The kettle-dyed Wool of the Andes wasn't quite colorfast (I am still not sure all the loose dye came out, though it does not appear to have shed onto Grant's shirt), so it took forever, but eventually the sweater was complete. And today (his first day back to work since the blocking was finished), he even wore it. Awwwww. What a sweetheart.

Grant models his birthday sweater!

(Yet another bad cell phone picture, this one from the iPhone. We're just out of luck on cameras lately.)

He appears to like it! We're currently pondering which sweater will be his holiday sweater from me. Now that I've gotten started making sweaters, I don't seem inclined to stop. :)

It's also hard to say, because some days I work on a project for ten minutes here, half an hour there, and other times I am literally slamming out stitches as quickly as I can for as many hours as my hands will put up with it. That's been the case yesterday and today (although today I had to go run errands as well). And 4.5 st/1″ still knits up hella fast. So:

2009 Birthday Sweater, Day 2

It's almost impossible to tell scale and progress here, but the sweater is finished (save for some weaving under the armpits — sixteen stitches per side) up to about 3″ above the armpits. The cables on the sleeves are going to go all the way up to the collar, and they're mirror images of each other. (I am very proud of myself for not having screwed them up yet; cables are kinda new for me, but now that I've been working them on this project and they've been turning out so well, I'm hungry for MORE MORE MORE.) All measurements indicate that this should fit, although if it's a bit snug, this particular sort of wool will block a little big.

I've been experiencing so much pattern scatteredness lately — I keep starting projects and starting projects and starting projects, and finishing nothing. It's nice to have something where I've just been able to work it and see it coming together almost instantly under my hands. I just hope it looks as good on Grant as it does on the needles, because it is really looking pretty great on the needles!

Also, I'm sort of envious. Now I want one of these for myself! Except that my version would need side shaping, bust darts, and a V-neck, and I'd probably give it cables up the front, too. Maybe next project… hmm… maybe I should order yarn. >_>

I do not know how the seed stitch blanket project is going; haven't measured it lately. It is still on the needles, and I am approaching the end of The Largest Single Continuous Ball Of Yarn I Have Ever Had In The House (due to splicing from the project I unraveled to start the seed stitch blanket). It is finally cold enough I'm excited about working on it, though!

I have several (new) pairs of socks on the needles, and am thrilled about them all. :)

However, my whole world is currently being consumed by the following project. (Sorry for the horrible cell phone picture; our camera batteries are all refusing to recharge…)

Grant's birthday sweater, 2009, after one day of work.

This is what's known as "last-minute birthday insanity". My adorable Grant is more than a little hard to shop for, and I had thought I didn't have time to knit him a birthday present. But then this morning I had a flash of inspiration, figured out what I wanted to knit, and knew I had the right yarn in the house for the job. What's more, that yarn knits up at 4.5 st/1″, which makes it a quick-knitting project.

I had never really thought of myself as a fast knitter, but it seems that when a deadline is looming and I have a dozen episodes of Enterprise to catch up on, I can really move. ^_^ The sweater currently has half its body (up to the armpits) and 1.25 sleeves (up to the armpits); the worrisome part is that at the armpit point, I will be about halfway done. I still think I can do it, but a.) not secretly (which would require me to stop knitting when Grant is home), and b.) I won't be able to have it washed and blocked by the actual birthday, which is unfortunate, because it will definitely require both (the yarn is not quite colorfast).

On the other hand, he seems quite enthusiastic about it, and the cable on the sleeves is the only complicated thing about it; the rest is so easy I can do it while reading. (I've been reading the World of Warcraft comic — I didn't realize the Varian Wrynn storyline was written by Walter Simonson. o_O And I've been reading Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden and only haven't been throwing it across the room repeatedly because it's on my Kindle, which wouldn't tolerate such treatment.) I'll still take good-luck wishes, though. XD

Seed Stitch Blanket progress

The blanket is actually quite wide — wide enough to cover a queen-sized bed. The real question is… how long is it going to be?

Bam! (said the lady). Not just 20", but 24"!

I made it to 24″, and I've still got a TON of yarn left. Maybe next week I'll be up to 36″ of blanket!

I'm also seriously considering moving my destashing criteria from weight to yardage. That's going to be a little harder to count, but I think it'd be worth it in order to make me stop avoiding socks and shawls (which I love, but which don't weigh much).

I have a fingering-weight scarf on the needles, but no pictures of that just yet! I've ripped it out and restarted it several times, but I think I'm finally happy with the (tubular) cast-on…

So in the interests of actually getting more knitting done (I'm never going to knit down my stash at this rate), I'm going to see if I can get back to at least once a week, checking in and giving an update on what I've been knitting!

Lately it's been a grey and white bulky-weight seed-stitch blanket. No pattern, just miles and miles of seed stitch. This is actually what I'm in the mood for right now. Something easy, simple, soothing, something that can be done while I read, write, edit, watch TV, or in downtime during my raid.

Seed stitch blanket, 11/06/2009

I have started and restarted and restarted this blanket over and over and over. It has been many things. This is what I've liked best, and more importantly, what I've liked knitting the best. It's now 14.5″ of seed stitch. I'd like it to be at least 20″ by the next time I check in; wish me luck!

It'd be hard to be happier with this project than I am. It's not just the fact that I knit three-quarters of it while I was in Hawaii (:D), it's also the awesome blocking squares from KnitPicks. These are 1′x1′ squares that fit together like puzzle pieces to create whatever size blocking surface you need. They come in six-packs, so I bought two sets, thinking that'd probably cover me for my shawl knitting. I might actually need a couple more, but they're very easy to store.

They look, feel, and even smell (!) like brand-new flip-flops. Go figure. The foam is non-absorbent, which I think is going to reduce my drying times somewhat — having wet knitting on top of a wet blanket just means you have to dry out both things, not just the knitting, which was never quick. I'm definitely looking forward to blocking more projects on these!

