60g Fun Fur (Brown), to be precise, which means my table looks like this now (taking into account new purchases and a bit of along-the-way destashing):

And now the yarn pictures!

1. 2. 3.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8. 9.
10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
16. 17.
18.

1. 245g Shine (Cloud)
2. 20g Shine (Cherry)
3. 45g Shine (Cream)
4. 50g Zitron Polo (White)
5. 725g Zitron Polo (Grey)
6. 45g Microspun (Grey)
7. 80g Microspun (Royal Blue)
8. 75g Microspun (Black)
9. 25g Microspun (White)
10. 100g Merino Style (Honey)
11. 100g Merino Style (Moss)
12. 110g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Red)
13. 175g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Green)
14. 140g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Fisherman)
15. 40g Wool-Ease Sportweight (White Frost)
16. 55g Wool-Ease Sportweight (Dark Rose Heather)
17. 50g Bel Time Farm Merino/Bamboo (Orange)
18. 400g Bel Time Farm Merino/Bamboo (Purple)

My favorite out of these: that beautiful merino/bamboo in the last two pictures. It's so soft and delicious I want to snuggle in it. I think I have enough purple to make a whole sweater, but the orange is going to be a hat or scarf. Either way, they're MINE MINE MINE! The only person I love enough to give this yarn to is Grant, who wouldn't want a purple sweater. Probably. I haven't asked, and don't plan to. :)

680g of Wool-Ease, specifically to bulk up my supplies for the Powers of Two Blanket.

300g of Classic Merino for… well, probably for more sheep.

200g of Dark Horse Fantasy for a Baby Surprise Jacket. Or something.

400g of Dark Horse Fantasy for a Secret Project.

200g of Cascade 220 for a Less Secret But Really Cool Project.

And 100g of feltable sportweight so I can make tiny sheep.

Well… at least it's already in Ravelry.

And now for pictures!

1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
7. 8.

And the rest of these are Wool-Ease!

9. 10.
11. 12.
13. 14.
15. 16.
17. 18.
19. 20.
21. 22.
23. 24.
25. 26.
27. 28.

And their identifications:

1. 50g Swish Superwash (Dark Grey)
2. 50g Swish Superwash (Squirrel Heather)
3. 50g Swish Superwash (Dublin)
4. 50g Swish Superwash (Jade)
5. 50g Swish Superwash (Ebony)
6. 100g Muskoka (Grey)
7. 125g Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted (Flames)
8. 95g Cascade 220 (Light Brown)
9. 20g Wool-Ease Dark Rose Heather
10. 210g Wool-Ease Oxford Grey
11. 85g Wool-Ease Natural
12. 250g Wool-Ease Mushroom
13. 130g Wool-Ease Woods
14. 175g Wool-Ease Grey Heather
15. 30g Wool-Ease Denim
16. 110g Wool-Ease Cranberry
17. 70g Wool-Ease Green Sprinkles
18. 65g Wool-Ease Highland Twist
19. 50g Wool-Ease Blue Heather
20. 60g Wool-Ease Berry Heather
21. 80g Wool-Ease Blue Sprinkles
22. 30g Wool-Ease Country
23. 70g Wool-Ease White Sparkles
24. 15g Wool-Ease White Frost
25. 55g Wool-Ease Green Heather
26. 100g Wool-Ease Black
27. 2g Wool-Ease Light Rose Heather
28. 3g Wool-Ease Pines

That's a total of another 570g of non-Wool-Ease and 1610g of Wool-Ease, bringing me up to 5659g worsted-weight (not including Wool-Ease), or 7269g total of worsted-weight yarn and 10,819g of bulky and worsted-weight yarn, all neatly entered into Ravelry (rah rah rah!).

Tune in next time to see what those 3279g of sportweight are!

Well. The patterns around for crocheted market bags tend to make these enormous things that stretch so far they drag on the ground if I'm carrying them on my shoulder. And they take a huge amount of yarn. Not what I'm after.

I decided to try designing something that takes the natural stretch of a simple cotton yarn into account, and this is what I came up with. It's a granny square bag with two short handles. Experienced crocheters should be able to extrapolate how to make larger (or smaller) bags (and handles) just by looking at the pattern; instructions aren't given for changing the sizes. This is the size I like, and I think it's a good one. I've taken a few of these to the store and come back with comfortably-sized bags of groceries. And if they get messy, you can throw 'em in the washer and dryer with your towels.

Please follow the link to my Small Market Bag pattern! Like everything on this site, it is Creative Commons licensed; please feel free to share and distribute (as long as you keep my name and website attached). :) Many thanks to Wyoming Knott, Sorcha, and Moonrose for testing the pattern for me!

• Bulky yarn (finished) 3550g
• Worsted weight, non-Wool-Ease
• Worsted weight, Wool-Ease
• Sport weight
• Sock weight
• Lace weight

Today I give you the second of those categories: Worsted weight, non-Wool-Ease.

1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

49.

