or Santa's wife. And I'm here to join you and count down the
days until our favorite holiday, Christmas.
And we are on day number thirteen. More than half way there at this point. How exciting! And we're doing a different craft project
every day. Now, remember when we made the Humikimo bracelets
and I told you that when there are some scraps left over, to hang on to those because I was
going to show you something that, um, you can make out of those? And also I've told you that I'm an avid crocheter
and showed you how to use the Knifty Knitter.
And every time we do these projects there
tends to be these little bits of yarn left over and I like to put them into a bag and
then use them for different craft projects. So today what I want to show you how to make
is something called a yarn doll. So this is an example of one of the yarn dolls
that I've made. And it's just made out of yarn.
Now, these little yarn dolls don't have a
face. Now, um, I know that in the Amish tradition,
they never put faces on their dolls, because they say that only God can create a face. And so I, I do wonder if the origins came
to that or whether they simply just don't have faces. Um, here's a little bit smaller one.
This one has, um, the legs are separate so
this ones' kind of wearing a skirt it looks like, and this ones' got little pants on,
or little legs. Um, you can also see that the arms are slightly
different. These arms have been wrapped in, um the yarn
that's used for the color for the shirt, and these arms were just left alone like that. And then I have made, and I'm going to show
you how to do this, um a couple of the, um dolls made out of the thread.
The thread that was left over from the bracelets
that we were making the other day. And so here's one and the, this one I've braided
the arms, so they're a little bit different, but still wearing a skirt. It would be just as easy if I wanted to separate
that and make legs, to go ahead and either tie those with a little bow at the end or,
to braid them also. And, um, so there's that one.
And then, this one I had such little bits
of scrap leftover, it kind of reminds me of, um, the Guatemalen worry dolls. Have you heard of those? Those are so fun. So they come in this little pouch. And it's got all of these little dolls in
there.
And the little dolls have little bits of fabric
and little bits of, um, floss wrapped around them and they're, they're made of something
with wire. And the legend with these is that at night,
before you go to bed, you tell these little dolls all of your worries, all of the things
that are troubling you, and then you go ahead and put them, with your worries, back into
the little bag that they came with and um, and then you'll be able to sleep worry-free
because you've given all of your worries away. So, that's what this kind of reminded me of. I thought it was so cute.
So you could make your own little worry dolls
and tell them all of your troubles while you're sleeping, or right before you go to sleep. Um, this one's also a little bit different,
you can see that the arms are completely different color than the other yarns that are in the,
um the rest of the body and the head. So what I did with this one was, I actually braided
a piece of, you know, a length of the floss, the leftover floss. And then before I tied it together, I'll show
you how to do that, I just simply placed that inside of there and tied it off.
And, um, you want to make sure that it's nice
and tight when you do, but that's how that one's a little bit different and I'm going
to show you what I mean in just a minute here. So let's go ahead and make a floss one first
with the leftover that we have here with this floss from the bracelets. I've taken out two extra pieces so that I
have something with which to tie the little, you know bows that go around the head and
arms and the waistline here. So, um, what you do is you fold this in half
and, I like to do it over my finger but you don't have to, but you're going to fold that
in half and then you decide how big you want the head to be, and you take a little piece
of your floss that you have here, thread, and you're going to do that, that famous square
knot that we keep doing in all of our projects.
Now, I like to hold this off to one side so
that it divides the yarn in half and I have more to tie later. So I'm not just using the center of it, I'm
using an edge. So right over left and under, and then left
over right and under. And that makes our non-slipping, square knot.
And you want to get those nice and tight there. And then, if you wanted to, you could tie
a bow around the neck, or you can just, in this case I'm going to just cut it because
I don't have a lot of the thread left. And when you cut you'll have one piece that, unfortunately,
goes to the landfill, but not a lot that you can do with something that small. And then you've got another piece that you
can use for, um, you know tying off something else.
Now, if you think you've got the head just
a little bit bigger than you wanted to, you could very carefully, and very slowly, just
sort of slide this up. Work it up just a little bit and it'll make
that head just a little bit smaller. If that's what you want to do. Now, for the arms, what I did was, I took
the red, so I have red arms, and I pulled three pieces of red thread out on each side
of our little doll.
So there's three on that side. And then I've got three on this side. And then what I did for this one is I went
ahead and braided those and I, when I lay it down, I want to set something... You can
either, um, safety pin this, so if you're working on a cloth, like I've got my table
cloth right here...
You could safety pin it to that so it doesn't slip. Some people when they're working on, um, these
kinds of things they'll safety pin it to their britches, so that, uh, it doesn't slip around. And then I'm just going to braid it. Now, if you don't want to braid or don't know
how to braid, that's fine.
Um, there are YouTube videos nowadays that
can teach you to do almost anything. Um, so you can watch some of those, or you
can ask someone who does know how braid to help you. And this one I'm just kind of doing loosely. And then when I'm done I will take the piece of
string again and tie off that arm.
Right over left and under, and then left over
right and under. And then I'm going to turn it over and do
the very same thing to the other side. So a loose braid, and then when I'm done I
will tie it with my square knot. And then we're going to go ahead and snip
those so that they're the same size.
And then our last step is to go ahead and
tie a piece around the center for the waistline. So we'll take our last piece of string here
and we're going to just go ahead and tie around there. Now again, I've been cutting these off, um,
to not have any bows. They're just little pieces sticking out.
