February! And Knitting for Dolls!

Whoosh! The first days of February have whizzed by. Basketball games, an impending visit by a niece (which was cancelled just today because of weather), and the usual cooking, cleaning, laundry, and all those other fun necessities of life.  So here we are, on the fifth already.  

We have snow and cold.  And the cold, below freezing, is predicted to last for at least the next two weeks.  The insert in our basement fireplace is blazing!  The dolls are happy, too, because that's the room they live in.  Which is a nice segue into today's topic:  knitting for dolls.

I recently posted picture of a sweater I made for my American Girl doll.  She began as Samantha, circa 1910, but just lately I decided to change her era to that of my own childhood:  the 1950s.  She has my dark hair and eyes, and even her hairstyle is one I had in upper grade school. It's been fun to remember outfits I had during that time and try to figure out how to recreate them in miniature.  So I have begun.  I had a sweater similar in style to the one I knit; however (if I remember correctly) it was green.  I couldn't find any green yarn after I made my test sweater, so I settled on purple.

Here she is wearing it, grateful that it's wool and snugly on this cold, cold day.

As I dressed her I was reminded of sweaters I had knit years ago for Ann Estelle and Betsy McCall so I dug around and redressed them for the winter weather.  

Ann Estelle is wearing hers backwards so it looks like a pullover when actually it's a cardigan.  These little sweaters are so much fun to knit!  The one for Betsy is from a free pattern I got through a Tonner doll list I was on "back in the day", and Ann Estelle's was taken from an old Petite Doll Knitting Book written for Barbie dolls that my cousin Diane bought for me when she worked in Billings, Montana, in the early '60s.  I took the cardigan pattern in it, used larger needles, and voila! It worked! Now I just need to find a source of fingering weight yarn in colors other than baby pastels so I can knit more and expand their wardrobes.  

Oh!!!  And I almost forgot a very important find.  Poor Ann Estelle has had legs that wobbled almost since the day I got her.  As I dressed her this time I found that she had totally lost the ability to stand and I was forced to seat her.  This made me very unhappy because she's wearing some very cute red boots that needed to be seen!  

I made an internet search and found the answer.  It seemed so strange that I didn't believe it would work, but as you can see, work it did.  Here's the link to the blog that explains what to do.  I didn't have the small rubber bands she shows so I took a larger one and just looped into three rounds. I could see that it was working, so I took another and did the same thing. Perfection.  Each leg took two bands, equal to six of the size she shows. I'm one happy doll mama!!  ♥