Wanna See a Hat Trick?

I can't quite say, "If there's a craft, I've tried it" yet, but if you don't watch me, I will branch out.  This excursion into doll-making took me a week and I'm extremely pleased with it.

Meet Caitlyn, Sheriff of Piltover, of League of Legends, in doll form.

Why, do you ask?  Well, I'm a geek, and I love geek-craft, and she's my favorite champion in the game so far.  I've only been playing about two months, so I haven't gotten through all of them yet, but Caitlyn is just fantastic.  And Riot Games does a weekly Summoner Showcase that features all sorts of player-made things.  When I started playing, my husband showed a few of them to me, and promptly said, "You should make something."  Unsurprisingly, I agreed!  So here she is.

The doll itself is made from the extremely popular Pretty Poppet pattern by ghilie, which I can highly recommend; I've done some basic toy making before, but never a jointed doll, and I had no problems constructing her.  It's a very good pattern, thank you, ghilie!

She's made of mostly recycled materials, which I am quite proud of--her skin was a Danskin tank top, both dress fabrics were thrifted formal gowns, the petticoat base and ruffled trims are scraps of bedsheet, and all the leather is from one of my mother's damaged purses, kindly donated to my upcycling collection.  The new materials were the yarn for her hair, her eyes, the wire, the lace for her petticoat, and all the thread to sew her together...not too shabby!

Her hair is a wig made of yarn hand-knotted onto a mesh base--in this case, a piece of an onion bag, if you can believe that.  The hat is fabric-covered cardboard, held on with extra hair extensions threaded through the base, which I tied to her wig.  Not the most stable thing, but it was very important to me that all her clothing and accessories be removable for future repairs.

The dress looked complicated at first, but wasn't too hard once I broke it down into sections: pieced bodice, waistband, gathered skirt, glued-on leather trim.  It took me some thinking to come up with a material suitable for the cog "buckle"--but I had a plastic lid from a Crisco can in my box of random craft things, and with my trusty X-acto knife, some paint, and some Super Glue, I had my cog charm.

Her leg bands are sections of purse strap.  These were a challenge second only to the boots, which came slightly later; my sewing machine couldn't handle the leather, so I couldn't sew it together.  I'd used Super Glue on the leather for the dress, and that held well enough, but it wasn't strong enough to hold the ends of the straps together.  Add to that my lack of tiny gold buckles, and I was stumped for a little while.  But when I was checking my bead box for something to substitute for the buckles, I found the copper wire, and an idea was born.  Both end of the leather are notched on opposite edges, and I contrived a method of linking the notches with the wire, then wrapping the whole thing extensively to hide the join.  They'll come apart if you play tug of war with them, but they hold just fine otherwise.  And they look cool.  I liked the effect so much I made myself a bracelet out of the strap I had left, despite the fact that I don't really do steampunk!  (My husband thinks I should, though.  Maybe when I have a job that doesn't have a uniform...)

The boots are an ode to the power of my hot glue gun.  There's no way in hell I could have managed them without it.

The arm bands and gloves use a modified version of the wrapping from the leg bands: I refined the notches a bit and used brown thread instead.  The gloves are held together above the thumb with that wrapping, then below the thumb I lashed a thin thong to one side, which threads through a slit on the other and then ties around the wrist.  I'm really proud of that.  Really proud.  Somebody give me a medal already!

I don't see myself churning out doll after doll now, but I would certainly make another one in the future--it was a lot of fun!  I do have two nieces that are going to need fancy dolls someday, but since right now, they're 3 and 1 years old, I think I have some time before they're ready....

It Pays to Pay Attention...

...to flyers tacked up on your local grocery's bulletin board.

Sure, usually it's puppies for sale, the local high school drama productions and musicals, and the like.  And then, there's the ad, hand-written in black Sharpie on cheap construction paper, that makes it worthwhile.

The one for the massive 50-cent sale being held on Saturday morning at the church-run thrift shop you rarely go to because the hours are so limited and unconventional.

Totally and absolutely worth it.  Even though it was a 22-minute hike each way and I'd already done my run for this morning before I left.  My feet are complaining, but my hands are so happy!

Check out the loot...

