An hour lost.

“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.” – Robertson Davies
What he said. Daylight Saving pisses me off. I don’t mind it on the “fall back” end, since I find it very difficult to complain about something that gives me an extra hour to knit and makes it easier to put my kids to bed. Spring forward however…is loathsome. I have given it some thought and decided that there is no way that DST was invented by women. (It was actually Ben Franklin, who I think we can all agree never tried to put a whack of kids in bed the day after DST or had to try to get them up in them morning…I swear that if he wasn’t dead I’d be sending the girls over to his house to give him a little education.) Apparently we do this to save energy. I’m not falling for it. If it pisses you off go here, and sign the petition. If you are the mother of a toddler…sign twice.
I have been knitting doll clothes, and (I can scarcely believe that I’m going to admit this in public) I’ve been liking it.
dollbluedollpink
It occurred to me (mostly after reading your comments) that maybe I’m underrating this form of knitting. Many of you have really strong memories of knitted dolly stuff , so it would seem that some of these gifts were favourite toys. I started thinking then about how willing I am to knit baby things, and babies outgrow the stuff in minutes. This dolly stuff will be played with and treasured for years, maybe forever. Screw it, I’m contributing to a childhood and I don’t mind. (Except for the part while I’m sewing up tiny little dresses, and fitting in wee little sleeves. That’s dumbass.)
Making these little things was fun, though I’m going to make some Sams Bitty Baby for Christmas, and then stop, since I may be getting a little obsessive. The observant among you will note that I short-rowed the back of the dolly pants so that it would fit over the diapers. Yup. Time to stop.

15 thoughts on “An hour lost.

  1. I dunno. You should probably do some Kaffe Fassett style doll-sized intarsia stuff.
    Seriously, though, the lace skirt is lovely, and I am impressed that you even thought about the diapers. My non-doll-owning question is, though, why does a doll, which wouldn’t pee, now would it, need a nappie?

  2. Daylight Savings Time is the devil. It is now (ahem) 10:30 AM and I still haven’t managed to get my toddler to eat breakfast, lunch is going to be a nightmare and I can forsee what a rigamarole bedtime is going to be. I must be totally uncool because I am actually looking forward to knitting doll clothes, my son’s trains don’t accessorize.

  3. Okay. Not to hijack someone else’s blog or anything, but the Harlot asked. Asked. So here are the socks, which are now done!! Both of them. Huzzah!
    The socks: http://www.bedford.net/teep/socks.jpg
    (Everyone will please be pretending not to see the stubble on the legs of our model or the incompetent kitchener on the toes. Socks are more navy than they appear in the picture.)
    And dolls have nappies because the idea is to pretend or model real-baby behavior. Real babies need nappies, therefore doll babies need nappies. When you get down to brass tacks, doll babies, being plastic, cloth, china, or some combination of the above, don’t need CLOTHES but they look awfully forlorn when they’re naked and/or grubby dirty.

  4. Teep, (whose socks are simply smashing, especially for a first pair….all praise the teep) gives a better answer than I was going to for why dolly’s need nappies. My answer? Either “for effect” or because this way they can torture their mothers by forcing them to look for the lost nappy for hours before happiness can be restored.

  5. Thank you for the daylight saving rant. I am feeling particularly bitter about it this year. I had to get up early Sat. I had a dream or something on Fri night that it was Sunday the next day, and changed my alarm clock in the middle of the night. I got to where I had to be at 5 instead of 6 in the morning. I am so pissed about it that I have left the rest of my clocks on the real time.
    Love the doll clothes. And yes, they will be played with for years. I had my Mom’s and when I had no daughters passed them to a cousin’s daughter. She has spiffed them up a little and passed them to her girls. Value for time spent I think.
    But you’re right. Short rowing the butt of doll clothes is a sign of potential problems. Time to shift gears.
    Barb