I'd pick up more KnitPicks accessories, but I already have a ball winder, and I really have all the stitch markers I'll ever need. >_< The sock blockers… maybe. I've gotten along fine without them so far, but they're the only things I see on their accessories page that I'd use (and don't already have). But if you don't have a ball winder already, it might be worth picking one up from there — that's a really good price!

Yes! Erica's Shawl is done. :D :D :D It's just waiting for my new blocking squares so I can block it, weave in the ends, and send it off. \o/

More or less. What was wrong with it? Well, the thing people say about flat gauge being different from in the round gauge turned out to be really true on this project. I stared at the different yoke and sleeve gauges for a couple of days trying to decide if I could live with it, and eventually the answer was no.

So I ripped back, went down a needle size for the yoke, and voila! It looks great. I just wish it'd looked this great the first time around.

This is the part where I repeat "I'm a process knitter, I'm a process knitter" and that I like the act of knitting every bit as much as the finished project… but I'm awfully glad to be nearing the end of the sleeves/yoke part, I have to say.

I worked on just one project: Erica's Shawl, which got to this point:

I hope it's about 33% done, but it's impossible to tell right now. I'm just going to keep going until I run out of yarn. :)

How ready am I to be back to normal life? Only so ready. We're unpacked (except, I guess, for our carry-ons), almost all the laundry has been done, but oh God, I don't adjust to time changes well! I went to bed around 11 last night and woke up around 7:45, and while that ought to be plenty of sleep, internally I have no idea what time it is. It could be 5:30. It could be 8:30. It could in fact be 3:30pm, and I would not argue the point.

I was relieved when I saw a quote from the Yarn Harlot (and now I can't remember where I saw it; perhaps on her page-a-day calendar!) saying something to the effect of "No matter how big a sock you're knitting, people will always ask if it's a baby sock." I was once knitting a sock for Grant in navy blue, and when I told the waiter who'd asked that I was knitting a sock, he replied, "Oh, a baby's sock," as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I boggled at him. This was eight inches of ribbing and a turned heel the size of an adult man's foot. A not-too-small adult man's foot. What baby has feet like that? But apparently people are just crazy, and assume that all knitting is for babies or something. It wasn't just me!

Lace mystifies people, but most people take it in stride once I tell them I'm making a lace shawl. Now that Erica's Shawl is big enough, I can hold it up and people see what I'm talking about. They do ooh and ahh quite a bit — and deservedly so; the yarn is lovely and the pattern is clear even before blocking — but most people just get it and don't keep at me about it.

(It's about twice that long now, and I seem to have finally begun to make a dent in the yarn.)

Today's waiter was… a little more aggressive. He said it looked like I was almost done — dude, I have a foot and a half of shawl! I said no — it was barely started, and it'll be six feet long (I hope) before it's done. I held up the ball of yarn I was working with.

Waiter: How many of those will it take to be six feet long?
Me: Just the one.
Waiter: *jawdrop*
Me: *smugly* That's why it makes such great vacation knitting — it packs up really small.
Waiter: *grabs bag of yarn, gauges weight* *to my UTTER SHOCK AND HORROR, attempts to GRAB NEEDLES OUT OF MY HANDS to feel weight of shawl*
Me: AUGHN NO NO NO NO STOP!!!
Waiter: *still pulling, oblivious to fact that I am in the MIDDLE OF THE ROW* Oh, I just–
Me: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! STOP! *tries to keep stitches on needles, grabs back*
Waiter: *finally lets go* Oh, I was just trying to see…
Me: *desperately checking needles and praying I haven't lost hours of work — guess who doesn't work with lifelines?* I need to take care of this now.
Waiter: Oh! Sorry! Sorry! *departs*
Grant: Ack, sorry about that.
Me: Whew. Didn't lose any stitches. Sheesh!

What on earth do you guys do when that happens to you? Does that sort of thing happen? I tell you what: I have shown off lace shawls to many people, and nobody has ever attempted to yank knitting out of my hands before! (The waiter was very lucky Grant tends to pay for meals, I'll say that.)

It's strange to be an introvert who does such attention-getting things. Knitting garners a lot of attention. Reading on my Kindle garners a bit of attention. People see me doing unusual things and get really excited and interested in them. I don't mind explaining it, and I don't mind answering a few polite questions about my knitting. But holy cats! Just because I'm showing you my lace does not mean you can grab my needles out of my hands! Crazy! o_O

Tomorrow I'm going on a trip to the summit of Mauna Kea, where there will be stargazing. The trip's a long one, so I plan to bring my knitting. I'm not sure how much attention I'll get, but I do know I'm not going to let anyone close enough to grab my needles. It had never occurred to me I needed to keep a close grip on them before — no one's ever done that before — but now I know.

So what it is you guys do when people ask you about your knitting? What would you do if someone tried to grab your needles out of your hands? How do you answer people who are just saying crazy stuff, like asking if your gigantosock is for a baby or insisting that you're crocheting when you're knitting on five dpns?

QP: Ooh! Decided you needed a little sock yarn?
Me: Yes! *sheepishly* Well. I don't know if I needed more sock yarn…
QP: Oh, but it's here! And you're here!
Me: *relieved and excited* Yes! Yes!
QP: And this is your Hawaii sock yarn!
Me: EXACTLY! Yes! Yes! You get it!

Actually, Quilt Passions was full of some really wonderful yarn I'd never seen before. This being Hawaii, it's mostly silk, bamboo, and cotton blends — all really gorgeous. I didn't want to go overboard, though, so I picked up a couple of (large) balls of (very very nice) sock yarn from Cascade (I didn't even know they made sock yarn other than Fixation), which will probably be a shawl and not socks at all.

