Arrabella & her Double Moss Stitch

This week I have also been dreaming of another doll. Her name is Arrabella and she is filled with vintage, bohemian personality.

 

 

I wanted her sweater jacket to have real texture and weight so I thought double moss stitch might be nice. Only problem is, I've never tried it before, but hey, how hard can it be, right??

 

But after a slow start I got it. The most important part is to keep track of what row you are on.


There seems to be a couple of ways people do double moss or double seed stitch

1) Working on a row with stitches in multiples of 4

Rows 1 & 2  knit two, purl two, repeat

Rows 3 & 4  purl two, knit two, repeat

Repeat these 4 rows for pattern.


2) Working on row with stitches in  multiples of 2

Row 1  purl one, knit one, repeat

Row 2  knit one, purl one, repeat

Row 3  knit one, purl one, repeat

Row 4  purl one, knit one, repeat

Repeat these 4 rows for pattern


I decided to use the latter, example 2.

Mayla

This week, as long as the children allow me, I am hoping to finish Mayla. On Saturday night I worked into the wee hours, only to wake the next morning and discover Mayla sitting on my work table.

 

 

I have been saving this piece of William Morris design fabric for just the right moment. When Mayla told me that blue is her favourite colour I immediately remembered this small piece. I have a few ideas of what I am going to do..... just a couple of days to, hopefully, make it happen.

Early Autumn Loveliness

Besides my family, there are 2 things that I am deeply passionate about, dolls and gardening. There are times when I can combine them by grabbing some knitting and heading out to sit and knit in my garden.

At the moment what a joy that is. The zinnias and salvias are in full glory. I thought I would share the view of my morning with you all from my Autumn Garden.

Our path that leads into the garden is regularly over growing to the point where we can't get through, I guess we can thank all the rain we have had lately, a far cry from the bush fires that threatened us some 6 months ago.

Finally we are seeing banana passionfruit flowers on our vine! Can't wait to start harvesting, does anyone know if you can make passionfruit butter from banana passionfruits?? Worth an experiment or 2 perhaps.

I have a very real soft spot for zinnias and salvias. As a result I think I have salvia plants by the dozens and zinnias by the hundreds. At this time of year it is not uncommon for my little garden to be swarmed with butterflies, obviously the butterlfies love them just as much as I do.

Gwen and Dolly

I've been working on a little dolly named Gwen this past week or so. She started as a dolly dream, I really wanted to create something out of some beautiful grey wool that I have had in my wool stash.

I also wanted to play around with a vintage knitting stitch known as feather & fan. I'm new to lace knitting and I thought that good ol' feather & fan would be a lovely first step. So Gwen's dress has a skirt made of this pattern.

Gwen loves playing dollies, her favourite is her little felt doll named Missy.



Gwen has a scarf that she wears around her neck or sometimes as head band. It is made of delicate mohair blended yard in a variegated, dusty pink colour.



Gwen has a sweet little pair of crochet baby jane shoes on. They are made from the same variegated mohair that is in her scarf.



I'll be putting Gwen and her dolly Missy up in my Etsy store today.