When your mother-in-law asks you to knit something, especially when you have a mother-in-law as nice and loving as mine, it's impossible to say no. And when that object is especially challenging and perhaps patternless, you find yourself with a vocabulary limited to "yes."

Bear with me while I share the background of this teeny-tiny, yet life-encompassing, project.

My sister-in-law collects American Girl dolls. Some of the dolls, including my beloved Samantha, are being retired, or "archived." Kirsten, the girl from Sweden, was archived at the end of 2009. When her archival was announced, her clothes and accessories were immediately out-of-stock, only to show up on eBay at exorbitant prices. Lindsay wanted to get a few things to round out her collection of Kirsten paraphenalia, including this sweater:

I was asked around Thanksgiving if I coud recreate this sweater. Of course! I'm sure there's a pattern! No problem!

Problem 1: No pattern.

I did find something similar, but it was a pullover, not a cardigan. I bought the pattern, decided I didn't like it and decided to do my own thing.

Problem 2: I have never knit doll clothes before.

Hello, smallest sleeves on Earth. There was no way I was knitting this at fingering-weight gauge - I was at about a dk or so. I didn't get as many pattern repeats on there as I would have liked, and, unfortunately, the star didn't fit at the top (which, by that point, I was perfectly fine with).

Problem 3: How will I know if it fits? I didn't want to do all this work and not have it fit the doll.

My Samantha doll is living the good life in Iowa right now, tucked into a pink plastic doll case with all  her clothes hanging nicely on little pink hangers. Luckly, I have a wonderful friend with two daughters who aren't completely attached to their dolls, so Samantha and Elizabeth came to live with me for a bit.

I decided to knit the cardigan completely in the round and then steek. I've never done that before, but what better way to learn on a little sweater? Everything went pretty well even though I used a silk/wool blend (Valley Yarns Northhampton) and didn't reinforce my steeks. I lost a few more columns of stitches than I originally intended, but that was a-ok.

Pre-steeking, with iPod nano for scale.

There were at least 20 yarn ends to weave in. Gahhhhhhh. It was a hot mess.

Post-steeking (the inside view).I monkeyed around with the sleeves quite a bit, mostly because I kept messing up my color pattern. Luckily, it only takes a half hour or so to undo the damage and restart the sleeve correctly.

All finished!Compared to the rest of the sweater, the button bands and collar were easy-peasy. I found the buttons at Jo-Ann (they have a great button selection lately), and I put little shirt buttons on the back of the button band to stabilize each silver button on the front.

Samantha works it.After all that hoo-ha, I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Lindsay loved it, Gracie got to spend a lot of time with the dolls (and now wants a dolly of her own), and I learned a lot. But, honestly, these doll clothes are just as much work as adult clothes except you don't have the luxury (luxury!) of plain stockinette separating all the shaping and joining. There's a lot to be said for plain stockinette.

So! I seem to have lost an entire month. And no offense, February, but you're a month I think I could afford to lose.

Actually, I was pretty much in the trenches with February, doing some hand-to-needle-to-fabric combat with all manner of secret things. The secrets! I love them! They make blogging awfully hard.

These were not secret, but as I am also very lazy about taking pictures (and, apparently, mailing things to my parents), these socks are kind of late.

Socks for Chuck B. I started them on Christmas Eve, realized they were too big and started again. I think they're still a little long in the foot for him, but he likes them. Likes them so much he picked up the phone to call me himself. They're made of deep-stash Twisted Sisters' Jazz, and I have quite a bit of yarn left over. If he ever grows a third leg, we're in business.

I'm not sure how much longer he will need me to knit socks for him, as my mom has turned into a one-woman sock machine. Seriously, she's knit five pairs in three months. She is an animal and I'm a little afraid of her sock knitting prowess. I actually only have three pairs of socks on the needles at the moment, and I feel those three pairs will be on the needles for some time to come. My sock mojo is flagging, perhaps because I'm really working hard to using up my sock yarn stash, and I'm getting to stuff I absolutely adore and don't want to knit.

Tomorrow, I will show you something I swore at for thirty days straight. Thirty days! For something six-inches tall! But Gracie likes it, so it can't be all that bad.