Last fall, I ordered a doll from AliXpress who I ended up calling Natasha. She has (kind of) a Silkstone Barbie head sculpt and an articulated body similar to the Integrity Toys Fashion Royalty dolls.
Recently, I noticed there were new dolls there, so (yes) I ordered one. Here’s a landing page, although there are plenty of vendors selling these dolls. This is FR-25. She has her left hand raised in all the product pix.
The box is optional – I ordered it, to protect the doll in shipping, and it came dented but the doll was fine. There’s no stand with the doll. She was a little cheaper than Natasha, costing me just over $30 CAD including shipping etc.
Natasha came with a pair of black slingbacks, but not this girl.
And here she is, wearing the mauve silk suit I made for the girls last year – even though it doesn’t fit her very well – and catching some rays after her long flight. She’s so tall that the sleeves on all the items for B are short, and these girls are actually a little wider in the hip than either of the B sculpts that I sew for. That dress is a big snug.
She is staring off at the sky (watching contrails, maybe) because her head doesn’t tip down any further. I had to ease something so it *popped* to be able to bend her knees, which was a bit daunting but worked out fine in the end. Her feet are too big for most B shoes, but she fits FR shoes.
Her hair is nice, similar to Natasha’s, very soft but could be a little more thickly rooted. Her nails are shorter than Natasha’s, which is a good thing IMO, and her skintone is more lifelike. I think she’s a good value for the price.
Her face does remind me a little of Linda Evangelista, so I’ll call her Evangeline.
I’m going to have to make clothes for these two, since they can’t borrow from the other girls…
My friend sent me this book at Christmas, full of pretty sock patterns. I don’t usually make pretty socks – I stick to my tried and true, usually in a self-striping yarn – but the socks on the cover are so pretty (and knee socks!) that I had to cast on a pair. I was due for a little fair isle project.
It’s curious that I find knee socks so irresistible – I never wear the ones I’ve knitted, but I do love them.
The book is called Knitted Socks from Finland, and it’s by Niina Laitinen. (The title and image are both linked to the book’s page on the publisher website, which displays buy links too. A lot of smaller stores appear to have the book in stock, so there are plenty of places to buy a copy other than the big river.) The pattern for the socks on the cover is called Dear Sister, and the book includes complete charts. I had a peek on Ravelry before casting on, and could only find the book in the original Finnish: the pattern is called Siskoni Mun. (Those are both Ravelry links.)
It’s always fun to scroll through the completed projects there and look at yarn choices – some Ravellers had knitted the socks in Knit Picks ChromaFingering, a single ply fingering weight that is available in both solid colours and gradients. (That link will take you to KP’s product page.) I have some Chroma in my stash, but wouldn’t have thought of using it for socks – it’s very soft, partly because of the loose way it’s spun, and even though it has 30% nylon, I wouldn’t expect it to be tough enough for socks. But, I love the gradient look and I had the yarn, so I cast on. I used my trusty pair of short circular needles in 2.5mm, which usually have a sock on them.
I also loved the projects that had used a different background colour than the off-white shown in the pattern picture – why not have dramatic socks? I’m using the solid black for the background and a gradient – the colourway is Lupin – as the contrast. Making a change like this always bends my brain a bit when it comes to the charts. I’m knitting the white squares in black so have to think about that for a minute each time I pick up the project again. I have used some patterns (mittens, mostly) that offered the charts both ways around, which was just great. They were digital downloads, though. In a printed book, that would take up too many pages.
Here’s my progress on the first one. I didn’t do a twisted rib because I’m not a fan – my socks have just plain ribbing at the top.
This is the first chart completed, about a dozen rows of ribbing and fifty-some of pattern. There’s another chart of another 40 rows or so before the beginning of the heel. I’m not sure they will actually be knee socks. They might be mid-calf socks, which is fine, too. We’ll see. Part of that will be due to the yarn substitution, but another variable is legs. 🙂 You can see the model has slender calves. My hiking/biking calves are not that slim, so the sock will be stretched wider rather than taller.
It’s not a difficult knit, but not a TV knit either. Each row is different and there are deceases down the center back of the sock. I have to pay attention a bit. Although I always worry that stranded knitting in socks will get too tight, I think my tension is in a good place on this project. I’m not one of those fast fair isle knitters with one colour in each hand. I put down each yarn and pick up the next one, which does give me a chance to check my tension. It means for slow progress, but it’s meditative. Watching the butterflies form and the colour change keeps me knitting just one more row.