I do like to get yarn when I go places. When we were in New Zealand, I got some yarn. :) I've gotten yarn in California and yarn in Texas, and here I am in Hawaii with more souvenir yarn. I love the idea of knitting something out of it that I can look at and remember how wonderful this trip was — and it has been wonderful!

Still nearly a week before we have to leave. I hear it was snowing in Seattle yesterday. The weather's kind of cloudy here, but we'll take it!

He's very cuddly. Getting him in and out of his shell wasn't too tough, and I'm extremely happy with the mattress stitch right now, which is how I attached the legs — it's a fairly seamless look, and mattress stitch is quite easy. I have the pattern for the Super Sheldon costume and the Officer Sheldon costume, so at some point I may end up making one or both of those — but I'm pretty happy with him as he is.

Luckily for me, he seems very tolerant of the sheep:

–but he's really very cute, even if his shell and legs aren't done!

I'm doing him in Swish Worsted (a couple of balls I had lying around to compare colors), size 3.5mm needles. It's turning out nicely, although I have my doubts as to whether I'll actually have enough of the light green to follow the pattern exactly — I may end up using some dark green for some of it. No harm done, though!

I also have some other single balls of yarn sitting around, some in the adorable leopard tortoise colors. I might have to have more than one turtle!

In other news, ZOMG! They're reprinting Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting!! I don't even do Fair Isle, and I know what a big deal that is. This book is basically legendary and has been out of print forever. People are really hoping that, with the huge positive response this is already getting, they'll also decide to reprint some of her other very hard-to-find books, such as Aran Knitting, which goes for $200 used if you can find it (seriously). I think Fair Isle was going for close to that before the reprint was announced. I'm tempted to preorder (even though, as I said, I don't do Fair Isle!) just to make sure I can get a copy when it comes out.

The one Alice Starmore book I do have is The Celtic Collection, and I've not yet knit anything from it, though I did buy yarn for something out of it. The only reason I haven't actually knit it up is because it's a fingering-weight project that, to get gauge, I need to do on 2mm needles. And it's a sweater. On the bright side, having put it off for a few years means I've gone down two sweater sizes, so woohoo! Less knitting FTW! :D (I am planning on starting that project this year.)

It's been nearly a year since I started this (you can tell because the gallery was started on March 4, 2008), but it's done! Done! *does a happy dance around the living room*

Now I just need to weigh the leftover yarn and see what I ended up using. I think I may have inadvertently used some sportweight in the border, which I hadn't realized I still had. In any event, I'm extremely pleased — it's a stashbusting project and it came out beautifully! Yay! I need more of those. :)

ETA: I was able to take 922g of yarn off the stash worksheets after finishing this project! (I obviously used more yarn than that, but the stash was weighed with this in progress.) I'm out of "yarn debt"! My destash weight is now at 555g — a positive number for the first time this year!

I guess this was just one of those blankets that was meant to be small. Afghan-sized, even.

Uber-Woolo there is sitting in the little space which is all that remains unknit on this blanket. I am really looking forward to finishing it, which is making me work on it that much faster!

It'll need a border when it's done, probably in black, and when I'm done with that I'll need to decide if it needs a backing, too. It might. It might not. If it does, I'll look for something sheepy. :D

I'm up to four (and the center square plus first stripe on another). I'm definitely enjoying how these are coming out, although it'll be really ironic if I need to go buy more yarn in order to finish a scrap project. I keep telling myself I can make small blankets, but I'm not sure I believe me!

Started 3/16/2007, finished 2/12/09. I think that's pretty fast for me.

It's all done, and I couldn't be happier! I'm suddenly very excited about getting to my next big cross-stitching project, so hopefully I'll make some progress on that while the enthusiasm is at a high. :)

And thus I have stayed far, far, far away from it. I own a rotary cutter for sewing, but that's as close as I've ever gotten. I have lots and lots of hobbies, and never feel like I have enough time for any of them! Quilting would just be one more thing that would have to fight for its time with me, and I don't want to give up my knitting or cross-stitching or crocheting or reading or writing or World of Warcraft. (Although maybe that's something I should think about — if I ever stop playing WoW, I can start quilting. It might help with the withdrawal pangs. But it's not too likely — I just got myself a second account. >_>)

Anyway, recently — probably due to my newfound lust for Vera Bradley bags (I own a book cover and three different bags and a wallet now. My only defense is that, since they're all in a discontinued fabric, they were severely discounted — and also they're amazingly perfect as knitting bags, since they have tons of pockets but no zippers to catch on your work!) — I started thinking that it might be cool to make my own bags and book covers. After all, then I could have bags and book covers with sheep-printed fabric!

After a while I ended up looking at books (I hear Eleanor Burns is awesome) and eyeing fabric and very, very nearly buying a self-healing mat and one of those enormous rulers. I held off at the last minute, and the urge seems to have passed… sort of.

I've had a bunch of Wool-Ease around forever; I had plans to make a mitered-square blanket with it. However, the mitered-square blanket has been languishing under the bed for months, and I had all these quilt pictures in my head, and I thought, "Scrap Log Cabin Blanket GO!" Two squares later, I haven't even made the slightest hint of a dent in the Wool-Ease. Not even a little. A square is about 80g, and I have a total of 2315g. It looks like I'll be able to make roughly 28 squares (without reclaiming the wool from the Powers of Two blanket); it would take 36 to make a queen-sized bedspread. On the bright side, squares take up very little space around the house and are easy to do while reading. On the not-so-bright side, I bet I won't be finished with this until September. On the other bright side, September is when blankets start becoming needed around the house…

Anyway, here's the other way in which quilts have insinuated themselves…

I own this beautiful book of cross-stitching patterns by (or inspired by?) Paula Vaughan — one for each month of the year. This is the very beginning of the February quilt. I'll need to get more floss if I'm going to finish this one, but I can get along for quite a while just on the floss out of the stash.

