Sheep On My Stuff

There won't be an update Thursday, as SheepLad and I are going off to Las Vegas. I never seem to knit on vacation (and probably won't be bringing the computer), so no sheep for you!

However, today I've got the finished pictures of the Grey Lacework Sweater:

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Yarn used: Wool of the Andes Bulky Hand-Dyed in Storm, a little less than 5 skeins. Needles used: 7mm.

It fits like a charm, though I had some issues with the neckline. Necklines are still, apparently, my bane. This one is more or less square, but looks more like a scoop neck on me. I worked back and forth on the shoulder and back stitches for about 6 rows, continuing to decrease at the raglan points, then worked back and forth without shaping for another four or so rows. Then I picked up stitches around the gaps made by not knitting the front stitches (three per side was enough, and luckily, the lace pattern hides the holes neatly), knit one row around, and bound off. In the front, the bind-off was fine as-was, but in the back, I bound off and decreased 1/3 of the stitches as I did it (so the bind-off alternated k1 and k2tog in order to keep that neckline from being saggy in the back). Worked like a charm, though the neckline is no longer what I'd call "stretchy". OTOH, I'm not sure I wanted it stretchy.

Baabet is so enamored of this sweater she keeps trying to convince herself she can block it to her own measurements. I'm afraid that just isn't the case, Baabet! Sorry!

I'm down to just 10 projects on needles at this point, which of course means I'm starting up something new. I have several skeins of leftover Microspun, and I'm going to be putting them into a project here shortly. Just needed to swatch first. More and more lately, I'm finding that I'd rather swatch to a gauge that's appropriate for the yarn and needles (needles big enough to provide appropriate drape), and then adjust the pattern to fit the yarn rather than adjusting my yarn and needles to fit the pattern. It's working out well enough for me so far!

I'd queued Cherie Amour a while back, and had even ordered yarn for it, but after looking at a ton of pictures on Ravelry, I had to admit that I didn't think it would look very good on my body type. And so I began a small odyssey of modification!

Once you've thrown out the entire pattern and you're not even looking at its measurements anymore, you are not really knitting the same sweater. I borrowed the lace pattern. That was it. Here's how we're doing so far, with a bit of aid from Baabet:

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Yarn used: Wool of the Andes Bulky in Storm. Needle size: 7mm.

I'm getting 5.5" to one pattern repeat horizontally, and 1" to one pattern repeat vertically (more or less, with blocking taken into consideration). I might add that this is a wider gauge than the pattern calls for, on smaller needles. Yes, I am a Loose Knitter. ^_^

Introducing Baabet properly, she is a lovely pink sheep by Ty, part of the Ty "2.0" collection that, I gather, is out there to compete with Webkinz. Basically, you register your plushie online, and you can then play games (and the website stores your toys, too, so you have a "collection" online as well as off).

I would have bought all three if I had found them (there are purple and white ones, too), and I really didn't buy them for the online component. :D But the games are adorable. Because there are three sheep toys, there are also three sheep games! They're very, very cute.

But back to the sweater! I've got quite the curvy figure, so I need waist shaping. But how to accomplish waist shaping in lace? I had two options:

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Fill in the spots with stockinette, or fill them in with yarnovers? I finally decided that the yarnovers looked better. If only I'd decided that earlier. :) But this is knitting up so quickly I can't complain about much. My next big decision is going to be what the heck to do about sleeves!

It always makes me so happy to finish a project.

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease (worsted) in Black and Pines. Needles: 5mm.

As expected, I didn't have enough Pines to finish this project. Also as expected, I was able to use black to cover the shortfall. The black yarn is on the shoulders in back and front, stopping 13 stitches short of the edge of the garment (thus maintaining a Pines-colored shawl collar all the way up). I had no trouble grafting the garter-stitch at the top of the collar, thanks to all that practice with my Bog Jacket. :)

Dorset Horn approves of my colorwork! She's obviously a very discerning sheep. ^_^

After all this, I get to start Cherie Amour (and I'm very excited, because it's getting toward the time in the year where it'd be too warm to wear it). I just need to wind up some yarn and then swatch. :)

A couple of weeks ago I heard about a 20% off sale on all of Ben Franklin's regularly-priced yarn. Since they stock a lot of yarn I like -- and I like yarn sales -- I went over and looked around at their stuff.

Schaefer Yarns makes some lovely handpainted wool, cotton, and wool/silk yarns, and until then I hadn't had an excuse to try out the wool/silk blend. I finally got the opportunity, because we had a combination of Sale! and SheepLad's Mom's Birthday!

