Sheep On My Stuff

The Bog Jacket 2 is the sweater that wouldn't end. I'm tempted to cheat on it just so it knows it had better put out. Here's a picture.

Yarn used... you know this already, right? Wool-Ease sportweight in Wheat, size 4mm needles.

Even Beautiful Sheep is having trouble making it look interesting. I've finally cast on the extra sleeve stitches, though (I did short rows first). Hopefully next week I'll have pictures of a sweater to show you.

To make up for that, here are two completed dishcloths that have been sitting in a box in my yarn closet for months.

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Yarn used: Sugar 'n' Cream solids, size 4.25mm needles.

Finally, finally, finally. Say hello to Little Ty Sheep, returning to model the dishcloths. Awww.

The yarn closet is looking better now! Well, actually, it's looking much the same (full of yarn). However, I have found the rest of the craft room, and I am delighted. The unfinished objects now have a place. The finished objects that may or may not find their way to Etsy have found a place. And I got rid of another couple of projects in the bargain -- one frogged, several tossed. This delights me -- and bumps my completed/frogged/tossed-to-new ratio all the way up to 1.6 for the year. Yay!

Here's a picture of all the Wool-Ease I have left. Some people stash Homespun and then try to get rid of it; for some it's Red Heart. For me, it's Wool-Ease:

Yarn exhibited: A shit-ton of Wool-Ease in every imaginable color. Most of it is Worsted, a little bit of it is Sport.

Exhibited along with the yarn is the cutest Kleenex box cover ever made. I could try to make something out of crochet or plastic canvas, but I couldn't beat that, and I don't think I can be bothered to try. That Kleenex box cover comes from New Zealand (you can't really see it, but there is a New Zealand logo on its front). Those are two of the sixteen to eighteen sheep that came back with us from New Zealand in 2005. :) Yes, I brought home a flock. (Also some souvenir yarn. Most of it is still in the stash. I almost don't want to knit with it! Some of it is gorgeous, though -- hand spun, even -- so someday I'm sure I will.)

What am I gonna do with all that Wool-Ease?, you may be wondering. I'm going to make practice sweaters. I would like to make sweaters that look like they belong on a human body, and this is where I'm gonna start. The Bog Jacket 2 is actually part of this project, being made out of (so far) two balls of Wool-Ease sportweight. (It will take about three by my current estimations... maybe a little more, maybe a little less.)

I'm up to my armpits in short rows -- literally.

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease sportweight in Wheat. Needle size: 4mm.

I've reached the part where I put in the yarn that separates the front of the sweater from the sleeves, and I've been doing my short rows again. This time I've decided to just say "the heck with doing them at random". Instead of being random, they form a V pattern that goes in sort of a reverse-raglan shape from the center of the back towards the arms. When I go "up and over", I'll reverse the shaping on the other side. I hope it turns out okay; the whole idea is to get nicely-shaped sleeves, and I'm just at the point now where I've cast on (invisibly) for those extra sleeve stitches. Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework!

Speaking of working, look how hard Beautiful Sheep is working at her modeling job! Ignore the part where she's nibbling a small piece of grass out of the waste yarn in the short row detail picture. She's helping, really!

Once upon a time I made a grey Booga Bag. I actually carried it around, even though I tend to prefer bags that are messenger-bag-like; currently I carry a medium-sized messenger bag in brown canvas by L.L. Bean.

Well, one day I left it at Qdoba. We called to make sure they'd picked it up, and they had, but when we went to get it the next day, it had disappeared. Oh, well. I lost a half-knit pair of socks, a grey bag, and a tape measure. Luckily, I carry my wallet in my jeans.

Once upon a time, I made a Jayne Hat. I had a lot of leftovers, since I'd used Cascade 220, and a hat doesn't take nearly 660 yards of yarn.

So, since the Booga Bag had been so fun, and I had the colors left over...

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Yarn used: Yellow, orange, and red Cascade 220, felted once. Needles used: 6.5mm.

Lily says hello and remarks that the Jayne Hat Booga Bag is not a terribly comfortable sleeping bag. It's just not sheep-shaped.

This project has been lying around for nearly two and a half years. It was finished, all the parts were felted, I just hadn't assembled it. Today, realizing that I'd done next to nothing on the Bog Jacket, I decided to go ahead and finish this up for the blog post. Hey, a Tuesday/Thursday schedule is turning out to be pretty good for me. ^_^

As a bonus, this got me up to a ratio of 12:13 completed-to-cast-on-new projects. That's a 0.9 ratio. Not the 1.5 ratio I'd like to have for the year... but I'm getting there!