  6. You are right, doll clothes are eternal. I still remember vividly the summer I was 5, when my mother had jury duty and the deputized baby sitter (she was probably about 12, her mother had the ultimate responsibility) put me down to nap in the middle of the day so she could play with my dolls. They had the best wardrobe on the block, because Mother was a dressmaker and had heaps of scraps to make doll clothes with.
    At some point, in theory at least, the doll’s “mommy” is supposed to get inspired to sew in wee little sleeves. It actually worked at our house. When we were 10 or 11 we had a period of “the smaller the better”.
    And I haven’t forgotten the voodoo dolls you showed us!
    Elizabeth in Norway

  7. I may have to frame that quote. Daylight Savings Time certainly wasn’t invented by night owls like me. Adding two small children who believe the greatest fun is staying up so mom can’t knit in peace makes it even less entertaining.
    The doll clothes are adorable. One really nice feature of knit doll clothing that no one mentions: it’s much easier to put on the doll, since there’s some give to the fabric. Nice for little not so coordinated hands. Yet another way to hook the next generation of knitters…my very first project was a knitted hat for my favorite doll :-).

  8. I have to cast a minority vote in favor of DST here. I live in Michigan, the place where it still snows in April (last night as a matter of fact) and where sunshine is a scarce commodity. Anything that gives my life a bit more daylight is a welcome thing. I welcome it in April. I mourn it’s departure in October. Stephanie, your comment about doll clothes being in use a whole lot longer than baby clothes is an excellent observation. I still have one of my childhood dolls and all her clothes.

  9. Yup. Daylight savings BITES. I hated it even before I was the mother of a toddler, but now I don’t even have the consolation of knowing I’d get that extra hour of sleep in October–because toddlers don’t roll over in the morning and say “oh good, I get an extra hour to sleep!” It’s usually more along the lines of “Mommy! Get UP! I want my breakfast!”
    The doll clothes are darling and will be loved and cherished, I’m sure. Short rows and all.

  10. I live in Indiana, where we don’t, for the most part, observe DST. I like it that way, but every few years we have to fight off politicians who want to make us change. This is the midwest and we don’t like change:) Those of us who don’t want to observe DST are helped by the fact that the politicians can’t decide which time zone we should be in anyway, so the whole thing dissolves into partisan bickering.
    Love the doll clothes, I had and cherished some handmade Barbie clothes as a child, and now my neice plays with them. I wouldn’t go overboard with it though. 🙂

  11. In the UK, British Summertime is a relic of WWII, just another law they haven’t got around to repealing yet, like the one from the 1300 stating all males have to practise archery on the village green on Sunday afternoons.
    It would be logical to stay on DST all year, and forget the whole switch nonsense. Not that I’m bitter, I just had to be up obscenely early to call the UK this morning.

  12. I agree, I want to be on DST all year. I hate coming home from work in the dark. Is there a DST all year petition anyplace?
    Caroline, mother of a post-toddler.

  13. I don’t really understand why you guys hate DST!? I live in the Upper Peninsula, and it was light until almost 9 o’clock last night, and after 6 solid months of snowing, including a fantastic 34 days-of-snow-in-a-row stretch, I freakin love it! Yeah, there was a blizzard this weekend, but it was still light out! And the number of hours doesn’t change, just the way we arrange them. So you “give up” an hour of sleep, ONCE A YEAR! Maybe its because I don’t have any kids.
    I think your dolly clothes are cute! You know, I had a baby doll that peed. It NEEDED diapers. It was the my-generation Betsy Wetsy. I tried to potty train her, but she just kept peeing as soon as I fed her, no matter what.Its pretty expensive to keep a dolly in pampers.

  14. I am struggling with DLS this year. I don’t have anything in particular against it, except for the fact that my kids were little lumps this morning when I attempted to get them up for school and I’m grouchy.
    The doll clothes look fantastic, Steph. I love the little dress.

  15. A lovely story with a lovely site. Such beautiful patterns. Looking for tiny baby patters that are practical for premies for our guild to make for local hospital. You have made such beautiful items. Thank you for sharing.

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