And so I've been hanging onto pictures of this project for a while now, because I didn't want to spoil the surprise. Happy birthday in arrears to my wonderful mother-in-law, who is awesome. :)

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Yarn used: Schaefer Yarns wool/silk in "Eleanor Roosevelt". Needles: 4mm.

It's a gorgeous scarf, and she seems to really like it. :) I might not work with this yarn again, as it was "un-plied" the same way the Soy Wool was, but it felt incredibly soft in my hands as I worked with it, and I'm very happy to have gotten a chance to try it out!

I never thought this day would come.

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

Total yarn for this project: say 4 balls of Sportweight to be safe, which is maybe 1500 yards. Beautiful Sheep, I couldn't have done it without you!

Of course, this project is not without its flaws. For one thing, I did not realize that all those short rows were not just tapering the sleeves (and I have to say, they did a great job of that), but also turning the sweater into a V-neck. The original plan calls for a straight high collar, and if you look at what I did to disguise that, you'll see it right away:

As you can see, what I did was just to pick up stitches at the appropriate V-neck place. It came out looking pretty good. I think I should probably sew a couple lines of thread through the fake inner plackets and then cut them off -- if I'm going to do more work on this thing, that is.

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Yeah, it's sort of mutated, and when I put it on, one side's longer than the other (and I have no idea how that's even possible, because it's the same number of rows exactly). But it's mine, and it's finished. I did it. :) And, hey, I think it fits quite well -- it's the right length on body and sleeves, it buttons over the breasts, it has waist shaping. I can only go up from there.

And meanwhile, I have some more work on the Powers of Two blanket:

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease, worsted weight. Needle size: 4.25mm.

Pretty spiffy! The squares just above the big green square on the left mark the upper left-hand corner. I'll be expanding to the right to fill it out and define the upper edge. When it's wide enough, it'll be time to start it growing down.

It turns out that I have a TON of the "white" (actually natural), light brown, dark grey, and red yarns in my stash, so I'll be using those fast and furious as I go. I'm hoping I won't run into problems with having nothing but those colors by the end of the blanket.

Last but not least, I've dragged something out of the UFO (unfinished objects) pile:

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease, worsted weight, "Pines". Needle size: 5mm.

The adorable sheep modeling this vest is Dorset Horn. She (yes, she -- in the Dorset Horn breed of sheep, both rams and ewes have large, impressive horns) comes all the way from New Zealand! One of my many sheep from the New Zealand flock. In New Zealand, the tourist shops are full of sheep. It is nothing short of a woolly paradise.

The vest looks like a whole lot of nothing right now, for which I can only apologize and say: It is a lot of nothing right now. It's simple garter up to the armpits, which is about one inch further than I've got it at the moment. Sorry! It'll look more interesting next time, especially if I run out of yarn and have to substitute in some black. Most importantly, this comes from the UFO pile. I have no idea how long it's been sitting around unknit, but it's no short amount of time. It definitely predates the beginning of the year. Not only will knitting this up net me a vest, it'll get my ratio up.

Current stats for the year:
15 projects started up new
22 completed/tossed/frogged projects
11 completed for the year to date (yay!)

WIPs:
7 have been on needles since before the beginning of the year
14 currently in progress/hibernating

And the vast majority of this year's projects have been from stashed yarn (almost a 5:1 ratio of stash:new), which is also making me pretty happy. (Of course, that doesn't count the yarn that came into the house for projects but hasn't been used yet... which bumps that ratio down some. But I'll take my victories where I can get 'em!)

I never thought I'd say it, but the end of my Bog Jacket is in sight!

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

I've got one half done completely, except for edging and perhaps notions, and the other half is nearly there, too. Strangely enough, all those short rows are leading to a V-neck -- which I don't mind, but it's a surprise, I'll say that!

I'm not sure what I'll do for fastening. I may do a zipper. Buttons are probably out, although I might be able to create buttonholes if I do an I-cord edging. The fit looks good so far, but I'm sure a second edition of this sweater would look even nicer. I'm pretty happy with the sleeve length and the waist shaping, though!

Meanwhile, the Powers of Two blanket is going along, as is the second project from Mindful Knitting. I've got a few more squares done on PoT, but nothing really worth taking pictures of. And as per the last time around on Mindful Knitting, I'm waiting until I have a finished project to post any pictures.

Tuesday! Will I have a finished sweater, or will weekend mean spending all my time with the adored SheepLad? I'm betting on the husband, but I think I'll get the knitting -- if not the edging or the fastenings -- done. :)

The Bog Jacket continues apace, but I am too lazy to take more in-progress pictures of it. I have, however, passed the 75% mark, and if I can make myself work on more boring garter, perhaps I will finish it this month! (And to think I wanted to have 12 sweaters knit this year. HA. HA HA HA.)

