Winning socks

Last weekend I won a pair of Sasha socks!  No, not via ebay, but by following another doll bloggger's site and just being lucky enough to check her updates at the right moment.

Petrana, of Made with love for Sasha Dolls, has been very busy knitting.  During the past 3 months she has made loads of pairs of socks (90!), lots of different colour combinations, so plenty of variety.  She sold some pairs on ebay, but didn't sell them all, so decided to run a fun give-away competition on her blog, and I was the lucky winner of the first pair.  They arrived very quickly and my daughters and Sasha dolls are delighted with them (my elder girl waxed lyrical because of the colours and my younger daughter wanted to know if they would fit her 19.5" Gotz dolls).  Florence and Nicholas James both wanted to wear them, but in the end NJ got first turn, because Florence is still wearing her lovely Christmas dress (which has matching tights) she received in the Sasha Secreta Santa swap.  NJ has changed out of his Christmas sweater and back into the sweater I made for him, and the socks go quite well with his sweater and new jeans.

I haven't been able to take a photo of them on NJ yet, but for a photo of the socks visit pair of hand knitted socks. Thank you Petrana, they are lovely.

Measurements for cloth stable

Here are the measurements for the cloth stable I designed and made for the 20 inch Battat Morgan Horse.

I've annotated a photo of the stable lying on its side, showing how the buttons and button flaps go for fastening the walls to the base.

measurements on the photo showing the buttons and flaps

the diagram I've drawn showing measurements of finished size

This stable was designed entirely by me.  I don't mind if you copy it to make a stable for a toy horse you know (but not to sell).  If you need the instructions to explain roughly how I made it, please email me at dollmum@yahoo.co.uk and I'll send you the PDF file which includes the diagram.  It was pretty much 'trial and error', in other words I had an idea, drew it on paper, measured the material, mulled it over for a while, started sewing, made adjustments, struggled with the unwieldiness of the stable due to its size and especially once the foamex board was in its slots, and when fitting the roof rods.  It took me a week's worth of evenings to make, so certainly isn't commercially viable! It is probably better to make something similar in wood or a strong cardboard box, but it wouldn't be a bag for carrying the horse unless you padded the insides to protect the horse in transit.  A cardboard box wouldn't be so easy to fasten up to serve as a carrier if it also folded out, but maybe other creative parents or grandparents will have the answer.  I just knew that for my daughter's horse cloth would work, even though I had to devise a way to make it stand up successfully.

It was definitely worth the effort for the expression on my daughter's face when she met her new toy horse for her Gotz dolls.