This project also had me reaching into my knitting library for a book filled with wonderful fair isle sweaters – The Tudor Roses by Alice Starmore. I have the hardcover edition from Calla Editions and it’s such a lovely book. I’m tempted to order up the yarn and cast on the Mary Tudor cardigan (that’s a Ravelry link) but need to finish up some other projects first. I have two fair isle cardigans already on the needles, waiting on me. (There were changes to the sweaters between editions. In the first edition, the Mary Tudor sweater was a pullover. That’s a Rav link again.)
The Chroma yarn is very soft (and a bit splitty, as loosely spun single ply yarns tend to be.) These will be lounging socks, not hiking socks. And yes, I’m hoping to make them match because that’s just how I roll. It looks as if there are two repeats of the colour gradation in the ball, so fingers crossed.
Onward. They are a bit addictive once you find a bright spot to work…
I have been making progress on the Which Way shawl. I first told you about it in this post than updated you in this post. This is a whole lot of knitting.
Today’s milestone is that I’ve run out of yarn. Both bundles of gradient-dyed yarn are used up and the shawl isn’t done. This is likely because I’ve somehow mucked up the decreases. I want the lower edge to be decreased to nothing before binding off, as I think it might look odd otherwise. This requires a lot more repeats than specified in the pattern.
I have a persistent feeling that I’ve made a mistake, so took the shawl off the needles to have a look.
Here we are. It’s a dingy day and raining too hard to take the shawl outside for a pic. Also, it’s huge, and I couldn’t get it all in the shot.
It’s that bottom wedge that I’m diminishing until it vanishes. At this point, there are 18 stitches there so I’ll need another 9 contrast stripes to finish that out. The pooling is from the main colour, which is hand-dyed, but it seems to have worked out pretty evenly. I don’t mind it. And I don’t mind the size of the shawl. I’m just wondering where I went wrong…
You can just barely see the orange marker in the middle when the decreases were started. The shawl from this point should (I think) be rectangular, and it looks like it will block out that way. I pulled that right tip out longer when I was laying out the shawl.
The pattern specifies 22 contrast stripe repeats after the decreases begin (where the orange marker is). I’m currently at 43. Following the directions, the decreases would have stopped around the point that the contrast yarn (the gradient) started to get darker. (Eyeball a halfway point between the orange marker and the live stitches at the right.) I think the shawl would have been too small then, and an odd shape. There are some finished project pictures on Ravelry that are shaped the way my shawl is now, which does nothing to explain the 21 contrast stripe difference.
Here’s the pattern on Ravelry again. It calls for 4 oz of the main colour, a sport weight yarn, (that’s 113g) and 5 oz of the gradient skeins (let’s call it 150g), knit on US 6 needles (4.0mm). My yarn is fingering weight so I used 3.75mm needles. (I could actually have gone down another size as it’s a loose garter stitch, but it is nice and drapey this way.) I had 144g of the gradients, and 2 skeins of the main colour for 220g total (732m). I’m into the second skein of the main colour and I guess it was predictable that I’d run out of the contrast.
Fortunately, I have another skein of sock yarn in a mulberry shade that is pretty close to the gradient colourways – probably more like the fifth shade than the sixth (maybe even the fourth. You can see it on the right.) I’ll go with it anyway. The fiber content is the same.
I’ll keep knitting and will show you better pix once it’s completed. I still have no clue what I did wrong, but the end result looks okay, so it will be what it will be.
Finishing up that Foxtail Cross Body Sling had me digging into my unfinished projects. I remembered starting this bag a few years ago, becoming overwhelmed with some detail and putting the project aside. I got it back out again and finished it up.
The pattern is from Amy Butler and is called The Weekender Travel Bag. You can buy the pattern on her site, from this page. (Just scroll down a bit to find it.)
Here’s the official picture at right. (Clicking on it will also take you to her PDF download page to buy the pattern.)
Although I love the look of this bag, I was worried about using quilting cotton on the exterior, specifically how well it would wear. For this first one, I used several table runners that had a woven design. I think they’re polyester. They were available in two colour combinations – here’s a green one, uncut.
