Hello, Dolly!

This is Dolly; at least that's what I've been calling her.  She belongs to a co-worker, Laurie, who asked me to do a little repair work on her.  Laurie thinks Dolly might have been made by her grandmother; she's obviously handmade.  Her body and clothes are made of squares, about 4 inches square, handwoven of wool yarn.  Her body is very firmly stuffed with cotton and her features are embroidered with cotton floss. 

Unfortunately, Dolly's showing her age.  The back of her little booties and the top of her little dress have become brittle and the weaving has started breaking.  One braid has come undone and she could use a little freshening up. 

I'm almost finished with the socks that were started last week.  I've finished the first sock and only have about 25 rounds to do on the second one.  Today, I realized that I've been knitting these on US 1s and my standard formula for ToolMan is on US 2s.  So these may not turn out to be ToolMan socks after all; I may add them to my drawer instead.

ToolMan's been busy this week, too. The cold weather means he can't work as fast; pins have to come in to the house to warm up and get their finishes.  Here are a few he's been working on:

 His pins have been selling well at Urban Fiber Arts.  So well that we're closing down the ArtFire shop; the bother of getting good pictures, monitoring the shop, and shipping just aren't worth the trouble.  And there's no way to show on ArtFire just how special these pieces are; they're each unique little works of art that need to be held and tried on to find the one for you.  

This bag is something I'm working on filling up.  I signed up for a swap on Thrifty Knitters in Ravelry.  The swap has a $10 limit and has to have enough yarn for a project plus other goodies found in thrift shops. 



You can see from the bag that there are already quite a few things in the bag for the swap.  But you'll have to wait until it's delivered to the recipient before I can reveal what's inside.  I don't want to spoil the surprise!