On an unrelated note, I've been listening to knitting podcasts lately. For those of you who may be curious about which podcasts I subscribe to, here are the ones I've got so far:

• Cast On. I haven't caught up on this one yet, but I've listened to the first few episodes and am looking forward to more!
• Knit Picks' Podcast. I started listening to this back in March or so; it was the first knitting podcast (and, in fact, the first podcast) I'd ever listened to. I'm behind by a bunch, but look forward to catching up.
• Knit Spirit. This is a bite-sized podcast, which I love. I'm nearly caught up on this one, and I'm really enjoying it.
• Pointy Sticks. I've only listened to the first couple of episodes, and this one seems to be permanently on hiatus.
• Ready Set Knit. I listened to the first show, but the second show contains a knit-a-long, and until I can sit down to do the knit-a-long, I'll be putting this one on the bottom of the listening queue! (Audio knit-a-longs: AWESOME IDEA.)
• Sticks & String Podcast. This one's a podcast by "an Australian bloke who knits". I've only listened to the first episode so far, but can't wait to hear more!
• Subknit. I've listened to the archives for this one and am all caught up. This is a podcast about knitting and kink, and it's a lot of fun.
• YarnCraft. Definitely looking forward to listening to more of this one -- I love the idea of hearing what life is like around Lion Brand, even if I'm not using much of their yarn anymore! >_>

I hear a lot of good things about Lime & Violet, but I haven't yet tracked that one down. Any other knitting podcast suggestions?

I'm back with three projects to show off! Here we go:

Yarn used: Sugar 'n' Cream cotton in purple. Hook used: I (5mm) by Susan Bates/Boyes).

I like loofas. I use a loofa daily. When I saw the crocheted, cotton bath puff, I thought it was kind of a neat idea. And it was indeed fun to crochet! It also used most of a ball of cotton yarn, which was handy -- I have tons of that put away in various places. But in terms of usability, not so much. It's heavy, doesn't absorb water well, and doesn't lather much. I'll stick with washcloths. Well, really, I'll stick with my loofa, but sometimes I use washcloths when traveling.

The sheep loofa is decorative only. I wouldn't want to risk destroying a SHEEP! by showering with it too often! And no... that isn't the only sheep loofa in my collection.

Yarn used: Wool-Ease Sprinkles in Burgundy Heather. Needles used: 5mm.

Here's another of my "use up the Wool-Ease" projects. This one's a farrow-rib scarf, and I have to say, farrow-rib is becoming one of my favorite stitch patterns. This is probably kid-sized. The knitting part was finished ages ago; it took me about a month to bother sewing in the one remaining yarn end. Oops.

Not-A-Blanket-Either Lamb is happy to be featured on the blog; her twin brother showed up to model the March of Dimes Blanket, but she hadn't gotten a turn in the spotlight lately. :)

Yarn used: Wool-Ease Sportweight in Wheat. Needles used: 3.75mm.

The second Bog Jacket is working up a lot faster than I'd expected! Given that there's an extra 70 stitches on the needle due to the gauge change, I was expecting it to take forever to get to this point. Instead, I've nearly gotten it done up to the armpits, where I then get to do interesting stuff again. The garter's not so bad, though! It gives me something to do while I read, watch movies, and so on.

Beautiful Sheep is happy to be returning, and bleats that she will volunteer to keep modeling Bog Jackets for as long as I keep making them. I'm not sure if that's a vote of confidence or not. *eyes sheep suspiciously*

So I've decided to modify my stashbusting/WIP-completing goal for the year (seen here).

• Old goal: "work or throw out one in-progress project for every two new projects I start"
• New goal: Complete, frog, or throw out 1.5 projects for every 1 project I start.

1.5? Well, it's a ratio, and the point is merely to finish more than I start (rather than to finish only half as much as I start, as was the previous goal, or to finish as many as I start, which is only keeping even). So far, my ratio is 10:13 (or 0.8:1), which is not so great. But I did toss or frog four projects I was never going to complete over the weekend, which bumped up my stats and cleared out one of the secret caches in which I store my stash. Ideally, by the time we hit the midway point for the year, I will have cleared the yarn caches out of every room except the yarn room (which is where the yarn stash belongs), and the yarn room will be clean instead of having yarn piled on the futon.

Don't get me wrong; I love having a stash. But my stash contains a lot of yarn I don't love, and I'd like to be able to rotate out yarn I don't love in favor of yarn I do love. I'd also like it more organized. And, oh yeah, on Ravelry. But a smaller yarn footprint is one step towards all of that (or so I hope), and thus I am going to try to keep completing projects just a little faster than I start them.

Oh, baby. Sometimes when we miss a target, we miss it by not just a little but a lot.

The end of a bog jacket, as modeled by Beautiful Sheep.

Now, I know I should listen to Elizabeth Zimmermann when she says things like "12-13% of [k]". I know this! But I looked at my knitting and I looked at my arms and I thought, Oh, geez, 16 stitches won't be nearly enough to make full-length sleeves! So I cast on 40.

A rough estimate about how many stitches I am over the mark? 24. *facepalms*

Well, there was that. There was running out of yarn. All these, oh yes, I was prepared to deal with. But then... take a look at the picture.

Take a look at where the tan waste yarn is on the left, and at the beautiful grafting job I did on the right.

*&@$*&@$!!! I grafted the wrong *&*&*&%#% part! TWICE!!! (Because I had to rip out the first grafting due to doing it wrong.)

