Shawl Yarn and Knitted Dollies

These are my sample skeins of my Journey to a Shawl yarn. It is grey Cormo cross wool blended with green, blue, and purple silk and angora. It spun into a great laceweight yarn, but I liked the fingering weight better because it showed the colors better, even though you can't see that too well in the picture. I finished dyeing the rest of my silk and angora today, and need to dye some more for another shawl. I am sort of in between big projects at the moment, so after seeing a knitted fish here, I was inspired. I will make the fish one day, but for now I decided to make some knitted dolls from a free pattern that is no longer available. Here is my first attempt, which I think looks like she is wearing a clown wig! I think that the fur stitch would look better in a firmer yarn, but I was using up some leftovers. I made up the clothing patterns on my own, but there is room for improvement!
This is my second dolly. I like her so much better! She has strands of yarn individually tied onto her head, and I like that much better. Although if I do this style again, I'll make the head underneath the same color as the hair so that you can't see her "scalp" so obviously! I used some leftover brown wool, and I think fingering/lace weight wool would make the best hair since it is finer and wouldn't be too full if I applied it to the whole head. She has a dress that matches Miss Peach's watermelon dress. I tweaked the basic doll pattern a bit more to my liking, and I think that there's still room for improvement. I may just start from scratch! I'm currently working on some shoes for her too. This kind of knitting is fast, easy, and fun!