strawberry skirt + strawberry pixie hat

Here's my second attempt at making a gathered skirt! I used this cute strawberry fabric (which happened to match Phoebe Maybe's stock blouse pretty well) and Winny is deigning to model it for me, even though it's not really her strawberry jam.

This time, on a tip given to me by the wonderful Anne, I lightly ironed the gathers and found it a lot easier to deal with them afterwards! I feel like it turned out minorly better than the toadstool skirt. It looks a lot like a skirt a petticoat should go beneath, but I tried that out and don't love the look.

As you know, I've got strawberry appliques hanging around, so I decided to whip up a pixie hat and slap a strawberry on it.

I usually do pixie hats in single crochet, but I automatically started doing this one in HDC ribbing because I've been doing soooo much HDC ribbing lately -- many of the mitts I've made are ribbed HDC worked in the back loop -- and I kind of like the texture with this gnarled yarn.

Again, this look isn't Winny to a tee, but I think she looks really sweet in it nevertheless. And she was very kind to offer herself as a model.

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small projects: vine charging cable cover

First thing's first... Be honest... Am I posting... TOO MUCH? I just feel more in-tune with my hobby self than I have in quite some time and it's making me want to post whenever I make something.

Now! Yesterday I up and decided to do this project: crocheting around a lightning cable to make it look like a vine. I've seen this everywhere for at least a few years, and found many really gorgeous flowery examples on Etsy. I made a relatively plain one, as just crocheting the leaves was a new thing for me!

These leaves are not perfect, and I would not recommend the tutorial I used to make them. It didn't have the clearest instructions, so I feel like I ended up not following the directions -- but not on purpose! But crochet is pretty forgiving in that way, so I feel like whatever I did still worked to make leaf shapes. I will say that it was a really fun escalation of stitches to make the curved shape! Going all the way from a slip stitch to a treble and down again!

I also think the leaves would benefit from some blocking, as they are very curly, but I never freaking block crochet. I'll have to think about that.

Another thing to consider: Should I maybe add some flowers to this thing? I don't know how people add flowers to theirs but I'd assume they're crocheted separately and then sewn on... I'd have to find a flower pattern I like to do.

Anyway, this lightning cable was in the process of turning a charming yellow-green, and the plastic casing on the lightning side is cracked. If this was fraying in any way I wouldn't have crocheted around it, but the wire itself is intact.

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Zasha dressup vid!

It's been about three years since my last dolly dressup video, but here is one for my girl Zasha! Filmed almost a year to the day after her unboxing video! That feels special to me! :"]

I have been really Blythe-y this last twelve months. Perhaps I shall never be as Blythey as I was my first year or two of collecting, when I was utterly swept away in the magic of everything. But in 2023 I did a lot of sewing for my dolls and, of course, expanded my family significantly. So it is about time I did another dressup video.

I intend that every doll I own have a dressup video, whether solo or paired with another doll, so I will eventually be doing videos for Winny, Vesper, Citron, and Miette as well. The caveat there is that I feel each of them have this very particular style, and so I want to try and attain some items that really feel like them. I have already dressed Citron a couple of times in outfits that don't suit her at all, and thus, I am particularly determined to expand my wardrobe with things that will suit her -- and the other New Girls. I still don't have enough stuff for Winny.

A couple of blog housekeeping notes:

Lately I've been fixing things up around Cure Touch. Most notably, I re-did the entirety of my Blythe Family page. Somehow it got flagged as having inappropriate content. I have zero clue what content was inappropriate?? But I just scrapped the whole thing and rewrote it. Some girls have new pictures and some don't! But they all have little nameplates I wrote out in Paint Tool SAI for them!

I also changed my About Me page very slightly, mostly by changing out old photos. I haven't had pink hair in way too long to keep pink-haired portraits there! I'd like to change it even more sometime, but who knows.

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mushroom skirt!

I made another skirt! It's this dark green one with a mushroom print. I saw the fabric, which I really love, and thought it'd make a cute circle skirt for Blythes. For this skirt I relied on this video tutorial/pattern, rather than just kind of winging it, like I did with the last skirt I sewed.