…sigh. It sometimes seems like I'm never going to dig my way out of my stash or finish any projects.

But at least I haven't started quilting yet.

Today I was so close to finishing this project that… what do you know, I put it off until I could post about the completed item.

This is not a habit I should get into, but it's awfully fun when I have a finished project to post about!

So anyway: Here are a pair of epic purple bracers armwarmers, knit for a friend for warming of arms! Before I send them off, I'm going to see if I can get a mana restore enchant on them. The only problem is, I'm not sure Teu ever got that enchant… maybe a Major Stamina enchant would be just as good!

(Love and hearts to my favorite boomkin!)

Several marathon crocheting sessions later, it's done! The stripey blanket is finished, and it's big enough to cover the bed, which is awesome. (The nightstands are a little messy. Please forgive my excitement, which outweighed my desire to present a clean bedroom for photographs.)

This used 2040g of yarn. If only that were enough to actually start destashing. Ha! It isn't. But every little bit counts, and now I'm on to another project.

Well, that was what I thought until I tried knitting the first fifty stitches. My hands couldn't take the lack of stretch, and I quickly decided to shift gears and make something fast. What's fast? Crochet.

And so now I've got a crocheted blanket-in-progress to go with my Mystery-Blanket-In-Progress. Sigh. It is going quickly, though; I'm nearly halfway done with it. :)

This is a bag made by chaining 11 stitches, 10 sc, then — without turning — make 10 sc in the other side of those stitches. Join into a round. 10-12 rounds of sc, then sc-ch2-skip next 2 sc-sc in next sc, repeat around. Two rounds of sc on the top. Ch-40 for a drawstring.

It seems really small, but with as much as cotton stretches when it's wet, it seems to fit my handmade soap just fine. Crochet is scrubby and provides some nice structure, so I'm finding it much better than knitting right now. We'll see how these hold up; I'll report back in after a few days of usage.

This was also a destashing project — I was able to destash the last 39g of my kitchen cotton on this project. Considering that I've brought 2000g of yarn into the house this year, and haven't finished any projects (so I haven't been able to mark anything off the stash list), anything is good!

I finally used up the last of this yarn making a 1×1 rib scarf. I'm afraid the wool isn't very soft (it ain't Merino; my best guess is it's Romney, since that's what most sheep are there), and even a soak in Eucalan didn't make it really soft, but I could wear it out if it were cold, which is what I plan to do with it. :) I'm not giving this scarf to anyone; it's mine! It's a souvenir from the best vacation I've ever taken, and I'm really happy with it. :)

The pattern is the Rainbow Soap Sack from the 2009 Knitting-Project-A-Day (Or So) Calendar. I picked that up at a bookstore today; at 50% off it seemed like quite the bargain. So far there are two patterns I'm interested in trying; this was the first, and a pair of socks for Grant will be the second.

It varies! First of all, there's only one knitting project I do every year for the holidays, come hell or high water: I make my mom a hat. Mom likes hats, and I like knitting, and it is an excellent fit! Also, Mom lives in Indiana, where knitted hats are a joyful thing in the winter. I wonder if she'd like one in March. It's still cold there in March. ^_^ (I have decided that if Mom can send me things for Girls' Day, even though I am 30 and married, I can send her things for Girls' Day, too. So there.)

A hat for Mom takes maybe three days max, depending on the pattern. Hats are lovely and short and generally easy. However, marking out a week is not a bad idea; one of the things I was working on this year got derailed when I cut myself on the finger. It took three days for that to be healed enough for me to start knitting again.

Sometimes I'm working on other projects for the holidays; this year I made an aran sweater for a friend to give to her husband. That probably took four weeks, all told.

Sometimes I do scarves, shawls, or other items that I've made out of love for the recipient; mark out a good six to eight weeks for those.

This last year I made a last-minute argyle stocking for Grant; it took two weeks of only-during-work-hours knitting (and the weather buggered that up for me, too, because he worked from home half that time).

If you've been doing the math in your head, you may have noticed that these add up to a total of anywhere from 13 to 15 weeks, and to pad the estimate a little more, perhaps 16 weeks would be a good way to round that out.

Four months. Just for holiday knitting. Really? Yep! Really!

The moral of this story is this: If you think you might want me to knit something for you for the holidays, ask me by March. ^_^ (It also explains why, after the holidays, I spend a few months going OH GOD OH GOD I CAN KNIT FOR MYSELF ALL MY KNITS ARE BELONG TO ME AHAHAHAHA ME ME ME ME ME. When I spend a third of the year knitting for other people, and as the year goes by it's a greater and greater percentage of that time, by the time I'm done I really want my knitting time for myself again.)

* Merry belated Christmas, that is to say; I'm writing this as a catch-up post on February 16, 2009. >_>

What's up with those people?

The question has never actually been put to me with the phrasing "why aren't you a monogamous knitter?" It's more of, "Why the heck do you need to have seven projects on the needles at once?"

Well! That is an excellent question, and one for which I have an answer.

Different situations call for different types of knitting. My favorite thing in the world to knit is lace — but lace is delicate, involves charts (frequent attention to a pattern), and although it packs well into a purse or suitcase, whipping out a chart at a restaurant can really be a drag.

I've also knit sweaters. I don't mind taking a sleeve to a restaurant, but a whole bulky sweater for a 6′5″ guy? What kind of purse does that take? I don't own one, in any event. (Same thing for blankets.)

Don't ask me to knit socks if I can't be sure I can look down at the floor and pick my DPN right up once I've dropped it. A plane? No. Planes move around. If I drop a DPN on a plane, it could roll all the way down the aisle before I can retrieve it. I'll pass!