I used the burgundy/pink variant for my bag and fussy-cut the pieces to play with the design. Instead of making my own piping, I bought drapery piping in a coordinating colour. Here’s my bag:
I did add piping to the tops of the pockets on the bag ends, though there isn’t supposed to be any. I had some left and liked the look of it.
I also used the needle off-set on my machine for the final row of stitching along the piping, so that I could get as close to it as possible. I still didn’t get as close as I’d like, but it worked out pretty well.
The reason I put my bag away initially was the zipper. I couldn’t find one with tabs that met in the middle. (I’ve since learned how to make one from the Blue Calla tutorials – I’ll tell you about that with another post about bag-making.) At the time, I bought two heavy plastic zippers to use instead – a burgundy one for each side – but wasn’t entirely happy with that solution. (Now, after making the bag, I think that the heavy plastic zips might be too heavy. It gets a bit bulky around the zipper opening with that fusible foam inside.) Recently, though, there were some separating zippers discounted at my local fabric store, probably because the zipper tape is mustard yellow. There was a 32″ one that was long enough for me to cut off one end, and the mustard matched the stripe in the fabric.
One change I did make was putting a heavier bottom in the bag. I often use these cutting boards from Ikea for that – they’re inexpensive and easy to cut to size with a heavy knife. The base of this bag was too big, though. The mister came up with a solution for me – he’d noticed cheap cutting mats at a discount store. They aren’t the same quality as the one I use on my cutting table, but in this case, one was perfect. I cut it down to size and put it in the bottom of the bag, before the lining went in.
I also really (really) like bag feet. I put eight on this one, because they’re smaller in size than might be ideal. They’re secured to that cutting board base, which means the base doesn’t come out and the bag can’t be washed. Would I wash an overnight bag? Not likely. If anything, I’d spot-clean it. I can’t imagine that this fabric, and all the layers of fusible goodness, would survive a trip through the washing machine either.
This bag is quite easy to assemble. There are a lot of layers but not many pieces and the instructions are excellent. The tricky bit was getting close enough to that piping, but a lot of that is on me, because I used heavier fabric and heavier piping than specified. I had no fun putting in the lining, but again, that’s on me – because I had put that hard base into the bag, I couldn’t turn it inside out as instructed. There were a lot of contortions to get the lining sewn in as a result!
I had thought this fabric might be easy to clean and mark-resistant, and I was proven right. When sewing in the lining, I stabbed my finger and bled on the bag. The mark came right out with cold water. 🙂
If you want to make a small bag, this is a good one to try! Keep it simpler than I did, though, and use the specified weight of fabric and binding.
You’ve probably guessed that the green runner is destined to become a different bag. I’ve already cut it out…and yes, it uses another of the sale zippers with mustard tape.
You don’t have to buy many patterns for doll clothes to come across Aileen’s Petite Fashions. These patterns are hand-drawn and clearly vintage. The title is hand-printed and the instructions look as if they’ve been typed. There’s usually a drawing of the doll and garment. At right is part of the one I’ll show you today.
Something about them reminds me of “ditto” copies, which our teachers made in the 1960’s and 70’s. (Dittos were made on spirit duplicators and characteristically were purple copies. The machines were hand-cranked and had a specific sound, and the process produced a memorable scent.)
I don’t know the history of these patterns, but they seem to date from the early sixties. There are a number of APF patterns reproducing original Barbie outfits. I found a list of them, here, though the site is old and it’s not clear whether the patterns are still being sold from this site. I’ve mostly come by mine via Etsy purchases, though often the finished garment is shown in the picture and I don’t realize it’s an APF pattern until I’ve downloaded it.
I recently made my first APF pattern. It’s APF 82 – Easter Parade, a reproduction of a 1959 Barbie fashion from Mattel. It included a black unlined coat, a print sleeveless dress, a purse and a “hat” (which is kind of a hairband, made with a “garbage tie”. Hmm.) Here’s a description on the Barbie Wiki with a picture of the Mattel original. I got this pattern on Etsy somehow, probably in a bulk pattern purchase.
And here’s my first attempt.
