Sheep On My Stuff

I have been having setbacks on the destashing goal. It's now a month since my challenge started, and until today I was actually up a few grams in the stash (about two balls of yarn's worth). It's not because I'm buying at random, thank heavens — it's really because I've had to buy more yarn for gift projects. However, that's all done now (I think I have enough to complete all the gift projects in my queue) and there's starting to be a light at the end of the gift-knitting tunnel. I am desperately hoping that by November 13th, I'll be down to two gift projects and nothing else.

Why November 13th? Well, there's something happening around then…

And a certain Epic Elekk is very excited about it…

Yes, November 13th is the release date for Wrath of the Lich King, the second World of Warcraft expansion. Grant and I pre-ordered our copies from Amazon last night (Amazon is offering in-home-on-release-date-delivery for Amazon Prime members, which we are; good for them for that, because they didn't do that when Burning Crusade was released).

I don't really anticipate more World of Warcraft-related knitting projects, but I will say that I get a surprising amount of knitting done while waiting for people to gather for dungeons, flying around on gryphons, and generally waiting while stuff gets done. So, with any luck, even after November 13th, I'll have something to post about. :)

Meantime, today someone I know mentioned that one of her wishlist items was "self-striping sock yarn". It so happens I have quite a lot of that still in my stash, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's just never going to get knit. I ended up packing up about 600g worth of self-striping sock yarn for her, which feels like a very cheaty way to destash yarn, but at this point, drastic steps need to be taken in a hurry. Remember how I said I'd finished buying all the yarn for gift projects? Well — I have… but 1000g of it hasn't arrived yet, so it isn't technically on the spreadsheet (or in Ravelry). When it gets here, I'm going to be behind again. (On the bright side, it's gift yarn. It will be all knit up by Christmas… minus the few extra skeins I bought for sanity's sake.)

As of today, I have 25,682g of yarn in my stash — 594g less than on 9/26/08. I'm going to call that my October count (as I totally forgot to take a measurement on 10/26), and hope that by 11/26, I've made a little more progress. To meet my goal, I really need to be destashing or using about 1kg of yarn per month.

…something tells me some more hardcore destashing is going to be necessary in the long run. People who want to be informed when I start destashing cashmere, I suggest you make yourselves known sooner rather than later. ^_^

One of the soaps I've been using lately is a soap-made-of-many-tiny-inset-soaps, and as it got close to being used up, it sort of fell apart. Enter the crocheted soap saver, friend to frugal soap users everywhere!

So far I'm using the one on the left. It was a 20-minute off-the-cuff pattern, and it needs some refinement. It's honestly a bit too big! If I had it to do over again, I'd make it about 1/2 to 2/3rds that size (like the double-crochet version on the right), but I think the single crochet is the way to go. (We'll see how I like the double-crochet version.) Weirdly enough, I basically end up using the soap saver as if it were a bar of soap itself — it certainly lathers like one. But hopefully I won't end up losing soap shards down my drain with it!

I have quite a bit more cotton in my stash, so I'll probably keep making these. If I ever find The Perfect Soap Saver Pattern, I'll post it. :)

The hardest part about gift knitting isn't the knitting itself, or the fact that it all seems to happen in a rush in November and December. No, the hardest part is that you can't post pictures, because the people you knit for are all online. :)

It's not that I haven't been knitting — but I can't blather about it, which leaves me with little to blather about. (I don't really want to cross the streams and talk about soap or climbing or World of Warcraft, which doesn't leave much else!)

So let me talk to you about It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons by Franklin Habit, a wonderful book of cartoons and essays about knitting. :) You've probably already heard of it — Franklin is no small name around the intarwebz — but if not, it comes highly recommended by this knitter and sheep fan. :) "It Itches" contains ten adorable and often humorous essays, and countless sheep (I mean, you could count them, but you'd fall asleep in no time).

There's also a tie-in with this year's Interweave Holiday Gifts, in which Franklin's adorable sheep prance throughout the pages. :D :D :D Count the number of sheep and you could win a contest at Interweave!

Any number of illustrations in this book are hysterical, but I think my favorite involved a Sudoku puzzle. Lace knitters, you'll know it when you see it. :)

…I was lucky enough to get to marry the love of my life. :)

In celebration, today he got a gorgeous sweater and a surprise pair of socks. :D Here are the socks:

Yarn used: Knit Picks Essential Oak Kettle-Dyed. Needle size: 2.5mm.

The pattern's improvised to be ribbed down the leg with ribbing on the top of the foot as well. I finally have his stitch/row count down (75 rounds ribbing, 60 rounds on the foot, 64 stitches), which means I can improvise in the future. I'm curious how the ribbing on the top of the foot will work out for him; I think it'll be a nice way to keep the sock snug.

And of course, the sweater!