And now for identification:

1. 22g Sugar 'n' Cream stripes (neapolitan)
2. 45g Sugar 'n' Cream twist (brown/cream)
3. 62g Cotton-Ease (brown)
4. 50g Soy Wool Stripes (black/pink/gold)
5. 78g Lion Suede (purple multi)
6. 60g Patons Classic Merino (Prairie)
7. 100g Patons Classic Merino (Forest)
8. 100g New Zealand yarn — from our 2005 trip (brown multi)
9. 195g New Zealand yarn — from our 2005 trip (green multi)
10. 135g New Zealand homespun — from our 2005 trip (grey)
11. 32g New Zealand homespun — from our 2005 trip (purple multi)
12. 20g Lion Wool (olive)
13. 70g Lion Wool (grey)
14. 100g Schaefer Little Lola (autumn multi)
15. 100g Schaefer Little Lola (green multi)
16. 100g Schaefer Little Lola (grey multi)
17. 480g Lion Cashmere Blend (light grey)
18. 120g Lion Cashmere Blend (dark grey)
19. 50g Shine Worsted (Cream)
20. 50g Shine Worsted (Seaspray)
21. 50g Shine Worsted (Grass)
22. 50g Shine Worsted (Ebony)
23. 500g Phoenix Soy Silk (purple)
24. 700g Phoenix Soy Silk (ivory)
25. 400g Phoenix Soy Silk (green)
26. 185g Dark Horse Fantasy (peach)
27. 30g Wool of the Andes (Chestnut)
28. 25g Eyelash ? (grey)
29. 35g Cascade 220 (black)
30. 25g Cascade 220 (black)
31. 50g Cascade 220 (blue)
32. 15g Cascade 220 (red)
33. 45g Cascade 220 (dark brown)
34. 15g Cascade 220 (dark grey)
35. 100g Cascade 220 (dark grey)
36. 50g Cascade 220 (dark red)
37. 15g Cascade 220 (grey ragg)
38. 125g Cascade 220 (ivory)
39. 30g Cascade 220 (Jayne Hat orange)
40. 100g Cascade 220 (light brown)
41. 70g Cascade 220 (light green)
42. 5g Cascade 220 (blue multi)
43. 85g Cascade 220 (navy)
44. 70g Cascade 220 (orange)
45. 80g Cascade 220 (pink)
46. 50g Cascade 220 (pink ragg)
47. 35g Cascade 220 (purple)
48. 100g Cascade 220 (sea multi)
49. 80g Cascade 220 (yellow)

That's a total of 5089 grams of worsted-weight that isn't Wool-Ease, bringing me up to a total of 8639 grams of yarn so far. Tune in next week for another update, and (hopefully) a bag pattern!

My goal is this: on my 30th birthday (September 26), I will have X grams of yarn in my stash. By my 31st birthday, I will have X/2 grams of yarn in my stash.

A lofty goal full of stashbusting! But I think maybe I can do it!

Of course, in order to complete that kind of goal, it's necessary to know how much yarn I'm starting out with. And in order to have a number for the goal by my birthday, I need to spend the next 39 days doing the math. And thus begins the stash cataloguing project.

I started off tonight with an easy goal: find all my bulky yarn, photograph it, add it to Ravelry, and post the stats here. So here's what we've got:

That's 893 (round up to 900) grams of handspun wool from Spring Hill Romneys (mmmm, so soft and pretty; I'm thinking a vest for Grant this winter), 1900 grams of Storm Wool of the Andes Bulky from Knit Picks, two balls of Ecological Wool from Cascade at 250g each, and about 250g of Merino Light that's partly worked up (woohoo, head start!).

Total: 3550 grams of bulky-weight yarn, all 100% wool.

I actually didn't go through as long a bulky-weight period as many new knitters; I knew one knitter who spent over a year trying not to work with needles smaller than a size 15. As a result, very little of my bulky-weight yarn is from "the early days" — the Merino Light sure is, as is the Ecological Wool, but the rest of it is stuff I bought because I loved it to pieces and am still willing to work with it now. I'm also excited to note that all this yarn is wool; I had this fear that most of my stash would end up being acrylic or some other fiber I've outgrown, and it seems that won't be the case at all. Yay!

Now, mind you: I'm not going to try to hold myself to knitting up half of my stash by weight in each yarn weight. So maybe I won't touch this at all — or maybe I'll knit it all up because it'll be a quick 3550 grams. >_> However, I have a shocking amount of stash (this is not even the tip of the iceberg, it's a grain of salt on the tip of the iceberg), so it'll probably be a hell of a lot of yarn by the time I'm through. Maybe I should consider working all this up…

Crossposted from elsewhere, in a list of things that make me happy:

I really, really like knitting lace! I love the slender yarn, the sharp pointy needles I use (Harmony from KnitPicks), the semi-delicate nature of what I'm turning out, the YOs, the k2togs, the blocking process. I love that you can get a ton of knitting out of a single tiny ball of yarn. I love the patterns out there, and I really, really need to make myself another Sheep Shawl (the first one, I gave to my grandmother). I also want to make the Pacific Northwest Shawl for myself. But I have so many other shawls in the works before that happens; after the current one I'm working on, I plan to do one for an upcoming wedding. And I can't wait; it's going to be gorgeous. I have two other shawls on needles right now, too, and I love them both to pieces.

One of these days I'm going to design my own heirloom shawl, and even if I don't have kids of my own, I'll find someone to pass it down to. I'm really quite happy that my cousins are starting to be old enough to get married; the next generation in my family may have been delayed a bit by the fact that Grant and I seem not to be likely to have kids, but that doesn't mean the buck stops here. :)

It's hard to believe there was a time when I didn't know there was an online knitting community, but it had never occurred to me to look for knitting blogs, tips, tricks, or patterns online when I first ran into At Knit's End. I think it was sometime in 2005 or so; I know it was a couple of years after Stephanie Pearl-McPhee started her blog. I remember looking at the back cover and thinking Yarn Harlot? Is this woman crazy?

