Sapphire: 2000-2018

Our sweet Sapphire; gone home to God.

Tiny cottage for tiny dolls

If you have a family of tiny dolls, they must be in need of a home!  What I wanted to do was purchase one of those cute CD storage containers that look like a house...I made a dollhouse out of one of these several years ago  (See this post).  Sadly, they don't seem to be made anymore...what to do?

Well, since I hoard boxes (to my husbands dismay), I decided to see what could be done with a single box and some craft sticks collecting dust in my stash of craft goodies.

Here is a photo tutorial on Flickr on making this dollhouse, for the 2 1/2 inch Bendy dolls I've been making:

Fairy cottage tutorial

And here are the steps in a nutshell

And here we are at home :-)

What can you make today!

First camping trip of the year!

We snuck in an overnight camping trip to Brown County state park this last week.  The weather was dry and in the 70's (as I write this Monday afternoon it is snowing!).  We had a wonderful time, in the most beautiful of our state parks.

...hiking the trails...

...chillin' at the campsight...

...looking for signs of spring...

...and finding fairies in unexpected places!

"There is no WiFi in the forest, but the connection is incredible."

Don't throw that out!

Okay.  There is a decided advantage to never throwing anything away.

Of course, you have to be able to find what you've stashed!

This afternoon I just had to make a couple of bendy dolls.  Several years ago I made dozens of these little dolls from Salley Mavor's Felt Wee Folk book.  Instead of using embroidery floss, I remembered I had a stash of Persian style crewel yarn in a gazillion different colors.  This almost got tossed when cleaning up my workroom a few weeks ago, but I just couldn't trash all those beautiful skeins, even though I had no idea what I might use them for.

Well, they work GREAT for wrapping the pipecleaners, and making the hair :-)

These little dolls are 2 1/2 inches tall, and require just one 12 inch pipecleaner to make them.  The doll on the left has a 20mm diameter head, and the one on the right a 16mm diameter head.  They have acorn caps that I've had for over 10 years, just waiting to be used again :-)

Rose among the Hellebores

Daffodil

Instead of dressing them in felt, I want to crochet some remove-able outfits for them, which is a departure from the book.  And I think they look sweet faceless; what do you think?

So remember...don't throw that out!

Looking for Spring

March has come and gone...it brought the most snow we've had all winter, but the flowers continue to bloom.

I fell in love with Dala horses this month!  A Dala horse is an artifact of Swedish culture: a carved stylized horse with lovely painted details.

These three are from Etsy.  The largest is 6.5 inches from toe to ear, the smallest is 5.0 inches.  Since carving and painting are not my strong suits, I looked around for a crochet pattern for this style of horse.  This is what I found:

The basic horse pattern is for an Icelandic Horse, freely available on Ravelry by K. Godinez.  

I tweaked the pattern slightly by adding a stitch to both legs (making them slightly wider) and inserting a thin wooden spool in the bottom of the leg to make them stand a bit better (a piece of dowel rod the appropriate diameter would also work).

I then decorated my horses with crochet flowers, lace, and doilies.

My bead and dowel doll Diane was very happy with the result, so I made her a Swedish inspired outfit to go with her horses :-)

The pinafore is from a pattern for crochet Hitty that you can find on this blog on the left sidebar.  The bonnet is from a pattern designed by Joyce and is available on her Flickr site.  The dress is a fitted waist crochet Hitty dress that you can also find on this blog.  Look for Crochet Hitty on the left sidebar and you should find several outfits to make for this doll.

Here is hoping that spring will decide to come and stay!