Finished Knit: Boy Dolly

It's a good thing this boy dolly is going to my daughter, because I'm not sure I could gift him outside the house.

I finished his overalls Friday night. The last time you saw him, he was felted and stuffed but he had no personality at all--no face, no hair, no clothes. I think he is chock full of personality now. I know he's not mine to name, but in my head, I've christened him Zeke. I love him so much.

The pattern is F. Pea's Scrappy Doll, but I made the head a little smaller and eliminated the thumbs. I also, obviously, made him a boy. For his hair, I knit a circle in the round, increasing where it seemed right to shape to his head, then sewed it on. Then, using a crochet hook, I added his hair, knotting it like you'd knot fringe on the end of a scarf. This took most of an evening. I trimmed the hair up a bit when I was done, but not too short, because Zeke is a bit of a free-spirit.

For the overalls, I looked at both Winter's Overalls and the top of F. Pea's Soxxy Dress for inspiration. I actually knit them from the leg join up twice, because I wasn't happy the first time--they were too big around and looked like clown pants. Zeke may be a free spirit, but he has style. Clown pants Would Not Do. So I pulled back and did it again and got just-right overalls.

Even though I did this completely in secret--including the photograph--I don't think I can let Santa take the credit for this one. I think the boy dolly has to be my daughter's gift from Mama and Daddy. Because I know I have to let him go, so he can be a much-loved and played-with boy dolly...plus, I'm sure I get to visit with him, since he'll be right here in the same house and all. (And in my head, I'll be thinking of him as Zeke.)

Knitting Progress

Since my last knitting post, I've finished the green Vertigo Hat and whipped up a pair of mittens, too.

I really do love those greens together. Who knew? I need to make another pair of mittens in the other green, and a spare set for my oldest in grey, and mittens for my daughter, but before I began any of that, I started on the boy dolly for my daughter for Christmas.

Here he is, waiting to be felted. Then I'll need to embroider his face, give him some hair (I'm thinking some loops), and knit him a pair of overalls, probably from my head rather than a pattern. The pattern for the doll is f.pea's Scrappy Doll, which is actually a girl, so it comes with a dress pattern. I knit her as a girl last Christmas (you can see it here). This time around I made the head smaller because it's kind of ginormous as written. I also eliminated the thumbs, because I thought they came out sort of funny on the one I knit before.

So, the boy dolly. Last Christmas Santa brought my daughter, then two, a sweet little Waldorf-style doll, but at the last minute I decided to knit a doll, too, and they sat in the Christmas-morning stroller side by side. Before too long, my daughter decided the knit doll was the mama and the other one was the baby--she likes to pair things up that way. Sometime over the spring/summer, she let me know she needed two boy dollies, because in our family we have a mama, two boys, and a girl. Of course. So for her birthday, she received a Waldorf-style boy dolly, and the second boy dolly will come for Christmas. She likes to give her dollies band-aids and cover them with blankets and take them for wild, speedy runs through the house in the stroller.

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DIY: Recycled Crayons

Really, tutorials for this are all over the Internets, so we hardly need another one. This isn't really a tutorial so much as a "seriously, this is so easy, give it a try!" bit of encouragement. At any rate, recycled crayons in cute shapes were on my holiday gift to-do list, as part of the presents for a four-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew, so here is proof of my successful progress!

I've recycled crayons before, but I used a muffin tin, which could go in the oven. This time, because I wanted cute shapes, I used candy molds (this set; what a bargain!!), and those can't go in the oven. So I needed an interim step--the hot water bath.

After peeling the crayons, we sorted them by color into tin cans and broke them into smaller pieces. The colors are going to blend when they melt, and it ends up as one uniform color, so keep that in mind when sorting. (The two-color ones in the top picture were made by pouring two different colors in the mold.) For the first batch (not shown), we sorted warm (red, orange, yellow) and cool (blue, green, purple)--I only had two tin cans. We ended up with red and blue. This batch yielded purple, brown, and green. Put some water in a pan and place your cans in. I used a pan I no longer use for cooking (it belongs to the kids' play kitchen now), which was smart, because some wax ended up in the water and deposited on the pan, and I don't really have to scrub it off because who cares if the pretend soup gets wax in it?

Boil your water, but keep an eye on your crayons. When your glasses get fogged from taking off the cover and peeking, your helper will go find her sunglasses so they can get fogged because she is still at the age when she wants to be just like her mama.

She's holding a bamboo skewer there. I used that to stir my melting wax so the chunks would all melt. Once the wax is all melted, carefully pour it into the molds. (Not a job for the child helpers, obviously.)