But the book was full of hilarious observations (some of them, I admit, are the kind of jokes you only get if you're a knitter or close to one), and so I picked it up without thinking about what I was getting into. I looked up her website, and suddenly realized OMG, there are knitters on the Internet!

Several years later, I have a knitting blog of my own. :)

I couldn't tell you why, but when I first started knitting, one of the things I thought I'd do was knit shawls.

Little did I know. Back when I first started, I was using acrylic-based worsted-weight yarn. It did not go well. And yet I loved it — the lace patterns, the drapey fabric, everything. (I knew nothing of blocking back then.) In looking for patterns, I turned up Folk Shawls, and I found almost everything in it to be just gorgeous. The first shawl I knit — yes, in acrylic-based worsted-weight — was the Wool Peddler's Shawl. (In a blue-green variegated colorway.) I have to laugh, looking back on it, but I really did have a good time with it!

A few years passed. I put laceweight on my wishlist one Christmas, and got two laceweight samplers — one from my parents, one from Grant. I immediately cast on for the Irish Diamond shawl. I needed more yarn. I ordered more yarn. I ordered more and more and more yarn… until a good percentage of my yarn ended up being laceweight. I'm not sure if, today, I have more laceweight or more sock yarn. :)

So far, out of this book, I've knit the Wool Peddler's Shawl (kinda), the Irish Diamond lace shawl, the Basic Black Shawl (in a color that was anything but basic black!), and I've tried out the Box Lace shawl. I think by the time I'm done, I'll have knit up nearly every pattern in the book. Cheryl Oberle is definitely one of my favorite designers, and I'm thrilled to have this book in my collection!

My pictures are horrible and awful, because the good camera is currently in Las Vegas along with SheepLad. However, here they are anyhow:

From left to right, the stitch patterns are: the 'prismatic' diagonal herringbone from this scarf on Feather and Fan, stockinette, seed, an unvented garter rib, stockinette, triple rib.

Mine contains the following:

• measuring tape

• needle gauge
• tin full of stitch markers
• needles (both straight-tipped and curve-tipped)
• scissors
• spare yarn for emergency stitch holders
• crochet hook for emergency dropped stitches
• row counter (any kind will do; I usually throw in a barrel-style one for space saving considerations)
• 2″x2″ post-it notes

And sometimes a double-pointed needle or two… or a full set of sock needles. I'm not sure why those are in there.

I actually have two of these — one in a zippered bag, one in the sheep bag made for me by a friend. :) That way I can take one with me when I go places, but I don't have to move it back and forth between portable knitting and house knitting.

Other things I'd like, but don't necessarily have room for: a pencil and a calculator. (I have a tiny calculator, but only one, darn it. I should have bought several; then I'd have enough for both knitting kits and to keep in the nightstand.)

Things That Make Me Happy: Yarncrafts! For me, that's knitting and crocheting. I started crocheting in late 2000/early 2001. I'd always wanted to give it a shot, and I'd even found a kind of cheap yarn that had a cute picture of sheep on it and a little bit of wool (this turned out to be Wool-Ease by Lion Brand, which I used for years and years and am just destashing the last of these days). I made a few blankets and was quite happy with them.

Then in May 2001, we bought our condo, and right around that time I learned to knit. I mainly learned by using The Complete Idiot's Guide To Knitting And Crocheting, and I learned using 14″ long straight metal needles on acrylic yarn. In retrospect, it's amazing I learned at all with those materials, and I totally deserve an award. It is not surprising to me that, while learning to purl, I grabbed the needles out of the yarn and threw them against the wall. Also, I was trying to learn from a book that was primarily teaching me English-style throwing instead of Continental-style picking. After several months of crochet, I was used to holding the yarn in my left hand and keeping the tension there. I finally gave up on doing it the way the book said and started trying it the way that felt natural to me, and it worked much, much better.

More than seven years later, I'm still doing yarncrafts all the time. I still know how to crochet (and have been doing a good bit of it lately as I turn out small market bags, which I'm going to try to post the pattern for over at the knitting blog soon), but I do prefer knitting. So far this year, I've completed 50 projects (as well as tossing or frogging 17 others), as part of my goal to wind up with a neater, more organized stash. (It's not working as well as I might have hoped, but at least I have a spreadsheet now.) Meanwhile, I'm also trying to knit from the stash more often than I buy new yarn. This is working somewhat better, as I've knit or started 67 projects from the stash and only 38 from new yarn this year. We'll see how I do by the end of the year. This doesn't really keep me from buying new yarn (and man, it doesn't help that Cascade 220 is the yarn of the month at Ben Franklin — I so want to pick up enough yarn for a sweater, maybe one for me and one for Grant, both, not to mention that I could buy lots and lots of yarn for new sheep), but it's kept the yarn-buying under slightly more control. More or less.

One of my most meaningful projects was a stained glass project using yarn from my late great-grandmother. My grandmother sent me her stash when she passed away, and though there wasn't enough yarn in any one color to make any specific projects with it, there was plenty to make a scrap afghan. And so I turned all that yarn into an afghan that looked a lot like this, and gave it to my grandmother that Christmas. In retrospect, since it came so early in my crocheting career, it may not have been my most skilled, polished project ever, but it made my grandmother happy, and it makes me happy when I see it.

Knitting makes me very happy. :) Yarn makes me very happy. There are certain things I've never tried to do, because I don't need more hobbies at this point (dyeing my own yarn and spinning), but I love the parts of yarncrafts I do participate in, and I'm glad to have finally gotten around to discovering them.

Anyway, in order to keep track of how fast I need to knit to make my target goal, I've made another spreadsheet.

