Scrappy Doll

I stumbled across this cute pattern at ravelry and was tempted to knit it, as it seemed to be a quick, easy knit, I had just the right scrap wool for the project and I wanted to reacquaint myself with felting.

The pattern instructions were excellent, except for the head size which was quite large compared to the torso. So, I had to decapitate the doll and re-knit the head from the neck up, making the neck thinner (18sts instead of 24) and less increases for the head (48 sts instead of 60).

  The doll itself takes little time to knit (I did it in a day) but the felting, drying, stuffing and the making up took a lot longer. I stayed up well into the night, the second day to do the face and hair. Instead of the leggings I opted for shorts and changed color at feet to make shoes. Then I embroidered the shoes with white yarn to make Mary Janes and knit some frilly socks.

Next, the doll needed some clothes and by this time, I was pushing to get it done. Thus came into being this little blue dress with a crochet heart and edging.

 Here is the doll finally done and dressed.

  It was surprisingly well received by my daughter whose tastes in toys go after her elder borher and she can not be bothered with dolls as a rule. But she was enamored enough to take it to bed with her last night.Not so surprising, was the envious reaction of my son, who has supplied me with various sketches for the Lego superheroes for me to knit and has extracted a promise from me to see if I can knit those too. Sigh, a scrappy doll is not so simple a knit after all.

Scrappy Crochet Update

After so many months, I dug out this WIP and worked on it yesterday. It still has a long way to go. Though it is barely noticeable, there is some progress from the last time. If you look closely, it is now 12x12 small squares rather than the previously 8x8 small square.
Still not decided what it's going to be. But I think it will look its best as an afghan. Any other suggestions?

From Rag to ?!?!?

Seeing so many wonderful projects around the web, mostly afgahans, made from yarn scraps/leftover, I started one of my own last year. Initially, I was thinking of making a yo-yo afghan. (Yo-yo's are small round crochet motifs which are later joined together to make different projects) . Later on, I decided on another style. Good thing with this is that I manage to incorporate the yarn ends during crochet.

This is going to be a very long-term project. I don't know if I have stamina for a afghan. As a rough estimate, an afghan would require around 4000 small squares (I'm near 100 right now) so the finished nature of this project is still undetermined.