I made the coat of black Kona cotton. The instructions, like those on many older patterns, seem to assume that you already know what you’re on about. I used ribbons for the bows on the pockets, because I had no idea how big to cut the bias strip to make them, and couldn’t see them well in the picture to mimic the original. The coat has no front fastening because it’s pretty full. I did finish more edges than instructed and it came out reasonably well. I think it would benefit from a lining as the back collar bit does not give me joy but there you go.
Vintage B is wearing it here with a sheath of emerald satin and a pillbox hat with two feathers. (I love this little hat!) I’ll show you the sheath in another post, once I work out some kinks in the pattern.
I also made the dress from the pattern, using a teeny-tiny cotton floral print that I bought on Etsy. This one seems very generous in bodice, particularly in the upper front. I think if I made it again, I might curve down the neckline that takes the bias band. Overall, the fit is generous, more suited to “little fingers” than sleek couture.
The black seemed a bit austere for an Easter coat, so I cut another of bright pink. This is a French shirting cotton with two shades of pink that gives it a pretty crosswise stripe. (I originally made myself a shirt of this fabric. What happened to that shirt???) I added 1/4″ to the length of the sleeves to allow for a doubled hem, and again used ribbon on the pockets. You can see that this kind of collar doesn’t fit under a coat very well.
And here’s an interesting detail. I recently bought Kenneth King’s book on sewing for dolls and was intrigued that he used bridal tulle as a lining on some garments. It’s very thin, as he notes. Well, Aileen was using bridal tulle sixty years ago – the top of the dress is lined with it. It does work out quite well, making a very thin lining. The skirt of the dress is unlined.
I’ve admired this pattern from Hankie Chic for a while, and finally bought a copy. I also made it for the girls almost immediately, which is pretty amazing. Usually patterns have to wait their turn in the queue. Not only that, but I made a second one right away, in a fabric that had just joined my stash, so I’m making personal ‘firsts’ all over the place this month. 🙂
Here’s the pattern – it’s available from the designer’s website right here. There’s just the one view, although you can see that the designer did some fussy-cutting to have borders and bands in different places. I found this to be a very easy and quick make.
Here’s the first one, made of quilting cotton and lined with cotton voile. This is one of the new Barbie Basics dolls with a MTM Original body, and the dress fits her. It’s a bit looser on her than on the original Silkstone, but I positioned the snaps for the Silkie girls. I did some top-stitching on this one as the quilting cotton seemed more bulky than crisp.
One of the results of using quilting cotton for a pattern like this with a very full skirt is that the gathers at the waist add a tremendous amount of bulk. The fabric is gathered as much as it can be or close to it, and that adds a lot of fabric in the seam allowance. You can probably see a huge difference in the waist in the second version.
This one is made from a piece of silk taffeta that I got at our sewing guild’s fabric swap – yes, it was here for less than a week before some of it was sewn up. (I know. The world is wobbling on its axis.) It’s also lined with cotton voile. This one is so very crisp. 🙂
The skirt on this one is a little bit longer than the pattern specifies. Silkie has a new pair of shoes that coordinate perfectly. It pleased me that the gold vertical stripe lined up on the skirt and waistband, because I hadn’t planned that. Sometimes there are good surprises!
Part of the difference in the slimmer waist is the doll, of course – the Silkies are smaller in the waist than the new MTM dolls (and bigger in the bust), but still. There’s a lot less bulk in the seam allowance because the silk taffeta is much thinner than the quilting cotton. Using a thinner fabric – like the silk or a cotton voile, perhaps a Liberty Tana Lawn – diminishes the bulk of the seam allowances at the waist. I don’t think you can trim it much and am not sure it would matter as you’d still have some gathered skirt seam allowance. Another way to address this would be to cut a circle instead of a rectangle for the skirt, as there would be less gathering – there could even be no gathering at all, depending on the size of the inner (waist) circle. I think I may play with that a bit.
The only pattern modification I made for the second one was to move the gathers out a smidgen on the bodice. I thought the first bodice was a little ruffly at the centre front – that could be a bit of an illusion because the doll is flat there. It does make sense to have the gathers immediately under the bust. For the second, I left the first centimeter from the front edge on each front bodice piece flat, and gathered from there to the side seam. Again, the fabric was gathered about as much as it could be in that small space. Another solution would be to pleat or dart the front pieces to get the fit. There’s something else to play with.
