Sheep On My Stuff

Yarn used: Essential by KnitPicks, in Burgundy. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Ta da! I have a finished pair of ankle socks. The leg length is perfect — 4" seems to do the trick, even though it looks far longer than ankle-height on the needles. I am quite pleased with them, even though I had to rip back parts of the second sock twice. Both times were a matter of symmetry, which is something I don't normally have to do for the plain socks I make, but becomes more important when you're working a pattern of some variety.

Anyway, now that these are out of the way, I have two other pairs of socks to finish and a shawl to bring out of hibernation. The timing couldn't be nicer on these socks, though. It's cold today, and I am happy to have a finished project and a warm pair of socks on my feet.

Well, the ankle socks from last time turned out… badly. Badly enough I only knit one sock and then gave up. So poor Douglas doesn't get to model a finished object as well as the socks in progress. She protested (bleating at me as I tossed out the failed sock, and then bleating louder and more indignantly as I revived a newly-found pair of socks), and so I have brought her back to model a pair of red socks in progress:

Yarn used: Essential by KnitPicks, in Burgundy. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Douglas bleats that she's happy to be back, and promises to convince me to model the socks in a slightly more interesting fashion when I have them finished.

It's a pretty standard pattern — 2×2 rib down the leg for four inches, then one of those heel flaps where you do s1 k1 across and p across the next row. Ribbing continues on the top of the foot. Toe is kitchenered.

I actually found this pair of socks in a closet, with about 2" done on the second sock. I was immediately overcome with the need to finish the second sock, so despite the fact that I have two other pairs of socks in progress — not to mention a shawl, dammit — this one got bumped to the top of the queue.

Two other pairs of socks in progress: one of them has been resurrected from the knitting queue, where it's been langushing a while. It's a simple pair of socks, this one for SheepLad. Made of a brown "mouline" yarn from Regia, it's an attempt at recreating his favorite pair ever of handknit socks.

Yarn used: Regia 4-ply mouline in brown. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Small Ty Sheep returns (from the post on Current WIPs, which are not so current anymore), bleating insistently that she didn't get a finished project picture, either, and therefore deserves another shot at the spotlight. Since I like to keep my flock happy, I went ahead and posed her with SheepLad's socks-to-be. (Sock-to-be?) We'll check in with her again when I've made some more progress on the socks.

After a few projects with 2mm sock needles, 2.5mm feels huge. And to think I used to work exclusively on 3mm Inox dpns. :) My last pair of socks — no picture yet — is another pair of ankle socks in a white/black ragg yarn from Regia. I think that one's on 2mm needles, but I'll need to check again when I'm taking pictures.

I've been busy!

Last time I mentioned I was working on a mystery project. It's not that much of a mystery if you link right to it, though, and now that the project is done and in the mail, I feel good about posting about it. So:

Helmet Liners, for Operation: Helmetliner. Yarn used: Brown is Chestnut, Wool of the Andes, KnitPicks; Olive is Deep Olive, Classic Wool Merino, Patons; Grey is Pearl Grey, Lion Wool, Lion Brand.

The sheep so nicely modeling the helmet liner is Bridal Sheep, who spent several years wearing a "Bride-to-Be" veil that I had somehow gotten when I was engaged to SheepLad. The veil eventually got passed to another of my friends, and the sheep… you know, I'm not sure if she ever did get married. She's a very heavy, sturdy sheep, and so she spends a lot of time in the summer sitting in the doorway, making sure our door doesn't slam shut.

This was an awesome project. It's quick, it used up some stash yarn (okay, I went out and sampled two kinds of yarn that weren't in the stash because I was curious how they were to work with!), and it's for a good cause. The pattern took a little bit of fussing at the very end, but for the most part it was very easy. I ended up doing the decreases with a combination of the two-circulars method and the magic loop method, as it turns out, and oh man, I might not want to do the magic loop for socks (too much work), but I love it. I might have to keep it in mind for small things like hats and such in the future.

After the helmetliners — five of them! — I wanted to start up the Sea Turtle project from Kath Dalmeny's World of Knitted Toys. But the truth is, I wanted a tortoise, not a sea turtle, so I decided to start improvising my own pattern:

Yarn used: Essential sock yarn from KnitPicks in tan, brown, and black.

The sheep there on my desk is a tiny little plastic sheep, possibly related to Pokemon in some way. It was a gift from my dad! It lives on the desk full-time, near one or the other of the monitors.

I suppose you can't really see the scale on this project, but that's sock yarn being knit on 2mm needles. As a result, it was hurting my hands a bit, and I was improvising the pattern, and it was making me slightly nuts, so in a fit of desire to do something that didn't require a pattern…

Yarn used: Trekking XXL, as if you can't see that!

I started socks. I like ankle socks, so I can get several pairs of socks out of one large ball, or one pair of socks for sure out of a smaller ball.

The sheep so happily modeling the sock and the sock yarn is a little black-faced Suffolk ewe named Douglas. Why is a ewe named Douglas? I don't know. I'm sure she's a girl, but her tag proclaims her name to be "Douglas", and unlike the sheep I have named "Muttons" and "Jiggles", I don't think that name's objectionable, even for a ewe. So she's named Douglas. That's all right; my favorite fictional astrophysicist genius is really named Meredith.

But the socks, the socks. You know, strangely enough, I don't have second sock syndrome. It's the first sock that trips me up. If I finish the first, I'm very, very motivated to finish the second, because then I'll have a pair. Until the first is done, though, I just have yet another knitting WIP.

In this case, thwarting my own desire to do something pattern-free, I decided to experiment with a different kind of heel shaping. I'm doing an afterthought heel on this one, which I've done only a couple of other times before, ever, and I'm not sure how I'll like it. What I really want to try out is a short row heel, which I think would be terrific, but I haven't found good instructions for that yet, and I'm not ready to strike out on my own!

Hopefully next time I'll have a finished pair of socks and some more progress on either the Flower Basket Shawl or the Tortoise. Happy bleatings!

I got the "Huggable Hedgehogs" pattern from FiberTrends for my birthday from a couple of my World of Warcraft friends, complete with yarn and stuffing and whatnots. :) Here are the results:

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To the left, pre-felted hedgehog; to the right, post-felted/stuffed/face-added hedgehog! Same sheep in both pictures for size comparison. Yarn used: Cascade 220 for the grey wool, an inadvertent scrap of Wool-Ease for the black, and I'm afraid I can't recall what the eyelash yarn is. Eyes and nose are the small plastic kind that you poke in from the front and secure with a button thingy.

I'm terribly pleased with how he came out. He's cute and soft and fluffy!

The sheep in these images is a Russ sheep, one of my favorites. He's about a handful worth of sheep, and usually lives on my bedframe. :) I can't remember where we got him, but I think he's a post-Seattle sheep.

Now for the other thing I've been working on (in addition to the Flower Basket Shawl, which looks much the same as last time):

Yarn used: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, Chestnut. A little over a skein so far.

It looks kind of like a misshapen lump, doesn't it? Well, hopefully it'll be out of that uncomfortable adolescence soon and headed toward the finishing stages, because I've got yarn for about four more of these in that brown, plus one or so in light grey and one in drab olive (all different 100% wool yarns). What is it? I'll give you a hint in the form of a link. Next time I should have it done, and the next one will probably be on needles.

The sheep in this picture is another sheep from Russ Berrie. Russ makes wonderful sheep! This sheep always seems to be offering a flower (and he's not the first sheep in the collection who looks like that). I think it makes for a very spring lamb-type look, but it decidedly isn't spring anymore! Indeed, we are getting into winter, and I plan on getting socks going again soon. SheepLad needs warm feet! :)