I don’t want it to be a storage doll, I’m going to experiment with using this pattern to make a soft doll to be a child’s toy.

Supposed to be doing this with a KAL, but I couldn’t wait for another second! I’m sorry, guys. I have no patience. And I’ve never done a KAL before. Hopefully my trying it out will help save you all some trouble…

Two places where I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to do (these are not mistakes in the pattern, just took me a lot of pondering):

1) Beginning the sari. I read this part over and over and had so much trouble understanding. (this is right after you cast on 21 stitches with a temporary method, after finishing head and neck) The key was that the sari is knit in the opposite direction from the torso. You’re knitting down and away from the work and then back up toward the work and attach it to what you’ve already done by knitting the last of the stitches in your row together with one of the stitches on the torso. I don’t know if that made any more sense than the directions in the pattern! The first couple of my photos may help with that.

2) Short rows to turn the sari. When it has you join up the circle of the sari and then has instructions like: K2, P18, K2; next row: K 18, turn. etc. I was getting all mixed up, doing short rows from both ends. It turns out this is just to get the sari to curve around the front. You only need to shorten by two stitches on one side (on every RS, which should be the side closest to the torso) Once you’ve shortened by 2 every RS row until there are only four stitches left, then you’re ready to knit all the way back up and the sari will curve.

The pattern is very creative and uses directions in the knitting in ways that I found unexpected. I love how it is turning out so far.

Finished and I love it! I stuffed her with yarn as I went. I stuffed the torso, then used a yarn needle to weave a bit of a net across her inner torso, so that I could stuff the skirt more loosely and the yarn would not fall out of the torso and into the skirt.

I made the sari skirt longer than 21 stitches because it just looked right to my eye. Particularly since I wasn’t putting the bottle in.

She is finished and ready to go into my baby hope chest!