(For those of you curious about formulas and such, it's a Google Doc!)

Since it spirals out from the center, I actually counted the number of stitches, not the number of rows, so as to be able to divide them out equally. There are over 92,000 stitches in the shawl! Will I make it? If so, it's going to be close.

Well, it turns out Sneaky Sheep has been going on missions. So far he's managed to infiltrate the study, while I was raiding Tempest Keep:

…the bathroom, as I was brushing my teeth…

…my bedroom window, as I was going to sleep…

…and now the kitchen cabinets!

(For fun and prizes, find the bonus sheep in each of those pictures. There are eight, plus an "extra".)

I do have other things going! I've been working on shopping bags, and two friends have graciously agreed to help me test a pattern. (It's crochet, requires about 300 yards of not-too-stretchy yarn, and roughly an H hook — mileage varies.) I'm also working on a shawl project, but it's a gift for someone; as such, I won't be posting pictures of it until it's complete and in the hands of the recipient. :)

Who eventually was joined by one grey sheep:

And life continued as usual. Then I got it in my head to make a rainbow sheep… and I bought some grey variegated yarn… and and and and…

And then I started knitting sheep for charity. Eventually the flock looked like this:

Yarn used for nearly all the sheep: Cascade 220. The camo sheep is made with Patons Classic Merino. Needle size: 6.5mm (US 10 1/2).

The front row have gone to their new homes, raising money for the California Marriage Equality initiatives; the back row… those are mine, and now I need to find places to display them. :)

Not to say that it isn't wrapped around one.

Yarn used: Dark Horse Fantasy. Needle size: 4mm.

I was surprisingly pleased with this scarf. Dark Horse Fantasy is definitely the nicest acrylic I've ever laid hands on, and I'd work with it again, no problem. And the pattern came out lovely! So lovely that I decided to do something I've never done before — I wrote up the pattern.

Yes, it's basketweave k3p3 with a 4-row repeat and 3 stitches of knitted-on I-cord border, and yes, a knowledgeable knitter can simply figure it out by looking, and yes, it felt strange to write such a "simple" pattern up… but I found myself thinking that maybe I should do it anyway. Not everyone in the world can hear the above phrases and turn those into a pattern!

Like everything else on the site, and every pattern I'll ever write, now and in the future, it's Creative Commons licensed. If you're curious what that means, I encourage you to check out this page, where I provide a few links and clarify my personal feelings on Creative Commons licenses as they apply to my patterns. :)

It is entirely possible I'll have another pattern up next week — this one for a crocheted grocery bag — but it might take me a little longer. My charity auction is finished, and it's time for me to cast on for a shawl. Wooooooooo shawl! :D

Thursday, be on the lookout for sheep. Some sneaky… some brightly colored… all very proud, and most of them (though not all of them) members of my personal flock. :)

Here's the sheep assembly line!

And a close-up of sheeps in progress:

Plus a picture of how they are size-wise as compared to a sheep that's been felted just once. Bear in mind the sheep is not stuffed — he'd look a lot bigger if he were!

The KnitPicks Options needles have been a godsend for this project. I just move the needle tips from cord to cord as I go — easy as could be!

I did start another blue/grey variegated sheep, but after working a couple of rows, I realized I'd rather be working on a color I haven't worked before. So I'll be casting on a camouflage sheep tonight. :D

I'm currently working on some Rainbow Sheep for a charity auction, but of course one of the sheep is staying home with me. :)

From left to right, we have the Original Felted Sheep (who I made very early in my knitting career), Boober Sheep (who came a few years later), and finally Grey Polled Sheep, Bi Pride Sheep, and Rainbow Sheep. I'm knitting five Rainbow Sheep to raise money for marriage equality in California — one of them has already gone out to someone who donated money to one of the marriage equality organizations, one of them is earmarked for another person, and three more are still being bid on. :) It looks like, all in all, I will have raised well over $150 in sheep alone (getting close to $200, actually). A custom knit shawl is currently going for $80, and the Jayne Hat Bag is going for $20. :)

I'm not going to be quite done with sheep with the end of the auction sheep, though. I'd like another grey sheep to go with the polled sheep, and I have a teal (!) variegated yarn that I'd like to make into sheep. I have one more "pride" sheep to go, too.

All these sheep are being knit with Cascade 220, which is one of my favorite feltable wools. (The horns on the Grey Polled Sheep are done in Lion Wool, which is also a nice feltable wool.) The pattern is A Felt Flock, by FiberTrends. Having now knit six of these sheep (with four more coming), I can honestly say I'm enjoying it a lot, and the short row shaping is ingenious!

(And this is why I was late on the last two posts. I have been knitting sheep practically nonstop for almost a week now, and I'm not done yet! Tomorrow, I'll get a post up on time, though — I'll be showing off the sheep assembly line. :) )

I think I've mentioned my Pink Prismatic Scarf before! It was an experiment both with the pattern (which gets five stars) and this yarn (which does not). Here's how it's looking right now:

I've tried it on both plastic and bamboo needles, and it's not making me happy at all. I'm going to finish it, because I like the color and the pattern is made of awesome, but I won't be working with this yarn again!

Here's the other scarf on needles at present:

It's an improvised basketweave pattern with built-in I-cord edging, using Dark Horse Fantasy. This yarn, unlike Comfort, is MADE OF WIN. I first heard about it through synecdochic on LiveJournal, who hails it as the best acrylic-based yarn ever, and she's totally correct about that. It's pricey for acrylic, but would be worth it if I absolutely had to have an easy-care fiber right now (it's sold at my LYS, unlike Shine from KnitPicks and such).

