At Christmastime comments: 34

Oh, December! You are filled with some of the loveliest things. Cold, clear mornings and steaming, spicy drinks. Children bonkers with excitement over the slightest things, the picture of a mouse behind an advent-calendar window, a two-cent candy cane, another tiny ornament for the tree. School sing-alongs and the smell of soup for lunch in the morning hallways. While she's at school, I scurry: writing Christmas cards, baking cookies, starting and finishing a comforter for her, shipping orders as fast as I can so I can get to wrapping the gifts that must be shipped. There's a constant back and forth to the post office. I knit and stitch through the chilly nights, surrounded by aging animals and waiting for my love to get home from work. He comes in with groceries and a blast of cold air and his good cheer, warming the room.

We went to Oregon Ballet Theater's Nutcracker on Saturday afternoon, and it was just pure delight, as always. (The photo of the Waltz of the Snowflakes is by Blaine Truitt Covert, and I always include it here because they don't allow you to take pictures, but I don't want to forget this. It's my favorite part.) Amelia made it all the way through (it's looooong, isn't it?) and snuggled on my lap in the dark auditorium for the last half of the second act. Afterward we went to The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner, which felt festive and fun and sits beguilingly right on the river in one of the best spots-with-a-view in town. Boats decorated with lights floated down the river beyond the windows. A balloon guy came over and made her a balloon rainbow, and we all ate sherbert and spumoni for dessert. It was a wonderful day. This morning I was lying in bed and Amelia brought me a tiny cup of what looked like four or five crushed up Cap'n Crunches. "Huh," I said. "Thanks, I think?" "It's a special present," she said. "My nutcracker crushed them for you!" Right on.

Thank you so much for all of your pattern orders!!! I'm rounding third on all my little chores, ready to be done with the to-do list. Today Andy is home, and is already doing the school run, and will do the pick-up, too. My freedom is strange and luscious. I hardly know where to start! I'm trying to tie Amelia's comforter while she's at school — this thing so far is still a surprise, and I keep it hidden when she is home, as much as I wan to be working on it because it's taking forever to tie. My fingers are so sore. (I'm using a big fat doll needle to tie it with perle cotton, and I recommend using a very big needle for this.) We are one week from Christmas, and it really does feel like a slow but steady slide, right into the heart of the season. I recorded The Sound of Music the other night and played the Do-Re-Mi scene for Amelia (it always chokes me up, right when Julie Andrews comes swinging through that sunny green bower and the music swells, oh man!). We sang it together for the rest of the night.

I made these cookies and I thought you might like them. For me they are the perfect Christmas cookie — chocolaty, salty, buttery, and minty. And just the right amount of sweet. They don't keep very long, so eat them up.

Chocolate Buttercream Mints

Cookies (adapted from Hershey's Chewy Chocolate Cookie recipe, which I have a handwritten copy of from twenty years ago but can't find on their web site anymore):

1 cup salted, softened butter
2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Cream butter and sugar in large bowl. Add eggs and vanilla and blend well. In separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Blend flour mixture into creamed mixture. Drop by teaspoonful onto ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350° for 8 minutes (Do not over bake. Cookies will be soft. They will puff during baking, flatten upon cooling.) Cool on cookie sheet until set, about 1 minute. Remove to wire rack to cool.

Frosting:

1 cup salted butter
4-5 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon peppermint extract
Pink food coloring
Crushed candy canes

Cream butter in large bowl. Add powdered sugar gradually and blend very well. Add milk, peppermint extract and blend again. Tint half of the frosting with pink. Spoon frosting into a pastry bag, keeping each color to one half the bag. Use a star tip and blob some frosting onto each cooled cookie. Top with a small amount of crushed candy canes.

 

Wishing every one of you a most lovely, loving, peaceful week as we lead up to Christmas! XOX, A

Dovegray Doll PDFs and Some New Clothes! comments: 8

Well, hello! Here are some lovely patterns for you! And it's about time, too!

These first two — Dovegray Doll and Little Peasant Dress, Pinafore, and Lace Stockings — you know well. They are exactly the same as the patterns available in the doll kit and the dress kit. But now you can download them and print them at home. As you probably know, you will need Adobe Reader to view and print this pattern on your home computer. 