Are we going to a movie? I need a project that can fit in my purse that has almost no pattern whatsoever. 2×2 ribbing works great. Also, I need a large-ish ball of yarn, so I don't have to mess with splicing in new yarn while I'm sitting in the dark.

In other words, I need different projects because I'm always knitting. I'm knitting when I go out to eat, to the movies, when I'm watching TV, when I'm listening to audiobooks, when I'm on the bus, and if I can get away with it, when I'm in classes. (French? Knitting works great. ASL? Not so much!) If I couldn't take a different project to wherever I'm going, based on the needs of the environment, I don't know how I'd cope!

I guess I just wouldn't knit. Which sounds like a horrible plan!

Huh. Now I have a question: How do people cope with not knitting all the time?

* …that's going to come out wrong to anyone who's not a knitter, isn't it? While I totally grok the concept of polyamory and I fully support anyone who does it conscientiously (a lot of people nowadays behave really jerkticiously and then chalk it up to "polyamory"; the healthy version of it involves honesty, communication, and care), that's not me! I only have so much romantic time and energy to give to other people; for me, they are a finite resource. One-on-one works best for me, and luckily, for my partner as well.

Today's chatter is going to be on the topic of "Questions That Make Me Crazy", and it's the major one, the big one, the one most people are likely to ask at some point:

How long did it take you to make that?

This question makes me crazy on two levels. One, I know it's a way for people to gauge the effort required to do something, because if it takes longer to do something, it must be more difficult (and therefore more worthy of respect and praise, because in the Puritan work-ethic culture of the United States, tenacity and the willingness to see something through are highly-valued traits).

Two, I don't know how long it took me.

Knitting is not like World of Warcraft. You can't just type /knit at the end of a project and have it tell you just how long, down to the second, you've spent on that project. If you want to know in that kind of detail, you need to have a stopwatch and a journal handy. I'm sure there are some knitters out there in the world who knit that way, with a stopwatch keeping track of every moment they spend knitting, but I'm sure not one of them!

The best I can do is say, "Oh, probably two weeks of hard work," where by "hard work", I don't mean "sitting on the couch while watching TV after Grant gets home from work." I mean twelve to fifteen hours of knitting. Per day. I'm estimating that the sweater I knit probably took me 168 hours to knit — the equivalent of spending a week straight doing nothing but knitting, not even sleeping.

One of the FiberTrends "Felt Flock" sheep probably takes me 18 hours to make. A pair of socks, maybe 40 hours. And sure, I go through knitting binges where I sit down with a new TV series ("new" meaning "I've never watched it before and thus have seven DVD sets to go through") and I really do knit for fourteen hours a day. But I don't do that every day, week, or month. (Okay, maybe once or twice a month.)

So how long does it take me in human terms? I don't know. I might have cast something on in March only to finish it in August. Maybe I cast something on and was so consumed with love for it that I knit nothing else and took this project to the movies; maybe it took a week. I might have cast on a year or two ago and finished up the project because I thought, hey, I'd like to get those needles back! Or maybe I've been working on it every time I go out to eat, but I don't go out to eat so much anymore, so last year it might've taken six weeks… and this year it takes six months.

I fit knitting into pockets of time everywhere. If I'm waiting for the bus (and the weather's nice), I'm knitting. If I'm on the bus, I'm knitting. If I'm out to dinner, I knit. If I'm watching TV, a movie, a sports event, I'm knitting. I knit while waiting in line at the grocery store, while waiting for Grant to come pick me up somewhere, and if I drank coffee, I'd knit while having a cup of coffee in the morning. Or something. If I can knit while I do it, I knit. My hands are seldom idle.

But I hate the idea of time as a measure of something's value. I hate it because I've had knitting projects I thought were glorious that only took a little bit of time, and I've had knitting projects that I suffered through for weeks on end in order to finish. I've also had knitting projects that took no time at all that I wouldn't want to knit again for anything, and knitting projects that took months that I'd knit again in a heartbeat. The fact that something took a long time doesn't make it great, and the fact that something took barely any time doesn't make it "no big deal". And, especially, the fact that something may have taken me a week or less — or a day or less — doesn't mean I'll whip one out for anybody for any reason.

I've had an awful lot of requests for Rainbow Pride Sheep. People like them; they're cute, and they take little yarn and practically no time; I can have one knit, felted, stuffed, and drying in a day. But I knit fourteen of those sheep in just over two weeks; I am done with Rainbow Pride Sheep, or any other kind of sheep, unless it's for me and I happen to feel like knitting a sheep that day.

Yes, I love sheep. I love the pattern. I love the felting. I love everything about it. But imagine if you had your favorite book in your hands. Okay? Now read that one book fourteen times. In a row. Without getting to read so much as a blog post or a newspaper article before you have to start that same book again. You don't even get to read a magazine in the bathroom; you have to take that book with you. (Um, no, I didn't knit in the bathroom, but work with me here; I'm making a comparison.) You might love that book every bit as much after the fourteenth read, but boy howdy, you'll be ready to read something else when you're done reading it for the fourteenth time, and if someone offers you money to read it again? You'll probably say, "No, thanks" — especially if you can do without the money.

I wish knitting did have a built-in WoW-style /played (rather, /knit) counter. I wish I could look back on all my projects and see how long it took me to knit them. But I know me: carrying a stopwatch around, and remembering to use it every time, is beyond my capabilities. :)

Gossamer Webs is a book that both covers the history of Orenberg lace knitting (a style local to a small town in the former Soviet Union — under the USSR, people who were lace knitters had to turn out 24 shawls a year, and that was often very difficult for a single person, so daughters were often recruited to help) and shows a few pattern options, but this is more a book about how to design your own shawl than how to follow a specific pattern. (The same author, Gamina Khmeleva, also put together a pamphlet called "The Gossamer Webs Design Collection" that does have three gorgeous shawls in it.)

