Whimsical Crochet

My little niece just turned three, and like most three year old girls, she has become obsessed with princesses.  Belle is her current favorite, so I wanted to make her a Belle inspired doll for her birthday. This pattern is my own, made up as I went along.  My husband told me I went down a worm hole with these roses.  For the roses I switched to embroidery thread and used a size 7 hook. Fiddlely but definitely worth it to add those little details in the end. I also had a happy accident running out of yarn as I neared the end of this skirt. The yellow was left over from my Lainey project, and by the time I reached the ruffled edge, I needed to substitute with another yarn.  While the rest of the doll was made with Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Sport, I created the edge and other dress details with Caron Simply Soft.  The Simply Soft was a little thicker than the Wool of the Andes, but I think the color contrast really makes this dress. The last step was the hair.  I cre

I'm excited to start off my blog with this project; a custom doll I made for my daughter for her 6th birthday. My youngest daughter is definitely her own person.  She loves Darth Vader but is still a ballet dancer, and in one of her most recent quirks, she has been asking for a pet ant.  We've talked about how ants are really colony animals, so having just one would be hard, but she was insistent that she wanted just one pet ant that she would name Lulu.  Wanting to deliver on her wish, I did get her an ant farm so she can have some real ants, but I also made her a Lulu along with her own custom Lainey doll. I found the pattern for the ant on Pinterest, from a website called Amidorable.  You can find the link here .  She suggests putting pipe cleaners in the legs so you can bend them into shape.  I think this is ingenious, and discovered folding the pipe cleaner at the end helped me to feed them through the leg a little easier.  My daughter has been sleeping w

Welcome to my blog!  I hope you find something interesting here! As long as I can remember I've been a crafter.  My mom taught me how to sew and crochet when I was a kid, and both were hobbies I maintained throughout my life.  In the early 2000s, when knitting became a craze, I taught myself how to knit from a book and through watching Vickie Howell on the Knitty Gritty TV show.  Thank goodness for YouTube now!  You can find out how to work any technique there! I stopped crocheting and knitting when I had my babies, almost ten years ago now, but picked up both again when I saw another mom knitting during my daughter's dance class.  It's definitely a better way to pass a few hours of waiting than spending the whole time glued to my phone.  In the last year or so my interest in crochet has increased, particularly given that it is quicker to finish a project than when knitting.  I also love making amigurumi; the open ended creativity really appeals to me, especially creati