This one has a lot of gathering; I've never successfully gathered anything before, and to be honest, I didn't find it very easy to arrange and settle everything how I wanted it. My skirt did not resemble 1:1 the skirt in the video while it was in progress. But the process was an educational experience, haha.

I would very much enjoy attaining more skirts that are about this length, or a little longer. I recently got one of these from CraftyCoraShop and I really like it; it's long and gives historical dress vibes! (I scooped three more in other colors just now!) Shorter skirts and miniskirts don't always feel right on some of my girls.

I miiigght take another swing at this pattern sometime, with some other fabric?

Between the hat, the top, and the skirt, I made almost this entire outfit!!! :)

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small projects: french knit bows

I have been obsessed with making bows with this french knitter I bought in December. You might be familiar with this little doodad (this whosit, this whatsit). I've also seen them called knitting nancys (nancies?) and tricot knitters. The impression I've gotten is that it's kind of a child's activity?? Which makes sense, since it's a fairly simple activity once all the steps are learned. But you use the pegs on top to knit an icord. It's a super stretchy cord! I believe I have crocheted an icord before, but I hated doing it, so I thought buying one of these little things might help.

I have made so many bows now... more than pictured here!

I made a modest number of bows to attach to a couple of pairs of mitts I sold at the craft market I did last month, but I only had time to do a few bows. I was slower at the knitting process than I am now. I intend to use the majority of these bows on crocheted items: mitts, and maybe I'll do a scarf dotted in bows! Not sure yet, but it seems delightful. I might make barrettes or something too.

Right now I've been making a couple of bows every night before I retire, as if journaling or darning socks by firelight. It's been quite nice, and I've had to fight off a temptation to start collecting french knitters due to my affection for this one. There are so many shaped like MUSHROOMS, and oh my word, it's hard to resist those especially... I might have bought one already. The literal only thing stopping me from getting more is that I've already scratched and scraped this one so much, by knitting with a tapestry needle. I don't want to buy a bunch of knitters and then not use them, but I don't have the heart to scrape them all up.

(BTW, I love this blush colored yarn!)

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small projects: crochet strawberries and hearts

Still feeling really crochet-y, by some miracle! Been working up some small items, like this strawberry applique (which I made by following this video). Last year at this time I made these crochet strawberry bags... been really into the strawberry thing for a while now, I think! I want to turn these into mitts, either by granny square-ifying them or perhaps just having them be appliques.

I also made some more hearts. I still have about half of the ones I made several years ago (almost ten years, in fact). I even reminded myself how to do them via the same video tutorial. And used the same sheet of scrapbook paper for a background!

As you can imagine, the strawberries and hearts are made quite similarly, but the strawberry has a lot more steps. The heart is incredibly easy to memorize. Do it once and you'll not need the tutorial again! But I can't seem to memorize the strawberry part of the strawberry, haha. The stem and leaves, I don't need the tutorial for, but I keep having to refer back for the actual fruit part! Stitching on the seeds also makes a strawberry take longer than one of these little two-minute hearts.

This is really really pleasing to me right now, filling up a little bag with hearts and berries!

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new year, new girl (jail for One Thousand Years)

Happy 2024 and all that, but aaah! The Blythe I bought myself for my Craft Market Success arrived, and she is a BEAUT. She's unique in my collection. A) She's an anniversary doll -- my first! B) She's got translucent skin -- for me, another first! C) She's the first Blythe I've bought that's been produced under the Good Smile Company rather than Takara.

Also, she's so fance~

I of course made an unboxing video, should you like to see!

I have named her Miette... after the cat!

Five Blythes in a single year is a lot, I know... some of the most substantial growth my collection's seen in many years! But this year I've enjoyed Blythe more than I have in the longest time. I always enjoy this hobby in a neutral way, but I did a lot of sewing this year, and therefore bonding with my girls. Besides crochet, which I technically did far more of, I had the most fun with my doll hobby this past year out of all of my many other hobbies.

Right now the dream consists of sewing and crocheting while I hang with the girls (the new girls especially), window shopping for Miette, and working on a dolly dressup video for Zasha.

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