I'd recommend this book to lace lovers, and anyone who's really interested in the international history of knitting, but if you're just looking for lace patterns, this probably isn't the book for you.

I made it out of Cascade 220, with a heathery light grey for the main portion and some really nice print/hand-dyed yarn for the red and green. I had some leftover blue and yellow for the little lines…

…which, in retrospect, and if I ever do argyle again, I'll do them in duplicate stitch; doing them as part of the pattern was an unnecessary pain in the butt! But for my first argyle project, I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way. Next time I'll save myself the work! :)

One thing I used that was really, really helpful was — well, were; I used several — fish-shaped yarn bobbins from Pony. I ordered mine from SpinBlessing.com, where they're now on backorder, but if you poke around you may be able to turn them up. The shape is great, and the bobbins are substantial enough not to feel like they're getting all bent out of shape as I wind yarn around them. :)

All in all, a wonderful success — the only problem now is that I don't have a stocking of my own! But I've got an aran one in the works. :)

And it was lovely! :)

I had it done in plenty of time to ship, but ended up procrastinating and then bringing it with me to the wedding. I hope she liked it!

What it is is my first attempt at a bath fizzy! I've been looking and looking and looking for ones I like on Etsy, and all too often I see the fatal word: cornstarch. I have had extremely bad reactions to cornstarch in sensitive regions, and I'm not willing to trust the stuff. Plus I liked the idea that it was a minimal-ingredients kind of thing. I couldn't go wrong, right?

I started with the recipe on this page, as well as some baking soda from the kitchen, and citric acid and witch hazel and fragrance oil from Brambleberry (recommended by several of the soap blogs I frequent). Brambleberry is also a (semi-)local business for me, situated in Bellingham. I picked up Cranberry Fig, and oh man, it smells AMAZING. Very fresh and fruity and delightful! (I also have "Ginger Fish", rosemary, and peppermint — and a Red Lychee Tea they threw in free.)

Well, I overdid it on the witch hazel, as perhaps you can see. While it doesn't set off the reaction as quickly as water will, it does set it off slowly. By the time a few minutes had gone by, my bombs-to-be had grown a bit larger, and they hadn't hardened enough to get them out of the molds.

(Yes. I did buy a sheep mold! :D I bought two, but only used this one.)

So I kind of pried them out, then rinsed out the ice cube tray and the sheep mold. Now, I'd been told that if you use much too much witch hazel, they won't fizz, but the leftover stuff sure fizzed in the trays and the mold, so I figured I'd let them harden and see what happened.

(Lesson two: Don't set them on toilet paper to harden! It doesn't peel off.)

I tried out a bath with them, and they fizz and float and I seem to have gotten the scent just right — strong enough to use, but not strong enough to linger. (Again with the wanting to make things myself; I don't want the scent from a bath fizzy to linger. Lingering scents can trigger migraines, especially if they don't wash off.) You can smell it if you sniff me, and it was great in the bath, but no more than that!

While I'm not expecting bath stuff to take over from knitting by any means (indeed, I have started a good half-dozen projects since finishing the Great Big Mystery Project — a sweater for a dear friend's husband [who is also a good friend!], which I am told went over really, really well, HUZZAH!!! — just from the sheer joy of being able to branch out that way), it is the first thing I've taken pictures of, and I'm pretty pleased by it. :) The results may not have been ideal, but they were functional, and for a first project I think that's pretty good.

(This post was backdated and was actually written on December 26th. Whee, catch-up posts…)

I'll have a TON of posts I can make after Christmas, and I have a couple of catch-up posts I can do for projects I've done and given away. However, this post is just to make sure people know I'm still out here and still knitting — and heck, let's put together a list of catch-up posts I can write in the very near future, backdated.

* 12/4: Wedding shawl!
* 12/9: Mom's Yearly Christmas Hat
* 12/11: An Argyle Stocking
* 12/16: The Cursed Ball of Yarn
* 12/18: Buy 4 Mittens, Get One Free
* 12/23: Entrelac!
* 12/25: Mystery blanket
* 12/30: Souvenir scarf
* 1/1: Ornament
* 1/6: ?
* 1/8: ?

And at some point I need to do a round-up on how the yarn totals are going. :)

At least it was on the yarn, not on the finished knitting!
At least I rinsed it off before it began to soak in!
At least it's superwash yarn in the first place!
At least I have extra yarn!
At least it was on the outside of the yarn ball, so the inside is all safe — only the outer layer will need to be removed, if that!
At least it wasn't on the project I'm done with. Oh, God.

Interestingly enough, I have never spilled anything on a knitting project before. In seven years! And I knit at the computer all the time (like while on gryphons in WoW). So…

At least I don't do this often!

The only thing I'm not loving is that I'm having trouble figuring out how to calculate gauge for it. I tried a normal stockinette test swatch with the proportion of my head (56 cm) and got something that seemed like it was about five triangles too big. Then I tried cutting out those five triangles and got something that wouldn't fit a newborn. I'm working in between now. When I get it figured out, ZOMG! ENTRELAC FOR EVERYONE!!!!!! I'm thinking scarves. I'm thinking mittens. Socks. Felted and non-felted bags. Pot holders. Entrelac is good for everything!

What I'd really like, after my holiday knitting is over, is to make myself a big fluffy soft warm wool blanket. :) We'll see if I get the time to do that before winter ends. I really hope I do!

