If Not Kansas, Then It Must Be OZ!!!

She's my latest Coffee Can Doll! Here are Dorothy and Toto, about to enter the Emerald City with their friends!!

No, I didn't knit or create the Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodsman, or Scarecrow in the background. But I did knit Dorothy's dress:

Since the details on how to create her will be in my upcoming book about all my coffee can dolls, I will only give a few details here. I call them coffee can dolls because under each doll's dress is a coffee can. I used the Knifty Knitter round looms to create the dress, painstakingly alternating the Red Heart Super Saver Spa Blue and White yarns to create the gingham-inspired pattern. I decided not to include the ruby slippers for her feet, partly because she doesn't have any feet! But also because I didn't think they would look right poking out from under the front of the dress. And in the original story the slippers aren't red; they're silver. I wanted her to be a combination of the "Dorothys" we have come to know and love on the silver screen, not just focusing on a particular one or accurately following her description in Frank Baum's book.

I used some brown yarn from my stash on the spool loom to create Toto's basket, seen here from various angles:







It took me awhile to find a dog that would be recognizable as Toto. I went to crafts stores, searched online, even considered sculpting my own Toto out of clay and painting him. I would find dogs that looked like him, but they were the wrong size. Finally, we were perusing a local Christmas ornament store that had just opened, and I found him nestled inside a Christmas stocking. He was just the right size, the right look, and everything! So I bought him, removed him from the stocking and twisted off the hook from his head. With a marker I carefully painted over the hole to match the color of his fur.

For my Emerald City, I paid homage to the movie and added a little of my own ideas about the city:

And yes, me being the detail-oriented person that I am, I individually drew and shaded every brick on the yellow brick road, even though I knew much of my hard work wouldn't be visible in the photos I took. I made them all different sizes, and drew them in perspective so that the further away they were, the smaller they were. Here's a close-up look:

It was a happy accident when I took the outdoor photos that the sun was shining in the direction that I had shaded the bricks.

So long, Dorothy! May you ever be enchanted by the spirit of whimsy as you follow the yellow brick road to your dreams!