Sheep On My Stuff

*
Yarn used: KnitPicks Bare Merino Lace Weight. Beads: My tube reads: "Toho 8T222 / 8/0 Triangle Copper". They are tiny triangular beads in a lovely dark brown metallic color.

The sheep posing in this picture is Barrel Sheep, who was a Christmas present from my parents one year. She's actually one of the more popular sheep among houseguests; she's just the right size to be an armrest or a pillow on the couch, and has been used as such by many, many visitors. She is named Barrel Sheep partly because of her shape (quite barrel-like) but partly because she does excellent barrel rolls, usually at the hands of SheepLad.

I am delighted to have this blocking job finished! It took us a couple of weeks to get the house cleaned up enough to even contemplate grabbing a section of the living room floor for blocking, and then it took me another week to get up the oomph to go and do it. This is a basic wet blocking job (soak the shawl in water for a half-hour, then lay out and pin down), but it's also by far the most elaborate blocking job I've ever done.

My first couple lace projects, I didn't have any kind of blocking items other than straight pins. However, I eventually got some lovely blocking wires, and this is the first time I've really gone all-out and used as many as I darn well needed. So I used large-gauge blocking wires on the sides of the V-section, the V of the V-section, and the top of the wing section. Medium-gauge wires were used for the inner lines of the V-section and the sides. Another large-gauge wire was used for the dividing line. Fine-gauge wires were used to block the curve. I think it looks pretty great!

The basic (not) black shawl continues apace, nearly finished by now. I daresay I'll have it done by the end of the week. After that, it'll be back to the flower basket shawl, and then I'll think of some other lace project to knit, probably. I've been really into lace lately; I just need to make a lace project for myself. I haven't done that yet (and I'm not keeping this one).

I also have a nearly-finished project in the works. It just needs a few notions and it'll be done. This one has a deadline of Saturday, 'cause I want to show it off to the nice people who got me the pattern for my birthday. :)

The problem is, what I've been knitting? Is lace. It's done. The mystery stole project is done.

Yarn used: KnitPicks Bare Merino Lace Weight. Beads: My tube reads: "Toho 8T222 / 8/0 Triangle Copper". They are tiny triangular beads in a lovely dark brown metallic color.

(The sheep on my shawl is Small Woolrich Sheep, which came from the Wool & Ewe Shop at the Indiana State Fair one year. It's a very cute sheep!)

However, this is what my house presently looks like:

and thus there is nowhere to block it. But the house painting is done (it's needed painting badly, since we moved in six years ago), and we can start getting things back to normal. When that shawl is blocked, I'll take another picture with another sheep. :)

I was on the very last part of this shawl:

Same yarn as the last time.

when a tragedy occurred.

Okay, maybe you can't see the tragedy.

How 'bout now? I dropped stitches. One minute I was sitting on the couch, watching Prison Break, and the next minute a handful of stitches had fallen off the needles, leaving me with a gap and no idea where it came from. ARGH. I was so close to being done, too!

In the interests of not making myself crazy, I'll probably be ripping back a few stitches at a time, instead of all at once. It may be six or seven rows before I get past the part that fell off the needles, and I'm not looking forward to that. This project might've just bumped itself to the bottom of my list.

In cuter news, that sheep is the smaller version of Lily (from the last post). Bought at the same store, part of the flock for about the same length of time, but she's about half the size of the larger Lily. Just as cute, but still not a troublemaker!

I fell behind on the Mystery Stole when the Harry Potter book came out. It wasn't so much that I didn't have time due to reading -- I flew through HP7 in a couple days -- but with two weeks off, I got out of the habit of working on the shawl. There was, after all, so much time!

Well, I really do want to finish it (it's lovely), so I got started again this week. I'm now finished up through Clue 4, and am ready to start on the short rows. I love short rows. :)

Yarn used: KnitPicks Bare Merino Lace Weight. Beads: My tube reads: "Toho 8T222 / 8/0 Triangle Copper". They are tiny triangular beads in a lovely dark brown metallic color.

The sheep modeling the shawl is Lily, one of the few dark brown sheep in my collection. (Most plush sheep are either white, beige, or cream... that general range. Even "black" sheep tend to be black, despite the fact that black sheep in the wild seem to be a dark brown themselves.) I got her many years ago, back at a store in Bloomington, IN that probably doesn't exist any longer (at the College Mall). Her name is not very dignified ("Li'l Trubbles") nor very apropos to the sheep, in my opinion. I mean, really. Does that look like a troublemaker to you?