It's 30″ x 36″ and made of the nicest, softest acrylic I've ever worked with (Dark Horse Fantasy). It took 382 grams, which certainly helps my stash statistics. :)

Hey, speaking of statistics: I said quite a while ago that I was going to try to complete/toss/frog 1.5 projects for every 1 project I started. Now, when I made that goal, I had a closetful of incomplete projects, and I was hoping that I'd use that goal as incentive to stop starting projects and not finishing them. However, at this point I'm down to nine WIPs, two of which will be done by the end of the year, one of which I plan to frog when I get around to it, and two more which may or may not end up frogged. I'd be down to five if all that happens, so it really looks like I've kicked the startitis habit. (No, seriously, that's a perfectly reasonable number of WIPs! It is!)

My current ratio is 102:101 (which rounds off to 1.0:1), and that's counting yarn I bought and stashed (but haven't yet worked with) as "new projects". Without counting that, I'd be at 102:88 (1.2:1). Not bad at all. :)

I was also going to try to knit 2 projects from the stash for every 1 project made out of new yarn. WHICH I HAVE DONE. \o/ My ratio is 2.0 exactly, counting yarn I've bought but haven't used and cross-stitching patterns I've bought but haven't worked (wow, why did I start counting those in the spreadsheet? The yarn, I think counting that is probably the right thing to do, but the cross-stitching?). Without the cross-stitching, my ratio would be 2.6:1. :)

The destashing goal is definitely a better one for my sanity, better for reclaiming closet space, but it's nice to see I wasn't as far off with the original goals as I thought I would be by the end of the year. :)

Step 1: Begin knitting.
Step 2: Knit about 40 rows.
Step 3: Realize that I'm knitting the wrong number of stitches.
Step 4: Rip out about 40 rows.
Step 5: Repeat step 1.
Step 6: Knit about 80 rows.
Step 7: Realize that I left something out around row 40.
Step 8: Repeat step 4.
Step 9: Repeat step 1.

With any luck, I have now gotten all necessary mistakes out of my system and will be able to continue without error (well, much error) from here. But sheesh. Twice?!

In other news, I picked up a copy of Knitting For Peace by Betty Christiansen recently. It's a collection of stories about charity knitting organizations, with a few patterns gathered up for some of those organizations. The point isn't the patterns, though, it's the ideas and suggestions for sending knitting to charities. It's full of great ones, and instead of giving out addresses and contact information that could be out-of-date by the time you get the book, they provide websites and email addresses that are more likely to be updated regularly or at least stick around indefinitely, as well as giving some tips on how to Google for the information you might need to track down more local charities. I'm really excited about the prospect of dovetailing my stashbusting with some charity knitting — next year!

For a rainbow sheep,

* Cast on in purple.
* Change to blue after row 9.
* Change to green after row 13.
* Change to yellow after row 21.
* Change to orange after row 27.
* Change to red after row 33.
* Head is red.
* Face is black.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, tail and ears are black.

(I also sewed a small piece of gold ribbon on this one to indicate that he is a married queer sheep.)

For a Bi Pride sheep,

* Cast on in blue.
* Change to purple after row 13.
* Change to pink after row 27.
* Head is pink.
* Face is dark grey.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, tail, and ears are all dark grey.

Despite the simplicity of this design, this is probably my favorite sheep mod of the bunch. I adore my Bi Pride sheep! :D :D :D

How about a sheep that evokes that Jayne Hat look? A sheep like this walks down the street, you know he's not afraid of anything!

* Cast on in orange.
* Change to yellow after row 13.
* Head is yellow.
* Face is orange.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, ears, and tail are red.
* Make a small (I use a 3/4″ pompom maker) pompom for its head.
* Optional: Instead of a red tail, make a larger (1″) pompom for its tail.

You can overlap colors from the rainbow sheep to make the Jayne Hat sheep if you like, though I used a darker red for Jayne than I did for the rainbow sheep.

What about a Leather Pride Sheep?

* Cast on in black.
* Change to navy after row 5.
* Change back to black after row 9.
* Change back to navy after row 11.
* I cast off in black on rows 12 and 13, but this is nitpicky and optional.
* Change to white after row 17.
* Change back to navy after row 23.
* On rows 27 and 28, I cast on in black, but this is nitpicky and optional.
* Change back to black after row 29.
* Change back to navy after row 33.
* Change back to black after row 38.
* Finish body in black.
* Head is black.
* Face is white.
* Ears are white.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, and tail are black.
* For the heart, make an appropriate amount of I-cord in red, then sew on in a heart shape. It will felt down into a more heart-like shape than it looks when you sew it on, but you can shape it with your fingers once it's out of the washing machine if it needs a little more help.
* Optional: Find something to use as a collar — I got this piece of vinyl-with-rivets ribbon from the quilting department at my local craft store. o_O (They have ones in camoflauge, too.) Or perhaps you could find a hat!

But those of you who are comic book fans will understand the title of the post once you see this:

A pair of superheroic sheep, made as a gift. :)

I'm not much for sewing, so the costumes were rather difficult for me. And I used a nice permanent marker for the emblems on Supersheep. However, the modding (this is the FiberTrends "A Felt Flock" pattern from Bev Galeskas once again) was quite fun!

Baatman is made entirely in black, all parts. No tail, as it would interfere with the cape. Not too tough!

Supersheep, however, is cast on in blue. I switched to red for rows… I want to say 8-13, with the legs maintained in blue. Then blue for the rest of the sheep, white for the head, red for the back hooves, white for the front hooves. Ears in white. No tail, as it would interfere with the cape.

I have to say, when I started taking pictures in the window of the craft room, I didn't realize what a neat background that would give me. I really like the leaves. :)

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. ^_^

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. :)

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. :)

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.

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. ^_^

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.

