New Dolls: Jade and Joy

I've been making dolls and playing in the flower beds, now that Spring really has arrived here in the Midwest.  This is Jade, from Fiona McDonalds free 'Babe's Little Sister' doll pattern. 

Her sweater dress is stranded colorwork, using the template for raglan sweaters from the Arne&Carlos 'Knitted Dolls' book; the patterns are from Alice Starmores book 'Charts for Color Knitting'.  The sweater is knit to Arne&Carlos's instructions, but with worsted yarn and size 6 double point needles. 

Here is the colorwork pattern for the dress:

Sweater body

Sweater sleeve

Click on the link and you should get a gridded pattern for the body of the sweater and for the sleeve.  If necessary, enlarge the image so you can see the individual grid lines.  The body pattern is one half of the dress body; the sleeve  pattern is for the whole sleeve.  Best if you have Arne&Carlos's book for the sweater construction directions.

Planted some of my favorites, violas, in a clay strawberry pot.  These are city cousins to violets, another of my favorite spring flowers.

And rejoiced that my hellebores survived this cruel winter, even to bravely blooming through the last snow of the season :-)

And finally, a new Arne&Carlos doll!  This is Joy, from their Hippie pattern from 'Knit-and-Crochet Garden.'   After making their dolls from the 'Knitted Dolls' book, I thought I would NEVER knit another doll on dpn's.  However, this little doll just had to be made, and amazingly, she made up quite easily.  Perhaps two years and more experience with dpn's made the difference :-) 

Joy is smaller than the original Arne&Carlos dolls, about 12 inches tall.   I think she is going to have some Hippie sisters joining her soon!