This next batch of knitting patterns are only available as PDF patterns. The first one is Little Flower Sweater. It is a top-down seamless sweater in sport-weight yarn. It has a simple two-motif that is easy to manage if you've never done colorwork before. I love this sweater and it is the inspiration for the kidd0-sized version I am developing. (That is in its final phase and will be released in early 2020 if you want to do some dolly-and-me dressing.)

Then there is Little Cable Turtleneck, and it, too, is a top-down seamless raglan sweater done in sport-weight yarn. It has a simple turtleneck and cable running right down the front, also an easy introduction to cabling. I sort of want a sweater exactly like this for myself. But I am planning a kid-version of this in 2020 as well.

Little Raglan Pullover is basically the same as my little stripey pullover without the stripes. Again, top-down, seamless, raglan, sport-weight. It has contrast solid colors at neck, cuff, and hem. I used my hand-dyed sport-weight yarn for these samples. (I sooooo wanted to get some mini-skeins together to make some kits for you for this sweater but it won't happen until January, either. I'm making a kiddo-version pattern in worsted-weight and I will definitely have hand-dyed speckled worsted- and sport-weights available when I launch that. The weather is so gross now that it makes dyeing yarn a bit challenging for me right now. That, and the fifty-thousand other things I have going on. But, just know, those yarns are coming and they are going to be so pretty. I've done a few skeins just for myself and I'm really happy.)

Now, here are some Little Accessories for Dolls. They include a ribbed scarf, a cable scarf, a heartwarmer, and cowl, a wrap, a bonnet, and leg warmers. Some of these patterns (leg warmers, wrap, cable scarf, ribbed scarf) exist in other individual animal patterns. But I wanted to bundle the accessories together here for those who only want the knitting patterns and not the accompanying sewing patterns (that come with the original designs; you can see them all here). The bonnet and the heartwarmer and the cable cowl are new. They're just cute. Easy construction, also all sport-weight, you'll have the whole passel of them done in three or four Christmas movies. That's how time should be counted right now. How many Christmas movies will this take me? Hmmmm [finger to cheek]. Three or four.

Last is the Little Raglan Cardigan. Every single solitary time I write the word "raglan" I write "ragland." Every time. Should you find this typo anywhere here let me know. I'll only be shocked if you don't find one.

This cardi (top-down, seamless, sport) is a slightly reworked version of an older pattern I had written for animals but this time it has no dedicated buttonholes. Those proved to be 1) annoying (I was doing a cast-off/cast-on buttonhole) and 2) too big anyway. So this pattern has no buttonholes; you can put buttons on either side, and you can slip the buttons pretty easily right through the knitting. They're quite small. We have some buttons here, but if you can wait until the new year I am going to be selling hand-dyed doll buttons in really beautiful colors (mustards, pinks, mauves, grays, clays, greens) instead of bright primary colors and I am excited about this. I just ordered 1,000 tiny buttons so stay tuned for those. I'll show you here on the blog when I'm done. They're perfect for all sorts of small doll clothes. The usual story: I couldn't find ones I like so I just had to make my own and start selling them, too. You know how it goes. This is everyone's story.

Anyway, have so much fun with these! I'm using the hashtag #dovegraydolls and, so far, #littleflowersweater if you'd like to post your creations to Instagram. These patterns are all up on Ravelry now, too. I've seen a few that people have made so far and oh my stars, your photos do bring me such joy! Please post them or send them to me. They seriously make my day more than you know! Thank you!

A Rainy Tree Day comments: 23

It was so rainy. A true Oregon December afternoon. It was the only weekend day we had available to go get our tree at the tree farm, so we went out. My camera was sopping wet, I have to admit. But oh, it was nice. It's so nice to be out there in the woods, with the fog and the wood smoke and the pine trees and the salamanders, the ponies and the sheep, the smell of freshly cut Christmas-tree trunks, roasting hot dogs, sticky candy canes, handmade candles, rain on cedar needles. It's been a while since we've been out in the woods, just shuffling around. My favorite part is always sitting out by the fire. The rain stopped for a bit and I could see the bright white of the sun behind the clouds. The bare branches of trees were black and sparkling. The far-off pines, far across the field, were wrapped in low cloud. We drove up and down the hills of Oregon City (also, does anyone else think that Oregon City just goes on  f o r e v e r ???), wound up at the pub for lunch, then went home and decorated the sweetest little noble fir I ever did see.