My dashingly handsome husband in the sweater:

Yarn used: Swish DK in Merlot Heather. It took just over 13 balls, just under 14. It's knit in the smallest size. Grant normally wears a medium. It blocked just a wee bit longer than anticipated.

and a closeup of JUST the sweater:

and detail on the pattern:

I am pretty absurdly proud of the seams:

It looks great on the inside, though I don't have any pictures of that. But I would show this to any knitter in the world and be perfectly proud of my work, inside and out.

And because he loves me, he was willing to pose with a sheep to fit the theme of my knitting blog:

This is the Wondrous Woven Cabling (by Nancy Marchant) pattern from Arans & Celtics: The Best of Knitter's Magazine, and it was lovely to work! I also want to credit, as always, The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques by Nancie Wiseman. For you Ravelers:

I love you, honey! Happy 8th anniversary, and may we have as many years together as life extension technology can possibly provide us! :)

The sleeves are done and blocking and still damp. I keep wanting to go in there with a hair dryer, but I know better! I'm so close to having Grant's sweater done — and he's been going to work in sweaters this week, because it's been so cold! Aaaaaaaa!

I said before I was going to use all that lovely Cobblestone Heather we bought for a sweater for me, but screw that. If he's willing to wear sweaters I make after all this time, I am so knitting him another one.

I originally had — I thought — sixteen balls of Merlot Heather. I have 12 ball bands for sure from used balls, and there's a half-ball left with which I'll be doing the neckline and sewing seams, plus two full balls after that. That makes 15 — which means either one ball has gone entirely missing, or I tossed a ball band before I realized I wanted to hang on to them for easy yarn tracking (which is more than possible). I'm going to assume that I did, in fact, use up that missing ball, which means I have now used 13.5 balls of yarn on this sweater, or nearly 14 balls (nearly 1722 yards) of DK-weight yarn by the time I'm through. Whoa. That's a lot of yarn! Almost a mile! You can imagine I'm pretty thrilled about what this does to my stash totals (using up nearly 700g for a single sweater = WIN).

It does leave me with a little extra yarn, with which I'll probably make a hat of some kind. :) But not until after I finish most of those mystery projects. Man, there are a lot.

ETA: As I finish and post about the surprise projects in this list, I'll be updating the post itself!

The husband sweater is going really well. Front and back are done, blocked, and seamed at the shoulders and sides. One sleeve is done; the other's about 30% done. Once they're both done, I'll block them, and then I just need to seam them, sew them in, and do the neckline. Yay!

Note the difference in how the cables look unblocked vs. blocked. Big difference!

I've been going kind of crazy in the last couple of days. It's not that I'm tired of the husband sweater — I just have a lot on my plate for the upcoming months. First of all, I'm knitting a shawl for my cousin Kristen's wedding. (It's the first time anyone in my family has gotten married since me and Grant, so I'm excited, and I want to knit something beautiful and meaningful for it!)

After that, I need to be sure to knit my mom's traditional Christmas hat. (I knit one every year, but this time I'm using very exciting yarn and a brand-new pattern!) I know it's only October, but it's never too early!)

(I have, of course, cast on for both of these.)

I'm expecting yarn in the mail from another friend, who actually knows that I'm knitting for her because she was in charge of sending me the wool. :) When I get that, I'll have a shawl to cast on.

I may or may not have time to knit a couple of toys for a friend of mine from WoW — I won't know until the shawl, the shawl, and the hat are done. — ETA: Don't have time, unfortunately!

And I went kind of nuts and thought "Oh, hey! If I rush it, maybe I can make socks for my anniversary for Grant!" So I've been working on that, too.

And did I mention I'm making sheep for charity?

I wouldn't mind knitting a _______ _______ _____ for my ______________, either, and if I finish my ______ ______ _____ or my _______ _____, I'll probably give one of those to my ___________ for _________ — but man, that's a pipe dream right now.

As you can guess from all the blanks, these are all surprise projects or secret projects, and many of the people I'm knitting for either know about this blog or get linked to it frequently via other sources. :) I promise I'll know what I'm talking about when the gifts are delivered to the people they're being knit for — but for the time being, blanks are the way to go. ^_^

(I did finish one of the charity sheep, but it isn't felted, stuffed, or sewn up yet.)

I do have one hint: in all the projects above, I'm using wool and silk and that's it. ^_^

After seven years of knitting and nearly eight years of marriage (8 years on October 21), Grant finally decided to let me knit him a sweater. :D

It's not that I haven't tried. Oh, I've tried. However, perhaps part of the problem is that I was trying to knit him sweaters with leftover bits of Wool-Ease. Which is 80% acrylic, and not colors he was really excited by ("Hey, I have 14 balls of Woods print! You like Woods print, right?" "…").

