Behind every great man ….

Mr. and Mrs. Claus

… there’s a great woman.  And, Mrs. Claus is no exception to that adage.

Last week, I posted some general tips and details about my Santa.  As promised in that post, here are my notes about making the always lovely Mrs. Claus.

Since Mrs. Claus was my second Greenhowe doll, I felt confident in changing her up a bit.  She was much more fun for me to “play” with in the knitting/design process.

Mrs. Claus in bits and pieces

• I knit most of her bits and pieces in the round (including the body above the “boots”) to avoid messy seams and to make the knitting go faster; I also changed her “shirt” to dark green rather than white (which looked drab to me), adding a bit of collar detail by knitting one round white, alternating white and red on the next round, and then finishing with a white round.
•  for her arms, I knit them in the round, adding the same white/red design on the “cuff”; I switched to knitting flat for the shaping at the top.
• her skirt, knit completely in the round, repeated the white/red patterning in lieu of the light green shown in the design (I didn’t have a light green and think the striping is rather attractive and festive).  I thought the skirt looked too long (and the CO edge kept flipping) so I hemmed the all-green garter edge and the skirt seems to sit better over her rather bright red boots.
• I omitted the “panty frills” and sleeve cuffs as unnecessary for my Mrs. Claus.
• for her hair, my bun ended up poof-ier than Greenhowe’s version … and instead of the holly I did a hair tie of by knitting one round red, one round white, one round red
• for the heart pockets, which I think are very cute, I worked these on dpns, knitting the front and back at the same time so I wouldn’t have to fiddle with seaming them.  This also made a “crisper” pocket.
• 

  Of course Mrs. Claus would be knitting ....

  instead of a candy cane in her pocket, I decided that Mrs. Claus would probably be in the midst of knitting something (aren’t we all?) so I did a small square on #1 dpns, stopping half-way through the 6th garter ridge, and then slipped the sts onto needles made with toothpicks and bead ends.  I wrapped a bit of the yarn into a ball and placed that in the old dear’s pocket, tacking the knitted swatch to her hand with hidden stitches.

• I secured her shawl by tacking the edge to her belly, but I thought it looked funny without some kind of ornament.  I took a small gold safety pin, threaded a crystal bead onto the pin part, and … voila … a  custom shawl pin!
  

  Mrs. Claus ready for Christmas Eve. She's gorgeous coming ...

... or going