Both the sheep in these pictures are from Indiana — I think they may have come from the Wool 'n' Ewe shop one year at the State Fair. They're a cute iridescent color, and are from the Russ Berrie company. :)

Yarn used: Essential Multi in Shale print. Needles used: …

Look! Zigzags! Awesome zigzags!

Sometimes, self-striping yarn totally breaks your heart. In this case, I couldn't replicate that pattern, even though I had another ball of yarn in the same dye lot. I tried six different needles in two different materials — no dice. I tried swapping needles as I went — no dice. At least I have a sheep to comfort me.

So this sock stands as a testament to the finicky nature of self-striping sock yarn — which I have pretty much Gotten Over, to be honest — and also a lovely practice sock. As it turns out, I did an afterthought heel for the first time on this sock, and I really like the way it turned out. Now I can refer to this sock when trying to figure out how much leg/foot I need for an afterthought heel, which is a bit more than I might have expected. And I really did like the afterthought heel — it seems to fit me much better than the standard slip-stitch heel does. Yay!

Most of the backstitching is done — there's a bit of blue border for the blue flowers, and around the edges of the kimono. The vast majority of what's left is background, but that's fine — I like the background work, as it's mostly stitches and half stitches. Yay!

Then I did something terrible.

I started counting yarn I'd bought and stashed — but hadn't worked up — in the goals.

Oh boy.

Counting each instance of stashed yarn as a "started" and "new" project, I am now at 1.3:1 (eek!) on completed/started projects and… 1.7:1 (ACK) on stashed/new projects.

In other words, I have bought a lot of yarn.

*hangs head in shame*

On the bright side, when I actually begin working the newly-stashed yarn into projects, I will then be able to count it as both stashed AND new, and if I finish those projects, they will go into both the completed AND started categories.

Srsly, I may not be buying any more yarn until the end of the year. (Yeah, that seems incredibly likely.)

Also, I hope that buying cross-stitching patterns doesn't really count. I mean, I've only bought one (with sheep) and two booklets (one for one specific pattern, one for the whole thing) this year, plus some fabric that was on clearance. And I'm working up one that was in my stash, and have only three WIPs (including that one) and four "want to do" and one "will do for yearly Christmas ornament" projects on tap, and that's all I've had in the house for ten years, excluding finished projects, of which there are five unframed, four in the framing process, and ten framed and on display in the house. That makes a total of 29 — 14 completed through framing, 5 completed through stitching, 3 in progress, 4 kits bought, 3 patterns planned, and the 2009 Paula Vaughan Quilt project. I am not crazy. I think. OH HELP. I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE.

ETA: OH JOHN RINGO NO. I had a math error in my spreadsheet. I'm not down from 1.4 to 1.3. I am down from 1.4 to 0.9. Is it even going to be possible to get up to a 1.5 ratio again? Clearly I need to be knitting more projects from the stash. And quickly.

*
Yarn used: Comfort by Berroco, color 9810. Needle size: 5mm.

The sheep in question is a small sheep who lives in the library. She is a sturdy and stable sheep, standing easily on her four hooves! (A noteworthy talent in plush sheep.)

I've been curious about acrylic/nylon yarns for a while. It's much, much, much nicer to work with than straight acrylic, but I don't know if I'd want to do anything bigger than a scarf or a hat with this particular yarn!

* * * *

I have many, many more things… which aren't framed. One of these days we'll get around to framing and hanging them. Eventually!

So I've picked up something I haven't worked on in a very long time:

This is a kit from Dimensions ("Elegant Kimono"), and it's lovely. I actually have a few large-size kits I've bought, fully and entirely intending to make them, but haven't gotten around to it — if crafting, I tend to knit! But I do love cross-stitching. My house actually has a surprising amount of cross-stitched artwork in it, so on Thursday I'll be adding some pictures of finished projects that I have around the house. :)

(The sheep, by the way, is Ovistine again! Hi, Ovistine!)

I'd always been interested in learning to knit, but the closest I'd ever gotten was making big floppy loose I-cord on my fingers, something I learned in elementary school. (And man, that's fast. If I ever need big floppy loose I-cord, not that I can imagine why I would, I'll do that instead of knitting it.) My mom didn't knit, although she did do counted cross-stitch. I'd done plenty of cross-stitching over the years (and eschewed stamped in favor of counted, which just looked nicer to me), but knitting and crocheting had always intrigued me.

So one day I picked up a booklet called 10-20-30 Minutes To Crochet, and gave it a shot. It didn't take long to figure out what I was doing. I bought a ton of acrylic yarn, made blankets and throw rugs, and for a few months was pretty much obsessed with crocheting and very pleased with myself.

At that point, we moved from our apartment to a condo, and I picked up another book — The Complete Idiot's Guide To Knitting And Crocheting. I bought — and wow, big mistake here, which I wish I'd had someone around to tell me — a pair of 14″ aluminum straight needles. With which I proceeded to try to knit slippery acrylic yarn. HORROR. Oh, man, what a terrible, terrible idea that was. I remember throwing my needles against the wall at one point as I tried to learn how to cast on. For some reason I was trying to learn the cabled cast-on method first… another horrifying mistake!

But I perservered, and eventually I produced a peach-colored acrylic dishcloth. After that I had a little more confidence, bought some better needles, and turned out hats and dishcloths and blankets for a few years, using mostly bamboo needles and acrylic yarns — although I quickly reserved Red Heart-style yarns for crocheting, as I realized it just wasn't as good for knitting as Wool-Ease and other such things. It crocheted up fine, though!