Instead of knitting sweaters, I have been knitting scarves. Let me point you at the following:

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Yarn used: For the Meditation Scarf (red/orange/yellow), Shepherd Multi in Flames by Lorna's Laces, needles 7mm. For the Triple Rib scarf (grey), Wool-Ease in Oxford Grey, needles 5mm.

The sheep modeling the Meditation scarf (on the left, red/orange/yellow) are a pair of wooden sheep with a wool outer coat. Are they doorstops? Footrests? Outdoor sheep? Honestly, I have no clue, but they've been around for years. For a while there, they were my circular needle holders, but that looked messy. And for a while, they lived in the bathtub upstairs, startling both me and SheepLad when we would open the shower curtain to find... SHEEP! (It was the middle bathroom; we don't shower there very often.) Now they live in the library, because we really cannot think of anywhere to put them, but neither do we want to release them into the wild. They have been part of our flock since we lived in Indiana. :)

I have been working on the Meditation scarf since January. I've decided to try meditative knitting, based primarily on the book Mindful Knitting by Tara Jon Manning. The first project is a garter stitch scarf, and the suggested yarn is variegated. I decided to splurge and buy myself some nice new yarn for the project, since all my variegated yarn is acrylic. When I saw the Shepherd yarn from Lorna's Laces (which, by the way, is superwash -- not that I can really imagine machine washing this thing, but you could), I thought "ah ha! An excuse to try this yarn out!"

Well, it turns out the Shepherd yarn is gorgeous, glorious, beautiful, fantastic, and lovely to work with. I couldn't be happier about it. :) I took a ton of pictures (one per day's work -- I did not successfully get to the meditation knitting every day or it would've been done far sooner), and have linked you to their album. Click on the image to see!

The sheep modeling the scarf on the right -- the Triple Rib (grey) scarf -- is named Ultra Soft Lamb. That's what F.A.O. Schwartz (in partnership, I can only gather, with Russ Berrie, for there is a smaller sheep that looks just like her made by Russ directly) named her, and that's what we call her. She is, in fact, ultra soft, and she's one of the few sheep who really isn't very anthropomorphized at all. She's got hooves, four legs... lamb shanks, so to speak. But don't worry! She is not on the menu. (Lamb is never on the menu around here. Would you eat kitten? How about puppy? This is how I feel about eating lamb.)

The Triple Rib scarf is based on a pattern from a stitch dictionary (k3 p3 on the right side, p1 k1 on the wrong side), and while I love the pattern to little bits, I'm just becoming less and less fond of Wool-Ease as time goes by. I know the sheep are giving it their best! I know they're contributing all the sheepy glory they can! But, alas, there's not much that can be done. It's still mostly acrylic, and I still don't care for the stuff!

But I care enough about it to try to use up the rest of it in another blanket project. Behold, the Powers of Two blanket:

Yarn used: So far, five different colors of Wool-Ease by Lion Brand. Needles: 4.25mm, subject to change without warning.

You may look at that sheep and think, "Oh, another sheep." But no! That's a special, glorious sheep. That's Pink Pads Sheep (ignore the tag, which reads "Muttons" -- what an undignified name for such a wondrous sheep). Pink Pads has the distinction of being the sheep with the largest ego in the entire flock. In my flock, that's one hell of an achievement. All my sheep are awesome, and all of them know how great they are, but Pink Pads sort of takes it to a whole new level. When you hug her? She knows it's because she's the best sheep in all the world. When she sits upon the shelf, she tends to climb to the highest vantage point (on top of the other sheep, don't you know) and survey all the bedroom around her, thinking to herself And they got all this just to impress me! How excellent of them.

Pink Pads claims that she is the only sheep cool enough, fashionable enough, to model such an awesome project as the Powers of Two blanket, and thus I have acceded to her wishes and given her the modeling job.

The Powers of Two blanket is a mitered square project. It's a scrap blanket, all in all. My self-imposed restraint is that each square must have a number of rows/ridges equal to a power of two. So 2² (4), 2³ (8), 2⁴ (16), 2⁵ (32), and so on. (So far the largest squares have 32 ridges, and the smallest have 8. I will probably go as high as 64 or 128, and as low as 4.) The fact that I can work on this project away from home as well as at home is great -- I can seam or work in squares as I progress. There will never be trouble finding a place to put them, because each square can fit perfectly in other squares. If all else fails, all I need to do is make tiny squares to fill in room. :) I look forward to seeing how this shapes up; I have a lot of Wool-Ease I can put into this blanket.