One last observation – I’d forgotten how much silk taffeta wants to fray. I ended up sewing one centre back edge a second time – the seam allowance frayed away after I trimmed the seam, so I sewed it again, then zigzagged the seam allowance just to be sure. I dislike how products like FrayCheck make fabric feel, so the next time I cut this silk taffeta, I’ll finish all the edges before I start assembling the garment.
Two new girls moved in over the holidays and I finally remembered to show you them to you. The theory was that they would be the last additions for a while – but then the Barbie Basics 2025 happened. Oh, and Lacie Churchill, too. (!)
First up, a Silkstone Gift Set that I’ve admired for a while. This is A Model Life from 2003. That’s the gift set at the left, then the two promotional images from Mattel.
Silkstone Barbie A Model Life 2003
The doll comes with her lingerie, two pairs of shoes, a pantsuit with pink blouse and a coordinating black skirt, as well as a pair of pantihose and other accessories. I bought mine new in box (NRFB actually), so she’s precisely the way she originally shipped. That said, the materials used for these dolls don’t always age well. It’s pretty common to discover that hair elastics have crumbled to dust or that the tape has dried out. The skirt peeled a bit when I removed it from the box – it was taped in and the tape had dried to the pleather so that they bonded together forever. Also her hip joints are also a little looser than might be ideal, which is another thing that changes over time. Funny that I just saw a video demonstrating how to restring these dolls when that happens. (Who knew? Not me.) So, I don’t think I’ll buy more older dolls without being able to have a good look at them first.
On the other hand, this encourages me to try something I’ve been thinking about. When the last Silkstone girl arrived, I thought about replicating some of her clothes in better fabrics. The designs and the cut are usually interesting and a better fit than many of the patterns available for sale. So, the first job on that list will be replacing this little black skirt. It should be easily done. The “official” clothes from Mattel aren’t usually lined – this skirt isn’t – and tend to be serged together. I suspect my replacement skirt will be nicer. 🙂
Her hair looks like it’s full in the back in these photos, but actually, she has the (inevitable) ponytail and forehead curl. The elastic in her hair is holding but just barely. I’ll have a look at options one of these days when it needs replacing.
2024 Poppy Parker It’s My Party
The other new girl who arrived is my first Poppy Parker. Her story is that she’s a girl from the Midwest who moves to New York in the 1960’s to become a model, so all of PP’s wardrobe is 60’s-inspired. She’s made by Integrity Toys, and often has amazing accessories. This one is a little simpler in that regard. She’s called It’s My Party and is from 2024, also NRFB – at least until she arrived here. This is the fourth doll from the At Home collection, which celebrated Poppy’s 15th anniversary. At right is one of the promo images.
Here’s a blog post featuring all four of the dolls in that collection with lots of pictures.
2019 Integrity Toys Jade Feelin’ Extra
I have one other doll from Integrity Toys, my Jade Feelin’ Extra, and expected some similarities between these two. Jade has beautifully made clothes – that baseball jacket is exquisite, embroidered, lined, and with a working zipper – and also fun accessories, like her purse and shoes. She has a second pair of hands in a different pose as well as jewellery.
Poppy is similar. She has the same body type, or very close to it, with a lot of articulation. She also has a second set of hands, painted to look like she’s wearing short gloves. I don’t love the joint at the ankle on the PP’s with interchangeable feet, so I’m glad that this one only has high-heeled feet.
I’ve also gotten some new storage for the girls and their gear, which tidies things up considerably and also has let me get a bit more organized. (Nowhere to go but up with that situation.) This is a shelving unit from Ikea called Kallax. We are changing out the knobs with an upgrade from Lee Valley. I love the seagrass baskets (also from Ikea) – they look great and smell wonderful.
The mister is still installing the pair of doors at either end of the middle row, but the drawers are full of teensy supplies, all neatly sorted. Those are all my books for the girls at the top left and their shoes at the top right. The red binder has my knitting patterns for the girls. I’ve put their stands in one of the baskets which is a great solution. That box of patterns will go into another basket, then maybe projects-in-progress (now in a box off to the right) in another. The fourth will probably have fabric stash. It certainly is making things feel neater, even though it’s still in progress. The girls will stay in their carriers and their clothes will remain in wardrobes. I have to figure out what to do with the 16″ girls since they don’t fit in these cubbies and it’s hard to find boxes tall enough for them. One step at a time!