But you can certainly, um, tie them in a bow
if you want to. The other thing that you can do is, once you've
tied this, you can take the pieces of string and just fold them down, if they're long enough,
they can blend into the little skirt that you've got going on here. Okay. And there we go.
We've got another one of these. Now wouldn't that make a fun gift for someone? You could give that to a little girl or a
little boy or put it on a, on a card that you're making, or hang it on a tree, or these
little ones would look cute on a miniature tree. Sometimes people put those together if they
don't want a great, big tree this time of year in their house. Alright, so let me show you some tricks on
making the ones that I have out of yarn.
So what I've done with that one is, um, I
borrowed a book. So this is, this is "The Good Earth" by Pearl
Buck. Excellent book! If you haven't read it, I highly recommend
it. It was required reading for me in 10th grade,
which was eons ago, of course.
But, um, really, really good book. I enjoyed it. So, the first thing you need is a bunch of
pieces of um, either the yarn or the floss, that are the same size, or basically the same
size. So if we wrap it around this book, we're going
to get that.
You don't want to wrap it too tightly, um,
because when you cut it it will bounce back and they'll all be different sizes. The other thing you want to make sure of is
that you aren't just wrapping in the same spot because the ones on the outside, because
of the length of it going around will be a little bit bigger the ones that were underneath. So join with me now, we're going to count
to twenty, which is less than we've counted to in the past. But we want to go around this book 20 times.
So there's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Alright! Now the reason that a book is so convenient
for this is that, very carefully of course, and with respect, you've got a slot to slip
those scissors and go ahead and make your cuts to the pieces, that are then all pretty
much the same size. Okay? How wonderful is that? Very easy, right? Instead of counting them all out one by one. Now this one, we want to be able to hang it,
so the first thing we'll do is cut a little scrap of a different color and, um, right
in the very center of this, we're going to do our square knot again. So right over left and under, pull it tight
but not so tight that we break the yarn, and then left over right and under.
And that's what connects it to our little
doll that we're going to make. And then now, in order to be able to hang
it somewhere, we want to do the kind where you wrap it around your finger, and then tuck
it in. And that gives it a little hanging loop. You'll be able to hang it from a tree if you
want to, and then, of course, you can just cut those to little pieces to make them level.
Alright, so now we need to take a piece of
yarn and create the head section. So I've got a little bit of green here, and
what I'm going to do is, instead of cutting a piece, I'm going to actually, um, just tie it
with it on here because the nice thing about square knots is that you're really only using,
moving one piece. It's the piece that starts out on the right. So right over left and under, and then left
over right and under.
See, this didn't even move the whole time. And then, when I cut them, I cut them about
the same size, I can tie it into a bow if I want her to have a bow. Him or her, depending upon what kind of doll
you're making. Or I can just cut it and, um, I'd have that.
So there we go, we've got that. Now what we're going to do is take four pieces
of yarn. One two three four, and those are going to
be the arms. I'm not going to braid them this time.
I'm just going to um, you know, tie them. Now, if you like to be very meticulous and
particular, then certainly you'll want to measure to see, um, how far each arm is so
that they're the same length. But doing this for as long as I have, then you
get pretty close by just eyeballing things. So I'm going to go ahead and tie this one.
Again we're using those square knots that
I taught you to make. Okay? And then, this one I'm not going to tie into
a bow, I'm just going to snip so that there's a little edge. And then, I need to snip the leftovers off
so the arms aren't too long and also so it creates what looks like little hands there. So I'm going to do the same thing to the other
side.
Right over left and under, you should have
this memorized by now, huh? Pretty close huh? Right over left and under and then left over
right and under. Right, and then I will trim that and then
take the, um, arms and trim the little hand section off. And now what we'll want to do is create the
waist. So again, we'll take our string here, our
rib...
Uh... Little pieces of yarn and decide where we want the waist to be. Aaaaand, another square knot. See? This is a big project of square knots.
It's going to be making several per doll,
huh? So right over left and under, left over right
and under. You should be a big pro at this right now. Okay. And again, I'm going to just snip instead
of tying a bow on that one.
And there we have a little doll. So what we could do is, um, you know, again,
we could create some legs if we wanted to. This one isn't really long enough to braid
it, um, the way it's [mumbles], but I do like to, when these are uneven, go ahead and give
them a snip across the bottom so that they're closer to the same size, um, together. Tighten these up just a little bit.
Now remember, we don't use scissors on our
siblings' hair, or our own hair. This is just for craft projects. Don't get in trouble with your parental figure
on that one. Alright, and yes, while there's just a little
bit of waste, it's still a lot less than it would have been had we just thrown that whole
ball of yarn away.
And there we go, we've made a little yarn
doll out of, um, our leftover scraps from previous projects. I've got a little bit more, I can make some
more of these if I want to. Use them in different colors. So, I hope that you had fun.
I hope that you make some of these. If you do, I would love to see what you come
up with. I do have that Facebook page, Jessica Kringle. You can take pictures of it and show me what
you've done, I'd love to see it.
Alright, well I hope you'll join me tomorrow
when we'll be making something else to count down those days until Christmas. And thanks so much for joining me. Bye Bye! [Music].
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