Sheep On My Stuff

...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.