My daughter gave me an early birthday gift of the Springbok puzzle that had
​inspired the cake I made for Smuzhka Raccoon's birthday last year....

Last month during Iplehouse's 'Discontinued Sale' I ordered a KID Ah-ra to be a big brother for my Byuri.  I thought I'd name him Aaron. He arrived this morning, and Byuri was beside herself with excitement. Nami was there to support her friend, as they helped free Aaron from his wrappings....

Aaron is Special Real skin, and it has a bit of a yellow tint to it, instead of the pink that most of my newer dolls arrived with. But that's good, since Byuri is the original Special real skin with French Resin, and it's much more yellow than the current formula.

Aaron is blank, and will need a face up and body blushing, but I wanted to get a glimpse of what he would look like. He came with 12 mm eyes, but those were way too big.  Even the 10 mm ones looked too big, and I finally settled on some 8 mm eyes. I'll have to see again once he's painted, which size eyes work best.

​Of course I have no spare KID boy clothes, so I borrowed Miles' clothes (he's going off to join the Fantasy troupe anyways), and I borrowed Efreet's dark brown wig (he's still wearing his knit hat, so it's not too noticeable that he's bald for the moment).  Aaron is looking good....

And now that he was properly dressed, he climbed out of the box to greet his little sister....

I think they'll get along famously.

Yesterday we celebrated Emily's first birthday. Marianne made a gorgeous cake with three little fairies dressed in the same costume as Emily wore in photos last fall. I just needed to adjust the snaps on the back, and on the wings, so she could wear it one last time with her birthday cake...

Emily loved her cake, and was all smiles. Unfortunately my camera doesn't do well in low light, even with a flash, and babies don't exactly stay still, so all her smiling shots were way too blurry 

The birthday girl with her three big brothers...

And Brady, whose birthday is just two days after his little sister, loved his gingerbread 'rock'...

I've been reorganizing my collection of Value Village finds, and thought it was
​about time to repurpose this Indian skirt into some fancy doll dresses....

The embroidered designs are bit big in scale for a mid-size doll, so I'm going to make it for my Asa. She always gets 'hand-me-downs' from slightly bigger EID Carina, so I decided she needed a dress with a bodice designed especially to fit her SID body.  The most accurate way to design a pattern, is to wrap the doll's body with plastic wrap and cover it with strips of duct tape. Then draw on the bodice outlines and seams...

Obviously there's little chance the corresponding pieces on opposite sides are not going to be exactly the same, so the next step is to cut up the duct tape bodice, and draw up a paper pattern with identical corresponding pieces.

I'm working on a sweater that's giving me nothing but trouble. It was originally intended to be for Izzy, and I had wanted to take her first pictures wearing a new outfit including that sweater.  But even at the beginning I was having so much trouble trying to figure out the stitch count for her size and the gauge for the thread thickness, that I had to unravel and start over three times. So I didn't bother waiting for Izzy photos, and thought maybe the sweater would be nice for Benny after she's painted. 

I wanted an Aran design, and chose white and light blue for the pattern colours. After knitting many rows in the pattern, I noticed that the section of the sweater body after I started knitting the  pattern was more than an inch narrower than the lower section, and that was with me trying to knit as loosely as possible. I didn't think the sweater would be wide enough anymore if I continued with it the way I was, and thought maybe if I unraveled the entire pattern, and inserted a bunch of extra stitches into the width just as I was starting the pattern, that the resulting 'tightness' would 'shrink' down to the actual wanted width of the sweater.

So I did, and it's working, but I lost two whole days worth of knitting in the process. Thankfully I started with the sweater body, since the sleeves will be a lot less work once I get to them. But I'm using rather short double pointed needles and the stitches kept sliding off the end. So I took two tiny elastics and wound a temporary  'knob' on the ends of the needles. Problem solved!

Once it's done, I'll see who the sweater will fit best - Benny or Izzy.

Yesterday was a nice cloudy first day of Spring, so we went to the 'trillium woods' for some doll photos.  I had made my Wizard a shawl and scarf for warmth out in the snow, and some of my other dolls were standing around waiting to go on some Fantasy expedition with him. But we never got any more snow.  So they'd have to go to the woods instead. And on a cloudy day so there wouldn't be all kinds of harsh light and shade to deal with. 

This coming weekend we are celebrating our youngest granddaughter's first birthday. She'll be getting an amazing 'fairy' cake, made by my sister.  Well, a few days later is our eldest grandson's birthday, and so he doesn't feel left out, I decided to make him something special too.

He'll be turning 14, and is into rocks and minerals, so what could be more appropriate than an edible 'rock'?  Years ago when I was a volunteer art teacher, one of my favourite projects in grade six was the making of paper rocks and minerals. I had drawn up crystal patterns for various rocks and minerals, and they were printed onto card stock. The kids made the crystals and covered them with Podgy & tissue paper. Then the crystals were glued onto a 'paper rock base' made of crumpled construction paper slathered with wallpaper paste. They looked incredibly believable....

So I thought maybe I could make one out of gingerbread. I mixed up a batch of gingerbread, printed out the patterns for amethyst and proceeded to cut and bake all the parts....

Obviously gingerbread isn't going to be as straight and 'crisp-edged' as paper, so after gluing all
​the pieces together with royal icing, I did a little sanding to smooth everything out a little....

After brushing on a coat of white royal icing, I painted all the 'crystals' with
​diluted purple food colouring, and put them over a heating duct to dry....

We made a 'rock base' of thick gingerbread supported with aluminum foil underneath, then with more royal icing, I glued all the 'crystals' onto the 'rock'. Piped some star points around and between everything, and sprinkled some purple sugar for a bit of sparkle.....

I hope he likes it.

I made a slip to fit under just the shorter skirts of the dress, and decided to take some more photos. But those clunky pink boots were just not going to do. I found a pair of low heeled 'glass slippers' that would do for now, until I order her some proper shoes. Or make some.

Having the longer skirts separate makes this dress so much more versatile.

I finished the bows for the back of Miho's dress today. I would have been done sooner if not for the snow storm we never got. For days they were saying that we would be getting 15 to 20 centimetres of snow, so I thought I'd make a shawl and scarf for my Wizard so he could go out on some winter adventures with my Fantasy crew. But we didn't get more than a light dusting.

​So back to finishing Miho's dress. I also made a matching clip for her hair. 

I debated whether or not I should take photos of Miho in her finished dress, or wait until after she's painted. But painting could still take weeks, and I'm sure everyone would like to see the finished gown.  So I took some photos....

Now I still have to make a slip, so she can wear just the shorter part of the dress by itself.

Baby Emily loves checking out the buttons on our shirts, so I thought I'd make her a soft book similar to one I made for Natalya when she was a baby. I chose all kinds of interesting fabrics, and sewed on buttons and beads, trying to 'hide' them in the patterns. I couldn't remember what I used inside the pages, and bought the thinnest felt-like interfacing I could find. But the book ended up considerably thicker than the first one (I had borrowed it as a sample). I probably used simple felt inside the pages last time.  Oh well, I don't think Emily will care.