A few years later I taught myself how to knit socks, and I've probably made more socks than anything else — it's the only thing Grant will let me knit for him (well, this is not strictly true, I just have yet to design a sweater for him that would look good on his body shape and would be comfortable for him to wear; I think if I made him a zip-up cardigan he could take to work and wear when he's cold, he probably would), so most of his socks have been replaced with wool socks at this stage.

It has never occurred to me not to knit in public. I get a lot of comments from strangers on it — mostly they just want to know what I'm knitting — and it's an interesting ice-breaker, although when I'm not really feeling like being social it can be kind of frustrating having my knitting thrust social contact upon me. But you know, c'est la vie — I'd definitely rather take my knitting places and have it to occupy me rather than being bored or having an activity that I can't do and talk at the same time. (Okay, the awkwardness of that sentence's construction makes me hurt, but it's early in the morning, whaddya want.)

• Complete, frog, or throw out 1.5 projects for every 1 project I start.
• Work two stash projects for every new-yarn project I start.

As of right now, I have completed/frogged/tossed 38 projects this year, and started 26 new projects, putting my ratio at a solid 1.5:1. Hooray!

I have ten projects currently on needles, and at this stage, I have also tossed or frogged every ancient WIP in the house, as far as I know. On one hand, this helped my organization immensely; on the other hand, it means no more easy ratio-bumping. But that's a good thing! It means I have more incentive to work on projects until they're done.

The only unfortunate thing is that I'm kind of stuck on larger projects for a while. I don't have anything I could polish off in a weekend — I suppose maybe a pair of socks. But it's kept me going on that Powers of Two blanket even when I'd have much preferred to cast on something new (like a felted sheep or somesuch).

As for stash-to-new, my ratio is currently a very solid 3.7 — I've worked 37 projects from the stash and only 10 projects with new yarn.

However…

In terms of new yarn purchases, things I have not yet knit up, I can think of at least five that I've made this year (although, now that I think about it, five is not so very many — those purchases just involve a LOT of yarn). Two of those purchases have definite uses in mind; three of them don't. It might be a good idea to start adding new yarn purchases to the ratio just so I have a better idea of how my stash is growing or shrinking. However, I've gotten a bunch of new storage containers this year to help store the yarn (yay!), and if I would just gather up my yarn and PUT it in the storage containers, the sofa in the guest room would not be covered in yarn. Alas, I have not done this yet (and anyway, piles of yarn seem like happiness-producing objects to me and not clutter, and it's not like we have pets). But perhaps someday soon!

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

Pink Pads Sheep is confused about why I'd ever want to feature a project without her. She's that kind of sheep, you know; the sort that's about half wool (and polyester fiberfill), and half ego.

Oh, excuse me. She's now bleating that it's more like one-quarter wool and fiberfill, and three-quarters ego.

Now she wants me to go get her a nice patch of organic wheatgrass.

The things we do for sheep.

Here's what the MHR Shawl looked like before I blocked it. A lot of people think lace looks like crap before it's blocked; I think it looked pretty good, honestly. This is a very geometric pattern, and it's based on garter stitch, so it lies quite flat. Except for the border.

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Yarn used: Bare Merino Laceweight from KnitPicks. Needles: 4mm.

Here it is pinned out and wet-blocked. It was dry just in time for the trip!

And here it is in action. :)

It was perfect — the day was wet and cold, but we had to go outside anyway — had we not, we would have missed the ceremonial firing of the cannon!!! However, my shawl kept me dry and warm and comfortable. Yay!

Thursday: the finished Obama socks! I may dig up some pictures of me working on the Obama socks, too, as people took pictures of me knitting all weekend long. (Trivia: It does wonderful things for your ego when Oleg Volk says that pictures of you are cute.)

…work continues on the Obama socks; one sock down, one leg in progress!

…I started working on the Powers of Two blanket again!

…and the Meditation Knitting project continues, too!

Also, I frogged the Anya scarf; I could not deal with lace on every row and not just the odd-numbered rows. C'est la vie; I'll find another project for that orange laceweight, I'm sure!

So it's been a productive weekend/beginning of week, just not so much with the camera. Pictures to come on Thursday!

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Yarn used: Bare Merino Laceweight from KnitPicks. Needles: 4mm.

At 4.25 repeats, I'm still ahead of the goal for today — 20 rows ahead, according to Excel.

Yes. I am that kind of nerd. If I need to finish something on a deadline, I put it on Excel.

As you can see from the screenshot, I have exceeded my goal every day, although some days have certainly been better from others. The green rows are weekends, when I'm less likely to get things done as I'm spending time with SheepLad. :)

I am rather boggled by the lack of time left before I need to have this project completed, but since I'm on track, I'm not worried. :)

Anyway, here's the progress on the Many Happy Returns shawl:

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Yarn used: Bare Merino Laceweight from KnitPicks. Needles: 4mm.

YCHWM-Sheep has been bleating a lot of encouragement as I work through this project. For one thing, she's been keeping me on schedule! I'm currently 16 rows ahead of today's target, and will be knitting more tonight. (I admit that my Excel chart is also partially responsible for the ability to stay on track, but the sheep is even more important!)

As well as being invaluable in keeping track of my chart and keeping me on schedule, YCHWM-Sheep has been instrumental in helping me figure out when to stop knitting. It turns out that this particular lace pattern is just a touch too complicated to do while I'm tired, so at night, my sheep bleats at me when I tip over to "too tired to follow the chart".