So this time I made him grope my yarn in order to pick out a fiber, and we went to the website to look at colors together, and then I ordered some of the tentative first choice and one ball of the tentative second choice. Of course, that meant the second choice came in first, and so I ordered more of that. :D

Then we needed to find a pattern. And you know something that this whole process has taught me? Don't give people too many choices. Seriously. If I thrust three types of wool at him and say "pick one!", then it's easy for him to make a decision. If I gave him one ball of every kind of fiber in my stash, there's no way he could make a choice. Looking at colors wasn't tough — there were a lot of colors, but only a few were of interest. Then we narrowed it down to two — and again, it was very easy to make a choice between two colors.

As I was saying, then we needed to find a pattern. I suggested a couple different things — plain? Textured? Cables? Grant said that he liked Aran patterns. Armed with the knowledge that too many choices is kinda dangerous, I grabbed up my copy of Arans & Celtics, marked five or so patterns I thought he'd like, and showed them off. They got responses like "No", "No", "No", and "Hey, that's kind of neat", and finally "Oh! I like that — would you like knitting that?"

\o/ \o/ \o/

And so I have begun! I have completed the back piece and started on the front piece. At that point, it's two sleeves and a lot of seaming. In the interest of making the seaming really easy on myself, I have added two knit stitches of selvage per side on each piece. (In retrospect, I could have knit this in the round, but I was being cautious.) I'll want to block the pieces before trying to seam them. (I may end up blocking the back piece today, since it's done and I want to see what it'll look like blocked.)

The only alteration (besides the selvage stitches) is that I've done the shoulders in short-rows, and rather than binding them off, I plan on doing a three-needle bind-off. However, instead of just picking up stitches for the collar, I really did bind them off. I'm trying to remember who it was that pointed out that a bind-off at the collar is done for a reason, to add stability to a sweater. Ah ha! It was the Yarn Harlot. I have been there and done that with neck bind-offs, and I will not repeat that mistake this time!

So far so good. The sheep are helping.

I've had two balls of Cascade Eco-Wool sitting around in my stash for… man, four years or so. No kidding. I bought it from The Fiber Gallery in West Seattle when they first opened, opening week, and as a result, the skeins (long since wound into balls) carried a faint whiff of fresh paint, even years afterward. I'd just never figured out what to do with them.

Clearly the ideal project was… a scoop of fudge ripple ice cream?

No, seriously, I've been taking advantage of Ravelry's pattern finder lately. I did a search for any project that would take between 600 and 800 yards of an Aran-weight yarn, and came up with the Hemlock Ring blanket by Jared Flood. It's a lap-sized blanket with a center motif and a LOT of feather and fan extending out from the center.

I'm intrigued to see that many people managed to get a perfectly flat blanket out of the deal, and many other people had a very ripply blanket (like I did, although blocking helped). This is one of those lovely things about Ravelry — it's always great to see the different things different knitters come up with. :)

Mine, as I say, started very ripply:

and got better after blocking:

Cuddly and sheep-approved!

This marks the first time I've ever had to block a blanket. It's also the first blanket I've ever made that's 100% wool — no acrylic whatsoever. :) And I'm very happy to say that after a bath in Eucalan-enhanced water, it smells a bit of eucalyptus and a bit of damp sheep, but not at all like paint (the paint smell dissipated pretty fast once I started working up the blanket).

The Baby Surprise Jacket (by Elizabeth Zimmermann) is one of those projects that's just insanely fun to make. You knit this weird-looking piece of fabric, and then you fold it gently and boom! Baby sweater!

The one and only thing I'm not crazy about with this sweater is the need for buttons. Although I mind it a lot less when they're cute fish buttons:

This is the last of my Microspun — apart from a little Dark Horse Fantasy and some Wool-Ease, it's the last of my acrylic. It's certainly the last of the acrylic that I don't consider fun to work with! The destashing, therefore, continues apace. :) This is 135g destashed, along with 55g that got destashed to someone on Ravelry. \o/

…however, for my birthday I did add some yarn to the stash. 750g for two sheep projects (and to look at colors for a sweater project which calls for five different shades of grey). This means I'm down 190g, but up 750g — a net gain of 560g. But a finished project is a finished project, and I'm really pleased with the way this one came out.

Baby Surprise Jackets are a great little project for using up a couple of balls of yarn here and there. But after knitting two of them in the very recent past, I think I'd rather use up some of my other yarns with hat or mitten projects, especially now that I've gotten most of the acrylic out of my stash. I do have one more baby sweater to knit — I really want to try out a Baby Bog Jacket in some of that acrylic I've got left — but after that I think I'll be done with both acrylic and baby sweaters. The only sad thing about all the acrylic being gone is that I no longer have much on the trade/sell page on Ravelry; most of the yarn I have left, I want to keep! That's going to make destashing a bit harder. :)