The first sewing pattern I used for the 11.5″ girls was this one, McCalls 7550. That experience taught me to look at the dolls modelling the garments in the picture, because nothing I made from this pattern fit my vintage Barbies. I made the sundress (shown in a blue floral) in navy and again in pink, and it just barely fit the Silkstone girls. The pattern is drafted for dolls that are less curvy than vintage B.
Now, of course, my newest girls have a different body sculpt than vintage B. original Silkstone or articulated Silkstone. The Made-to-Move Original body is smaller in the bust and hips, and generally less curvy. I have the Looks 20 redhead, and the blonde from the new Basic Black series has the same body sculpt. I was wondering what patterns to use for them – the garments that fit the Silkies are a bit big in the bust for the MTM Original body – and remembered this pattern.
Aha! It works brilliantly.
Let’s have a look. I made sundresses again – that view has a halter top – but left out the crinolines. Here’s one of them in a cotton print (with cotton voile lining) on Barbie Basics #2: (Hmm. Now I see the red thread on the front of her skirt. Oops!)
I’ve always thought these hats were funny – they’re made of two circles of fabric with a wedge cut out, like a piece of pie. The opening is then seamed, like a dart, and the two sides sewn together and turned. It looks like a plate to me BUT it’s hard to make hats for the girls. In the first place, they’re fiddly, and in the second, they often are too small to sit well on their heads. When they’re made big enough, they look disproportionate. I love hats and this frustrates me. I tried the disc hat on a whim, and it actually looks pretty good. Who would have guessed?
The shoes make me laugh. They were included in a mixy-mixy bundle of shoes for B. They should have red soles because they look like Christian LouBoutin’s Daffodile pumps embellished with Swarovski crystals. (Nothing but the best for the girls!) I’m trying to figure out a way to neatly paint the soles red and make them sparkle. Too bad I only have a white pair.
I also made the jacket and pants (shown in pink on the pattern envelope) with the top but without the scarf. I used pleather for the pants and these are snug even on MTM Original. It might be the fabric.
They look great, though, and the length is perfect. I made the top but didn’t like it particularly. It’s a little loose in the bust on this girl but just a relaxed fit. I changed the neckline to a V instead of the round neck so now that top looks a bit like scrubs to me. That may be the issue for me.
Instead of the top, I knit a top from Sticka-til-Barbie, #263, in black Malabrigo Sock. Here’s the Ravelry link for that pattern. Like so many of these patterns, it’s a quick and clever knit. I made the decreases mirror each other, but otherwise just knit as written. This one is a little confusing – it’s knit in the round to the bottom of the front slit, then you need to work past the CB to the othet CF with each row.
The jacket is also quilting cotton, also lined in cotton voile.
I tried both on an articulated Silkstone and an original Silkstone.
This is a little loose in the waist and fits perfectly in the bust on the articulated Silkstone. (She’s Best in Black, btw.) If I was sewing specifically for her, I would just move the waist snap 1/8″.
Here’s an original Silkstone in view E.
This is A Model Life. The pants are quite loose around the waist for her but fit okay through the hips. I think they could be a teensy bit longer. She refused to wear the red boots, btw. 🙂
She also wasn’t fond of the sweater, as if was quite loose for her, especially in the waist. She preferred this little short sleeved cotton top that I drafted up for the Barbie Basics 20. (She liked it, too, but it didn’t fit under the coat, which she loves.)
I’m now regretting that I chucked out the suit I made from this pattern. It’s shown in green on the envelope, a dress and jacket, and I made it of ivory silk. It was soooooo pretty but it didn’t fit any of my girls then. I guess I’ll just have to make it again – but now, I have a piece of green silk that will be just perfect.
Things have been quiet here at the blog, because real life hasn’t been very quiet of late. Add spring cleaning and my annual bout of reorganization and it’s been busy around here.
I have, however, been making progress on the Which Way shawl. I first told you about it in this post. Here’s what it looks like now:
Still on the needles, so it’s not laid flat, but you can see the orange marker on the decrease stitch in the middle. That’s the point where the pattern changed, from increasing at both edges to decreasing on the right edge and increasing on the left. I have to believe the result of this is that middle stitch takes a bend to the right when the shawl is laid flat. After 22 garter stitch rows, the pattern will change one more time to decrease down to a point again.