Destined for yarn reclamation, from left to right: 100% cotton, women's large, long-sleeved; 100% merino, men's large, long-sleeved; 100% cotton, men's XL vest.  The merino is the real find, of course, since never once have I stumbled across cashmere, but I'll take what I can get.

Destined for my wardrobe: on the left, a long-sleeve scoop neck, content label missing--but it feels like a high-quality synthetic, too shiny and slinky to be cotton.  On the right, a turtleneck tunic, long sleeves, knit from a fine-weight acrylic boucle.  It's incredibly warm without being heavy, and it's very, very, very soft.  Out of season now that it's finally spring, but I see myself wearing this a lot.

Finally, a shirt-dress I will never wear, both because I've never been a shirt-dress person, and it's too small to boot.  But that fabric!  I just fell in love.  I'm not sure what the fabric wants to be yet, but I will save it from its wretched shirt-dress fate.

I need to find out how often the church has these sales!

Leeloo Dallas Multicraft!

The orange sweater is now entirely yarn!  The yardage estimates vary depending on which skein I weigh, which I attribute to not having a scale that does partial grams, but I likely have at least 3600 yds and up to 5000.

Last night I whipped up a tote bag from the celestial shirt I liked so much, and what's really great is that I only used the two shirt fronts--I still have the entire back and sleeves to play with!  I can't get a good picture of it, but I kept the front patch pocket intact and made that side the lining piece, so the tote has a large interior pocket.  The handles are satin ribbon from my stash.

And I'm in the home stretch on Bitterroot, I have ten rows to go before the bind off!  But they are of course the longest rows, and several of them are beaded, which takes sooooo long.  But I think it will be worth it.  So now instead of a smallish green blob, it's a very big green blob. 

I hope to have it done in the next few days, then crank out clue 5 on the VES, then go back to my shawl design and finish that by the end of the month.  I'm not ambitious, or anything, you think?

Oh Sew Beautiful

The fruits of my sewing machine's labors thus far--a circular needle organizer and a needle roll!

Also, because I wasn't ready to start reworking the blue shawl, I (finally!) cast on a Bitterroot!  It's just a greenish blob right now, I'm in the middle of chart C, which means it's not large enough to be impressive because of its size, but it's too big for me to try to spread it out on the needle to impress with the lace.  I have this feeling it's going to be gorgeous, though.  I just know it.

Thrift Stores FTW

With a phone call and GoogleMaps, we found a local thrift store today that I didn't even know existed until last week--it's run on the upper floor of a local church, so it has odd hours and isn't near any other businesses, which makes the odds of running across it casually quite small.

I found four things there, and three at my trusty Goodwill I went to last week, and it's a good day!

Forgive the crappy picture, it's gloomy today.  The top sweater is really more of a camel color, 100% acrylic, will likely yield me more cobweb weight yarn.  Last week, I didn't know about "killing" acrylic yarn as a blocking process, so I thought I couldn't knit lace with it, and since then, the Ravelry forums have set me straight.  Soft acrylic in colors I like now comes home with me instead of being passed over!

The teal is 100% silk, and looks to be knit from a yarn composed of many plies without much twist holding them together--a common enough construction for cotton and cotton-blend sweaters, like the purple one I frogged for my VES.  I'm hoping once I have this one frogged I can separate the plies and get loads of silk lace weight in one of my favorite colors!  If I can, I have the perfect project for it already lined up, but I have some others to wade through first....

The gray is 100% cotton and destined to be dishcloths.  I have many, but some of them are looking pretty sad these days, and it might actually be nice to knit a matching set of cloths from the same yarn instead of "whatever color of Sugar 'n' Cream caught my eye last time they were on sale", which is the overriding color scheme I have now.

The blue striped fabric is two king-sized pillowcases that are going to be (hopefully) cloth napkins, and the shirt is polyester (reasonably soft, thank goodness) that I'm positively dying to make into a tote bag for myself.  A celestial print on green instead of blue or black?  Couldn't turn that one away, not only is it gorgeous, it's so rare!  Even better, it's a men's 2XL, so I have plenty of it to play with.

Not shown are the pair of khaki shorts I found for myself, seeing as how I only had one functioning pair of shorts to my name, I was happy to find them; and two more stuffed animals destined to be presents for my brother's growing brood of children.  They were too cute to pass up!