And when I keep knitting anyway, she patiently helps me unravel the stitches I've screwed up so I can re-knit them. On the bright side, I've gotten much better at unraveling from the center of a project rather than having to rip all the way back… on the less bright side, I've had to do that way too many times so far. Gah.

There is, however, a difference between being "too tired to knit lace" and "too tired to knit". I thought to myself: what have I got on the needles that's easy, easy, easy?

Well! I have the Obama socks!

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Yarn used: Navy Essential from KnitPicks. Needle size: 2.5mm.

These are called the Obama socks not because they have the Obama logo on them, but because I started them at the Democrat caucus in Washington, back in March. As is usual for me, the first sock was slow-going (two and a half months, sheesh — but this is not a record by any means), but the second sock is likely to be much quicker. I always think "must finish second sock! Then I'll have a pair!" Plus socks are nice and portable, which means I can take them out to dinner (they like tacos).

And because I couldn't resist a few more pictures of this wonderful, adorable sheep, here:

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This is Cute Little Dorset Horn Sheep, who is not the only Dorset Horn sheep in my collection, but is the only one who looks like this. :) He is so cute it boggles the mind. He normally lives near the television, in a flock-of-two with Librarian Sheep. Like many of the sheep that have been featured on this blog, he's from New Zealand! He traveled all the way home with me and has said that he really enjoys the States. He expected to miss seeing so many sheep around, but apparently he feels right at home in my house, where you can pretty much find sheep (and we are not talking a small amount of sheep) in every room.

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Yarn used: Bare Merino Laceweight from KnitPicks. Needles: 4mm.

I'm just about through two full repeats (out of 5.5), and I'm nearly a full day ahead of schedule — the only problem being that I haven't actually made my quota (35 rows) except for two out of the five days I've been working on it. I may be ahead now, but will I stay that way? CUE SCARY MUSIC!

The pattern's getting easier to follow as I go; I'm spending less time counting and more time just matching up holes. The reverse rows are all lightning-fast, since they're all knit. And the geometry is looking gorgeous. This is just making me want to knit tons and tons of lace, which, of course, I have plenty of ahead of me. ^_^ Good thing, eh?

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Yarn used: Bare Merino Laceweight from KnitPicks. Needles: 4mm.

"You're-Coming-Home-With-Me" Sheep is a meticulous sheep, as you can see. She's carefully inspecting my shawl for any mistakes. So far she's caught all of them, and I haven't had to do any unfortunate ripping back. :)

How did she get such a long name? It was Easter, and I was at a Hallmark store. There was a display of stuffed animals, seasonally appropriate, stacked on top of a shelf at my-eyes-height. I took one look at YCHWM Sheep, grabbed her by the face, said "Yep! You're coming home with me," and proceeded to snuggle her until I was ready to check out. She is cute, adorable, snuggly, and gets far too little attention, because she lives (with another sheep, usually) in a sheep basket (yes, a basket that is also a sheep (of which we have three (Easter is like that))) on the subwoofer. Poor darling.

So she'll be getting more attention over the next few weeks as I work on this.

Now, I know I can finish a lace shawl in a short amount of time. I did the Sheep Shawl in 14 days, and even if it's not bigger (and I kind of think it was), it sure felt bigger. Plus I had several days of faffing about and not working on it much.

For this one, I have 18 days to work (I'm now on day 3), and I'm ahead of schedule. I'm planning to wear this when I go to a friend's wedding — assuming it's cool enough, of course. It'll be late May in Montana, so it's hard to say. (Hence why I want the shawl — if it's cold, I don't want to have to drag out my coat.)

I found this on Ravelry when one of my friends linked to it. (Thank you!) It's lovely — so geometric! But the picture in the book wasn't very flattering, so I would never have noticed it if I hadn't seen the sample pic on Ravelry. As you can see, the geometric pattern is already clear in it, but it's going to look SO DAMN GOOD once it's blocked. All other projects have been pushed aside, and who cares if I'm currently blowing my finished-to-started ratio? (It's down to 1.3, goal for the year is 1.5.) There's tons of year left!!

ÜnterSchëpenFloppen is back, modeling the second of my granny square grocery bags. (The first one is not yet complete.) I've got two bags now, and I definitely like this one better than the first one I did. I hadn't intended to do two of the same pattern, but I realized midway through making the gusset/bottom that I didn't really want one done in a main color/contrasting color; I'd rather have them be the same color throughout. And thus I have two bags! The other one should be easy enough to finish.

Yarn used: Cotton-Ease by Lion Brand. Hook size: 5mm.

It was fun to break the crochet hook out again, but I can't say I love this pattern! Woolo, the sheep modeling it, doesn't mind it nearly so much. :)

The bag I'm more excited about is a granny square bag:

Yarn used: Sugar 'n' Cream Stripes by Lily (with a contrasting color to come). Hook size: 5mm.

It's working up so fast. I'll be done with it tomorrow at the latest, and I'll be able to make more of these easily. I'm quite pleased with how it looks so far, too. :) Meanwhile, ÜnterSchëpenFloppen thinks the yarn looks like Neapolitan ice cream. Mmm… Neapolitan. I haven't had any of that in far too long. Why doesn't Häagen-Dazs make a neapolitan? It'd be so good.

