Some new knits

I've done quite a bit of knitting for dolls in my time. In fact, the very first finished project I can ever remember knitting was a matching scarf and hat for my Maplelea Girl Saila as a kid. Recently, a lot of it has been making tiny sweaters for little Myrtle, like this fuzzy turtleneck:

One of the first things I actually "let" myself make for my new girl when she arrived (I had a convention to go to the next month and was trying to force myself to finish costumes in time) was a basic raglan pullover, so I'd have a pattern I could easily modify to make more complex sweaters later.

The new girl has a name of her own, too, by the way. I spent a long time just trying out whatever names came to mind to see if any of them stuck, and one of them did: Astrid. So, our newly-christened Astrid got some new sweaters.

These off-the-shoulder sweaters were basically inspired by one I'd made previously for my similarly-sized Ellowyne doll, just with a simple cable panel on the front and the sleeves. The red one on the right was the first one I made.

I was writing the patterns as I went, so it took some trial and error to get the cables to a point where I liked the look of both the braid and the twists on either side of it. I settled on a simple six round repeat.

I'm using 2.25mm double pointed needles and jump rings as stitch markers here, by the way. All of the ribbing was done on smaller 2mm needles.

That ribbing at the top edge is definitely the most tedious part to knit. It's the widest point of the sweater, so I was working the largest number of stitches, and working it in the most boring stitch pattern in the project. After it was done and I set aside the stitches for the sleeves, the rest of it just seemed to fly by. It looks good in the end, though.

I had Astrid with me at my desk so I could get a sense of where to place the increases and decreases to create the shaping, since I wanted the sweater to have a more fitted look. I was a little worried about how it would fit just looking at the body fresh off the needles.

It's a little funny-looking by itself.

When I actually tried it on her to test the fit, though, it looked fine. The purl stitches between the cables provide enough stretch to be pretty forgiving.

Speaking of which, please forgive the harsh lighting in some of these pictures. I was doing a lot of this at my computer desk after dark, and most of the light in the room comes from the lamp directly next to it.

Anyway, it was time to move onto the sleeves. The sleeves feature the same six-round cable repeat, but with the braid omitted. I also worked decreases in the sleeves so that they would taper towards the wrists. I tried the first one on to make sure it fit, then moved onto the other one.

You can see the cable pattern on the sleeves best here.

Once I had finished both of the sleeves, all I had to do was stitch the gaps in the underarms shut and weave in the ends, and the sweater looked like this:

Still looks silly when she's not wearing it.

And here's Astrid modeling it.

I decided I wanted to make one without as much shaping as well, for a looser, cozier look. I used the exact same cable pattern, but started with a few more stitches in the body and fewer on each sleeve, to account for the lack of increases and decreases. Essentially, I was knitting a bunch of straight rectangular tubes.

This is how it looked when it was done. I also made this one a little longer, so it would have more of a tunic top length. And here's how it looks on Astrid:

I'm not as happy with this one as I was with the first. I don't hate it, which might be damning with faint praise, but improvements can be made. The sleeves turned out longer than I intended, but I don't mind that. I actually think it's kind of cute. However, the body ended up being kind of an awkward length - she's pictured here standing up because it's not long enough to cover her butt when she sits down, so it rides up awkwardly. The bind-off edge also doesn't have enough stretch to it to comfortably accommodate the width of her hips with the added length. I might go back and add a couple of increases in the hip area and a few more rounds, maybe even extend it to a sweater dress length.

After all of that, I made a little sweater for Myrtle as a palate cleanser. Garments for her knit up in a fraction of the time it takes me to finish something for a larger scale doll. Her sweaters are knit entirely on 2mm needles.

I would have taken some pictures of her in her new sweater as well, but she was not co-operating with me. I suspect she needs to be restrung, or at least have her elastic tightened, because her joints just wouldn't stay where I wanted them to be. I've had her for six years now, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but I am a little hesitant... I haven't restrung a doll before, so I'm not entirely confident about it.

Well, I'm sure I'll work up the courage at some point. In the meantime, Astrid has some clothes to wear and a name of her own, and I have lots more planned. 

I'm considering tidying up the patterns for the off-the-shoulder sweaters and making them available to others, so if there's any interest in that, let me know! And again, thanks for reading this far.