Once they're set, wiggle the molds a bit to pop them out. The helper wanted flowers, so those are for her.

The brown ones look a lot like chocolate, but they are not. Don't eat the crayons.

How cute are these?? And so, so easy. I have a set of numbers for each giftee, plus vehicles, balls, hearts--enough crayons to put together a really cute gift bag, and my kids helped make them. (All the kids helped peel; my daughter was the only one home when I made this batch.)

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DIY: Rainbow Beanbags

This isn't a tutorial in the sense of providing you with step-by-step instructions with pictures, but truly, if you can sew, this is an easy and oh-so-fun project. The inspiration for these is a little backwards; I wasn't looking for something to decorate beanbags with, but instead a way for my daughter to carry around the set of Rainbow Girls with her. Wendi suggested beanbags.

The first step, of course, was to embroider the girls. I put them all on one piece of muslin.

When they were done, I ironed the muslin and cut the girls out. I wasn't being exact here--they're different sizes. I just went for the girl plus a bit of border. Then I snipped the corners of each rectangle (again, not being terribly exact) and folded the raw edges to the back. Snipping the corners makes it look like an envelope fold, sort of. I ironed those down.

Meanwhile, I cut two 5-inch squares for each beanbag. Then I pinned my girls onto the right side of one square--these are the fronts of my beanbags.

I zigzagged around each muslin rectangle to sew them together. Again, I didn't measure or stress about placement here. I just eyeballed it. Here's the main thing you should remember when sewing for kids: they're not judgmental.

Once I had my fronts, I sewed the two sides of each beanbag together, right sides facing, using a smallish straight stitch (between 1 and 2). I left a hole for turning and filling at the bottom of each one, roughly as big as that edge of the muslin rectangle. I used about a quarter-inch seam allowance. Then I turned everything right-side out pressed the raw edges of the opening flat.

Then... time to fill! These are my daughter's beanbags, so of course I invited her to help fill them.

The openings were smallish, so we began with a scoop and funnel, but the beans got stuck in the funnel, so we just used spoons. G, at 2 1/2, was quite adept with the spoon and was able to fill them with no problems. I used just under two one-pound bags of black beans to fill all six beanbags.

(There was a bit of a gap between getting the bags ready to fill and actually filling them because I put the beans in the freezer for three days, on the counter for two, and in the freezer again for three, because have you ever seen a bag of dry beans infested with pantry moths? I have. It's horrifying. The freezer-counter-freezer treatment may not actually accomplish anything, but it makes me feel like I've tried. The beanbags will probably periodically get a time-out in the freezer, just because.)

Once the bags were full, I sewed the opening shut with my machine. Partly this is because G wanted to play with them right away, and it's quicker than slip-stitching them shut by hand, and partly because I think it's a little stronger for beanbags that are meant to be played with. Slip-stitching would have been less visible, for sure, but as I said, kids aren't judgmental.

They fit so nicely in the hand. G decided when each bag was full enough, so some are fuller than others. (The fuller ones, by the way, take a little maneuvering to sew with the machine, but it's completely do-able.)

As soon as they were done, we played.

"This is fun!" says G. Indeed it is.

***
I didn't make these as a teaching tool--G already knows her colors--but you certainly could. Or you could put numbers on them. Or shapes. Or embroider something else. A set of beanbags is a fine present for a little person you love.

Sewn Bunny Softies

Look at those guys! Aren't they cute? I was lucky enough to win (completely unexpectedly!) the pattern when Wendi Gratz decided to give things away on her birthday. I had my choice, so I sat my two-year-old on my lap to get her input. It was a tough decision between the bunny and the bear, but the bunny prevailed.

I've been making things in sets of two for a long time--first, for my two boys, and now, for my younger two children, since my oldest, a nine-year-old boy, really doesn't have strong feelings on whether he gets a stuffed bunny softie. But I knew I'd have to make two of these. Also, since my daughter picked out the pattern, I didn't feel a need to keep my craftiness a secret. They knew the bunnies were coming. I did want to get them done before Easter, although I wasn't going to make them wait for them.

The fabric on the inside of my son's bunny's ears matches one side of his curtains (you can see that better in the main pic above). My daughter's bunny's ear linings are left over from a bundle that I used for project bags a long while ago.

(The girl does not stay still!) The main fabric is from jammie pants I made my boys shortly before my daughter was born. I stuffed these pretty softly with wool. I have a feeling they might get misshapen after a time, but I can always unpick the hand-sewn closure and add a bit more stuffing later on.

And you can see why I didn't make them wait until Easter, can't you?! The bunnies came with us to the supermarket today. They are already much-loved bunnies!