Clockwise from bottom left, you can see a stack of books I'm currently reading ("Communicating In Sign" is on top — I've been taking an ASL class at my local community college, and have been reading as much ASL/Deaf culture stuff as I can get my hands on). This is not all the books I'm reading. This is just the two books I am reading that are stashed in the bedroom. There are three books I'm reading in the study, two in the middle bathroom, three in the back bathroom, and a pile downstairs waiting to be tackled. It's kind of like a sickness, a ravenous appetite. Unfortunately, reading this many books at once results in not finishing anything at all. I need to buckle down and start finishing things!

Piled between the books and the alarm clock are my abacus bracelets and a couple of stitch markers.

Next is my alarm clock, with lamp on top. Yep, the lamp lives on top of the alarm clock. Why not — it fits! The clock is one of those things that will play CDs (that's why it's big and flat like a sandwich) and has two wake-up times, though right now we're only using one. It also has different settings for weekday and weekend, so we don't have to remember to turn it off over the weekend and turn it back on during the week. I usually wake up about five minutes before the alarm goes off.

Hand lotion in the back; useful when you're knitting and have dry skin.

Black object is a rear speaker. Yes. It lives on my nightstand. I suppose we could put them on the floor… or something… but the nightstand is where they have always lived.

Far back corner is a Kleenex box. All hail Puffs Plus With Lotion. It saves my nose every time I get a cold.

Foreground, in front of speakers: three sheep. There may be a fourth sheep hidden under the knitting project. They're sneaky, sheep.

Foreground, right: knitting project and its chart. I recently switched it to a 32″ needle instead of a 24″ needle. I may need to switch it right back when the sleeve stitches get put on holders. I also just tried it on (it's top-down and the stitches get put on thread) to see if I could make myself a sweater one size smaller than I was thinking, and the answer was a resounding "Hell, no". Sigh. I really wanted to be on to the next part of this sucker. But no. I've got another eight-ish rounds to go, and then I should be ready to divide sleeves. Yay!

On the bright side, I have another diamond finished (well, nearly!), and will be dividing off for sleeves soon. It'll be so much faster when I'm no longer doing so much increasing — not to mention how much less bulk there'll be on the needles, at least for the time being.

I'm still really enjoying both the project and my abacus bracelets (I've got one for the larger cable and one for the smaller cables), and lately SheepLad has been watching Lord of the Rings, which has given me an unexpected bonus knitting time with the husband. And talking of which, I hear hobbits from the next room. Off I go!

Still — since Tuesday I have completed one entire repeat of the diamond panel on my Cable-Down Raglan! :D

Yarn used: Zitron Polo in colorway 41 (grey, slightly heathered). Needles: 3.75mm.
Sheep: Ovistine, from the Auckland airport in New Zealand.

So here's one of my unpopular knitting opinions: I like cable needles. I really prefer working with cable needles to working without 'em, even though many people (especially lately) dig the on-the-fly, without-'em method. So cable needles are an integral part of a cable project for me; I tuck the cable needle behind my ear when I don't need it and pop the stitches onto the thing when I do.

Here's a shot of the project with my essential tools for cabling:

The cable needle is part of the set from KnitPicks (here). I'm using the smallest needle, and so far so good — though I'm honestly not sure if I wouldn't be happier with my Brittany Cable Needles instead. I may switch to the Brittany when I do my next pattern repeat.

The other item is a Knitter's Abacus Bracelet. Like the poster there, I heartily endorse the ones made by Hide And Sheep; they're beautiful, put together very well, and shipped fast fast fast. :D (Though I found these on Etsy, I actually bought them through the actual storefront on hideandsheep.net; the Hide And Sheep website had the two colors I desperately wanted (Starry, Starry Night, grey and black, and Stardust and Denim, sodalite and dark blue), and why make them pay Etsy listing fees if I don't need to? :) I think I may have to order some stitch markers, too, and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to get ones that match the bracelets.

Anyway, if it isn't obvious from the picture what you do with an abacus bracelet, there are nine small beads (to represent the ones) and ten large ones (to represent the tens), and at the end of every row (or the beginning, as you prefer), you slip one of the small beads through the loop of four beads. After you reach nine small ones, you slip those back to the starting side and slip a large bead through.

So clever! So awesome! So much better than my katcha-katcha row counters — I just put one of these on my left wrist and I'm good to go. (I may end up wearing two when I start the part of the pattern where I'm juggling two kinds of cables. We'll see.)

Yarn used: Lily Sugar 'n' Cream. Needles: 4mm.

The three sheep pictured are the Sheeplinglings. Um… maybe I should have had Sheepling (their father) pose first! They are Precious Moments sheep. Precious Moments makes some weird-looking, but strangely adorable, sheep.

Lately I've been having an urge for complicated projects, probably because my daily 1.5 hours of guaranteed knitting time has been devoted to less complicated projects (things I can knit on the bus). At first, I thought I could satisfy this urge by picking up a languishing WIP:

Yarn used: Gossamer, Rose Garden, Knit Picks. Needles: 3.75mm.

The sheep modeling this scarf-in-progress is a Sleepy Sheep we got in New Zealand. She squeaks if you squeeze her. AWWW!

(Incidentally, if my mom or my mother-in-law are reading this, my nightstand totally looks like that all the time and I did not have to move any chocolate wrappers off it to take this picture.)

This is the Candle Flame scarf. And it turns out there's something to be said for putting a pattern away for a month or two several months close to a year, because you might start off working with a chart that looks like this:

and, when you pick it up again, discover that there is a NEW PRINTING of the chart that looks like this:

(This, btw, is a free pattern from Knit Picks — don't squint at the