

Last time I talked about how the uneven striping due to the tonal yarn looked strange, but once the embroidery was complete it looked fine. And I think even without embroidery it would have been okay; it kind of matches Penny’s personality–all quirky and cute.

I also made another mistake with this cardigan which I didn’t discover until I put my needles away from this project. I knew something was amiss when I first tried the cardigan on Penny; it was so roomy, but I never (until now) get my number one and number zero needles mixed up. I was actually quite happy to discover this because it is better than my gauge changing and having to rework my patterns. So Penny has growing room with this cardigan. 😉