I got my new doll knitting patterns up in my web shop, and I will be back to show those off here ASAP! I also should've reminded you earlier about my free pattern for a winter crown but I kept forgetting. It's technically for Santa Lucia day (on the 13th, so you would have to work fast if you wanted it for that) but it would be good for a solstice night, too. We decorated for Christmas here at the house and I have a few projects going, so I'll be back with those soon, too. I did make this nightgown for Amelia today for Santa Lucia Day. It's in the wash right now. It's a surprise. She and I went to a vintage fabric sale in the church basement in the neighborhood last weekend and got this amazing red velvet embroidered ribbon that I thought would be perfect. I used McCall's pattern #3381 from 1972. I just like the cut of these vintage patterns, even for a peasant shape. Amelia is a nightgown girl, and this is her shape (with the elastic neck and cuffs) of choice. It's white flannel.

And it's so long, size 7, that I can't even get the bottom in the picture. Big girl now.

*** Thank you to M., who commented that salamanders have toxic secretions and shouldn't be touched! I had no idea and we definitely shouldn't have been holding them! Gah!

Decembery comments: 22

Halllooooooo! Happy December to you! It's hard to believe it's December already. I'm not ready. I have so much to do and, really, not enough time to get it done. Mild frustrations. I sat down this morning specifically to answer emails and ship orders and blog, and naturally the internet wasn't working. Stuff like that. The house is still mostly covered in pumpkins. Mimi and I did go to JoAnn's to pick up a few things the other day (one of them the pre-assembled gingerbread house — I have no aptitude for frosting together vertical walls) and she got some supplies to make a wreath for her room door. She cut apart a few little sprigs and added the pom poms and picked the ribbon and I couldn't have done it all any better myself.

Thanksgiving was warm and wonderful. We cooked and my family came and the house was trashed and we had such a nice time. I hope yours was lovely, too. I love Thanksgiving weekend so much. It always feels like the longest weekend of the year. Andy had Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off, and this was extraordinary. The three of us went out to lunch and then to see Frozen 2 on Friday, and on Saturday Andy cleaned his closet (it was like an excavation — this is what happens when you don't move house for twenty years) and I cleaned Amelia's room. We moved almost all of her hanging clothes into the guest room closet. We only have three small closets in the house. It was a little bit bittersweet — I remember so well those early years, when I filled her clothes rod with dozens of tiny little calico dresses and wooly sweaters. It feels like yesterday. But it was time for these big clothes to not be hung above the dresser anymore. Taking them out filled the room with light and air. We dusted and remade the bed and hung some new pictures and cleaned surfaces, ready for the tiny Christmas tree I promised her. She actually asked for a new mattress (she has one of those extendable toddler mattresses from Ikea right now and she doesn't like it — truly a girl after my own princess-and-the-pea heart). I am making her a new Calicozy quilt for Christmas and I really need to get on it! Anyway, her room looked so pretty and sweet when we were done tidying it that I just sat in her chair and stared off into space for about forty-five minutes and, as I told Melissa, I have not felt that level of general satisfaction in a long time. It was really nice.

If only the rest of the house felt like that. . . . I have some serious tidying that needs to happen before Christmas can move onto the property. That will be happening soon!

***Some business housekeeping:

The Dovegray Doll pattern and Peasant Dress, Pinafore, and Stockings patterns are now available as PDFs! I'm so sorry I didn't get them up last week! I am still working on my new knitting patterns and will be getting them up soon!

The pink handwarmers in the photo above were early pink prototypes for my Misselthwaite Mitts. Ultimately, I settled on green for them. I dyed some yarn recently for kits for those, too, and we have seven kits (green) in stock if you prefer.

The pink sweater is a basic raglan that I'm writing a pattern for. I dyed those yarns and I am hoping to make some yarn available for when the pattern launches, too. I want to do a video that shows you how I dye yarn if you would be interested in that?

Mimi's drawings were inspired by Flora Waycott's sweet book, Draw Every Little Thing: Learn to Draw More than 100 Everyday Items from Food to Fashion. I bought her this book and a learn-to-write-cursive book and she has been using both of them every day. It's so adorable.