M Doll and Proud

M doll has taken up most of the knitting air in the house during the past week.  It is amazing how much time can be spent knitting up one 25 inch or 63.5 cm toy.  When we left off yesterday I was trying to figure out what to do with the hair.  Well it has been determined to be brown and short.  The style you see in the photo below took me a remarkable 4 hours to sew.  Yes, I find that number hard to believe, and I did it.  Creating hair takes a certain amount of repetition, of going over the same area several times, so there are no "bald spots" showing through.  The great fun was deciding where to leave the few stragglers.  It was also decided that the lips needed to be bigger so one can see I changed them from a single thin line to two with the middle filled in.  The satin embroidery stitch was used to fill in the spaces.  The idea of big prominent features appeals to me.

I cut up an old pair of white pantyhose to keep the stuffing contained and firm for the head, body and each of the arms and legs.  Sewing the head to the body was another challenge because just like a newborn, the neck could not support the head.  It took a few tries by adding wider concentric stitches around the neck (all of which in the end helps support that head) until finally the head is secured to the point where it doesn't immediately look at the floor when picked up.   Finally before any photos were taken a pair of panties/diaper was knit and decorated to cover up the parts that might need covering.  (Paul and I laughed at the fact that I felt a certain modesty about this for my knitted grand daughter but not for my knitted Queen Elizabeth.  I know one, I guess and that changes everything.)  So here the M doll is as of today.

Next to a ruler showing how tall she stands

The rest of the outfit: the pants, t-shirt, sunglasses and socks still need to be knit, but they should be completed before too long.  The socks are already begun, and I'm trying to figure out the pants.  BTW, I didn't have to come up with my own design for the M doll.  Toys to Knit by Tracy Chapman used DK yarn to create a smaller version of this doll.  The M doll merely used worsted weight yarn and the appropriate sized needles to expand on the size.  The patterns for clothing so far are planned out of the same book.  (Had I needed to guess at all of this it would have taken months not weeks of trial and error to get it right.)

Here's Paul holding the doll like a baby to give you a better idea of scale.

I also attended a play call Proud over the long Easter weekend.  It focuses on Stephen Harper, the PM (Prime Minister) of Canada in a fictional world where in 2011 his government has won a landslide majority, including the 59 seats from Quebec that in reality went to the NDP.  The play pits the rather stiff and unemotional PM as he is always and only referred to in the play against a new, gregarious single mother of one, conservative MP (Member of Parliament) Jisbella Lyth from Quebec.  The play is a satire about why Harper wields such control over members of his party to get what he wants:  "Tighten things up just a little bit will suddenly have you make a few more choices." Or so the PM assumes.  Proud is at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver through April 26.  Oh, and as for the name, Proud, it is meant to get "Canadian citizens to think that we do have about as many things to be proud of about being Canadian as there are to be ashamed about. . .", according to the artistic producer, Donna Spencer.  I found it to be a wonderful way to spend 95 minutes and recommend it to you.

The Cast of Proud playing in Vancouver