The colour combination is unusual for me. I’m not sure I love it. I might have been happier pairing the gradient dyed skeins with kettle-dyed black or plum, but that would have been a predictable choice. I’m also wondering if I should have done the progression in the opposite direction, having the darkest hue in the middle, but I’m not frogging it back now. I’ve just started into the second bundle of skeins, so the contrast will get steadily darker now.
It’s interesting how the whole shawl looks paler as the gradient skeins get lighter, even though the main colour is consistently the same. The main colour is pooling a bit, but it seems to be small pools evenly spaced which is fine.
Here’s a detail picture:
I’m hoping it works out that I use the full bundle of gradient yarns, and the contrast gets all the way back to the darkest plum. We’ll see!
On Wednesday, I’ll show you something else I’ve been working on, for the girls.
It has been quiet here this month, because a lot has been going on in my working life. I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at the screen, updating links and distribution channels for my books – which means not much sewing or knitting has been going on. I’m getting to the end of that project, though, so decided to treat myself to some new girls.
Mattel introduced five Barbie Basics dolls this year, which went on sale earlier this month. They have the made-to-move articulated bodies and I ordered three of them. Here’s the whole collection – the images are linked to the landing pages on the Mattel website:
They are a mix of made-to-move body types, although it’s not that easy to see as much from my screen shots. Doll 1 is MTM Original; doll 2 is MTM Original; doll 3 is MTM Tall; doll 4 is MTM Petite; doll 5 is MTM Curvy. And they have different face sculpts: doll 1 is Kit; doll 2 is Karl; doll 3 is Claudette; doll 4 is Kayla/Lea; doll 5 is Heide.
And here are my new girls:
The MTM Original is the same body sculpt as my redhead Barbie Looks 20, but these girls have much (MUCH) nicer hair. It’s not rooted as thickly as on the Looks 20 doll but it’s a lot softer. Why these three? I wanted #2 since I love the Karl face sculpt. I love the tall girl’s burgundy hair and was curious to see how tall she would be. (She’s tall! I love how regal she is.) And I always have to get the redhead. It’s a thing. I mean, she has freckles. How cute is that?
You can see that I unfastened the hair on two of them. There are always these plastic things holding the doll’s head into the package – when you cut them off, the stem remains, so I took down their hair to pull out the stem with tweazers. The blonde’s hair looks good down IMO and I like that it has a mauve-blue halo. The tall girl kinda needs her hair tied back again, but I’m deciding whether I should try to comb it out first. (What will it do if I do? Tough call. It might just frizz out instead of staying in little curls. Hmm.)
The quality of them is fine but not fantastic. The tall girl had a sticky elbow, but I managed to coax it into bending. Their dresses are kind of meh – velcro fastening on the backs, unlined and pretty plain – but the finishing on the bodies is disappointing. The tall girl, particularly, has marks that look like blemishes on her arms and legs – I suspect the colour of her “skin” makes the shortfalls of the finishing more apparent. I saw the same on the last Silkstone I bought, so wasn’t that surprised.
I do need to find an alternative stand for my girls, in both sizes. The crotch stands that come with the Tonner girls and the Silkies aren’t as stable as would be ideal. Sometimes a girl tips right off and falls, and I worry that the ones made of harder materials might chip. These girls came with those plastic stands that have waist clips. Invariably, I break the waist clip, snapping off one end while trying to get a doll into it. The riser for the blonde girl had bent, as well, just as the one for the Looks 20 girl did. Both of bent in transit (probably due to heat) so that the riser is on an angle when you assemble the stand. The doll tips forward instead of standing straight up. There has to be another alternative, so if you know one, please let me know. 🙂
All issues aside, I do think they’re pretty and am really looking forward to dressing them. 🙂
Both bundles of gradient-dyed yarn are used up and the shawl isn’t done. This is likely because I’ve somehow mucked up the decreases. I want the lower edge to be decreased to nothing before binding off, as I think it might look odd otherwise. This requires a lot more repeats than specified in the pattern. 
Alive & Knitting 