OMG, y'all. There are times it's worth struggling with a project to make it come out right, and times when it's not. When you've got sleeves that are about a foot too long, that's not a time to struggle the rest of the project into shape.

Now, I do want to make another Bog Jacket. I really, really do. The side shaping was fantastic, and the garter actually looks good draped against my body. Seriously, this has potential, it does.

But not this time. And this is why I decided to make my test sweater projects out of stash yarn -- so I wouldn't feel bad when I threw it the hell away.

I'll be swatching and casting on again today, but this version of the bog jacket is toast.

I am not what you'd call an experienced sweater-knitter. I've made a few, but nothing I'd wear, embarrassing as that is. So this year I decided, okay, look -- I'm not going to get good at making sweaters unless I make some crappy ones first. And so when I ran into Elizabeth Zimmermann's Bog Jacket sweater, I thought, "Wow, how cool is that? I should make one!" This time, instead of wussing out, I went for it. So here I am, well into the arms:

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Yarn used: The now-discontinued Merino Light in maroon (#8 on the color card), Lion Brand Wool-Ease (worsted and sport-weight doubled) in Black. Needles used: US10.5 -- 6.5mm.

The gist of the sweater is that (shaping aside) you're knitting a square, and where the tan waste yarn is, I'll separate sleeves from body and later weave things together. (I'll take more pictures of the process when I get there.) I did discover that I'm running out of maroon yarn faster than the project is reaching completion, so I've dug some black Wool-Ease out of the stash and started using that as a stripe on the top. Hopefully it'll look good... and I won't run out of that before I'm done. I suppose I could dig out ivory Wool-Ease at that point, but I do hope it won't come to that.

I'm not really a big fan of knitting with Wool-Ease (though I don't mind crocheting with it) due to the high acrylic content. It just hurts my hands to work with it, since there's no give. However, this should flush a bit more of it out of my stash!

It looks nice.

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Yarn used: Soy Wool Stripes by Patons, in "Natural Earth". F-. Would not use again. Needles: 4.25mm by Boyes. Don't buy the size 6 needles expecting them to be 4mm just because it says so on the label -- it ain't so.

It's just that... well, this yarn has Issues. It splits (it's not plied per se), and then there's the color factor. The stripes are very, very pretty -- but you also have to match them up precisely.

Which would be easier if the yarn didn't have constant breaks (cemented together by knots). And the breaks wouldn't be so awful if they didn't tend to splice the yarn together at random color points. Or, sometimes, you get a really awful spit-splice in the middle of your yarn that triples the width of a black stripe. Or two colors that aren't in sequence might get matched up. Seriously. This blew, and the first one wasn't a picnic, either. I won't be buying this yarn again, and I can't recommend it to you guys, either. Patons? EPIC FAIL.

The remnants of three balls of yarn. There's about another eight inches of stripes here -- but not in a sequence I can use to extend the length of the scarf as it is.

On the bright side, FloppenCousin is extremely cute.

"Yes, I made this scarf!" says FloppenCousin. "Or at least I am posed very attractively with it." (Actually, she said "Baa! Baa baa baa? Baa! Baa baa! Baa baa baa baa!" -- so I am translating.

It's hard not to forgive a project when a cute sheep is atop it.

It's Trisia again -- and she's back with a finished epic elekk!

Smile for the camera, girls!

Yarn used: Lion Brand Microspun in Lily White, Royal Blue, and (now discontinued) Silver Grey. Hook used: G (4.25mm).

The pattern (as noted last time) is from Lion Brand (registration required), but now that you can see the finished elekk, you can see all my modifications. It's the legs, the tusks, the helmet, saddle, and banners that make her an elekk, and I left off a lot of the detail. Still -- very cute, no?

 Also in the works: a new scarf (same as the old scarf):

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Yarn used: SWS [Soy Wool] from Patons. Needle size: Supposedly 4mm, from Boyes, but it is a LIE. They're closer to 4.25mm.

Last time I posed ÜnterSchëpenfloppen with the scarf; now I'm posing the scarf with FloppenCousin, a close (but larger) relative. The pattern is the same (Farrow Rib), and the colorway is the same (Natural Earth). This scarf is being done by request, and unless someone else I really love wants something made out of this fabric, that's it for me -- it splits even more than Microspun, which is saying something! Still, it's very soft and looks really nice.

Yarn used: The now-discontinued Merino Light in maroon (#8 on the color card). Needles used: US10.5 -- 6.5mm.

Beautiful Sheep bleats hello!  Here's our check-in to see how I'm doing on the Bog Jacket. Answer: Quite well; I'm nearly up to the bit where I split off the arms and add some more stitches to the arms. It stopped being mindless garter when I had to do waist shaping (waist shaping is my friend, since I have a quite large bustline and quite small waist), and I'm sort of sorry for that, as I was enjoying having something I didn't have to look at at all. But it seems to be working out nicely, and the yarn is much, much nicer-looking on 6.5mm needles than it was on 4.5mm needles.

Thursday I hope to have a finished SWS plus a bit of progress on that Bog Jacket.  Maybe something exciting like the arm-dividing bit?  We'll see.