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 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. :)

I will grant you, it is a somewhat schlumphfy-looking bag. It's basically a prototype. It was also something for me to do with the leftover yarn I had once I was done with the Deep Purple Sweater. And since it was made in a wool I probably won't use again (and may not even be able to find again), I'm going to be writing down the pattern not for this yarn, but for a much more accessible felting wool, Patons Classic Merino. (It shouldn't take more than I have left, which is a little less than two balls. I hope.) I don't have a lot of experience felting, so I even made a gauge swatch for this. And I'm glad I did; this yarn reduces by about 33%, whereas the Patons Classic Merino reduced by 22% width-wise, but only by about 5% height-wise. (You can bet that'll require some different calculations as I work up the second bag.)

I am very pleased with how close to my mental image this bag turned out to be, though! And the flap was a cinch. Between this and a felted wool trivet, of which I do not yet have pictures, I managed to use up the rest of the yarn I had left from the Deep Purple project, which makes me very happy, too. And I'm getting better with the photos, I think, even if they're all being taken in the same windowsill. Credit to Jared Flood and David Reidy — Jared Flood for the tip, David Reidy for the interview in which Jared gave the tip. (The tip was to use natural light, but try to get it sideways to your project rather than right behind it. It turns out the craft room windows are perfect for that.)

Goal: By September 26, 2009, stash weight down to 13,138g.

I'm really happy with it. It's made with Sierra Pacific Glenisla, a 100% wool, feltable yarn which happened to be the Yarn of the Month at my favorite LYS. The pattern, worked from the top down, was really easy to follow and involved no (!) seaming. And, most importantly for me, it fits properly! (I made the 40″ version; there's a smaller one at 36″, and it goes up to 56″.) I was a little worried about that, because I'm short, and knitting it for the first time, I had no idea how I would go about shortening the thing — it's not constructed in a simple manner, as you can see.

The yarn could be nicer. It's just a little on the scratchy side, and I'm going to try washing it to see if that helps any. As for the pattern itself, I'd like more waist shaping — another thing that I didn't have any idea how to implement the first time through. It looks kinda bulky from behind on me.

But ultimately, it makes me really happy. :) I'm really pleased with the way it came out, and I might be tempted to make it again at some point — but there are so many things out there I'd like to knit that repeating a project seems silly until I've gotten through some others. My Ravelry queue is 117 items long, for heck's sake! And I have three projects on needles, and two I haven't started that have early December deadlines.

I also have a bit of leftover yarn from this sweater project, and an idea in my head for a felted bag to make with it. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can make it come out the way it looks in my head. :)

I am so excited to have this count completed I can't even tell you. The total has changed since last time — I completed a sweater (ZOMG!) taking my DK weight total down from 900g to 260g (and that 260g is going to go into a felted bag, I think), but I also ordered yarn for a sweater for Grant, and some Shine DK that I've sort of windfallen into and which is now MINE WOOHOO and enough for a sweater for me. (I don't know why I'm suddenly interested in sweaters, but I sure seem to be.) I picked up an extra skein of Cascade 220 so I can do armwarmers for a friend, also. But on balance, I've gone down since the last weigh-in, not up. I'll do one more on my birthday itself (even though that's a Friday and not a traditional blogging day), and that'll be my stash total, defining my goal for the next year. I CAN DO THIS.

When last seen, I was going through my sock yarn. We'll pick up there:

	Essential, Flint Tweed. I'm not crazy about tweed sock yarns; I have a friend who loves tweed and makes it look good, but this is a different kind of tweed than the tweed she likes. I got this as part of a sampler, and I am sure that someday I will knit it up. However, that day has not yet come.
	Risata in black. It's a lovely yarn as far as I can tell, but I'm not really sure what the point of wool/cotton/elastic blend sock yarn is. I always figured cotton/elastic sock yarn was for people who are allergic to wool, so if you add wool in there… then what? And if you're not allergic to wool, why would you want cotton and elastic? Maybe the mystery will be solved when I start working with it.
	From the now-discontinued line of Sock Landscape, this is Cape Cod. I'm not sure where the rest of it went. It may have become socks at some point!
	The heartbreaking Shale Multi that almost made a pair of awesome awesome awesome socks, but instead made only one. I weep.
	Regia Silk. My very favorite pair of socks for myself are made of this, and I'd really like to get around to making another pair, or another couple of pairs. They're done in a tiny gauge, and are only ankle socks. (The feel of socks slipping down my calves, or socks on my calves, is just not one I like, so ankle socks it is.) I thought perhaps I'd gone overboard on the tiny gauge, but instead these socks have turned out to feel very strong and like they'll wear well.
	More Regia Silk, but this time in grey. :)
	When we went to New Zealand, I brought lots and lots and LOTS of sock yarn, all in this new variety I'd picked up at my favorite local yarn shop. It's called Patons Kroy, and some people really like it. Maybe we got a bad batch. All the socks I knitted fuzzed like mad and had no memory, slipping down uncomfortably into Grant's shoes almost as soon as he put them on in the mornings. These are the only socks he's ever thrown out of mine, and I have to say, they deserved it. I don't know why I have this little ball of yarn left! At any rate, at one point during the vacation I realized I should have been knitting all along as we drove around (we drove a lot, all the way from Auckland to Wellington, where we then caught a ferry across Cook Strait and then took a train to Christchurch, and from there we drove to Dunedin and then up to Queenstown, from whence we departed. It was a lot of driving), as we'd have had more socks. Well, it's just as well I didn't.
	By contrast, here we have a teeny ball of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, and while I don't know what I'll do with it, I know it'll be nice. Shepherd Sock is one of my favorite kinds of yarn ever, just outstanding, and I'm only sorry that all the colors I have in my stash (or most of them) are multicolored, as you can see:
	here…
	…and here…
	…and here…
	…though I do have some grey…
	…and black…
	…and white.
	In other leftovers, I also have some black Essential…
	…and some tan v1 Essential.
	And a random ball of Jaeger Matchmaker Merino 4-ply.
	And a scrap of Lion Wool which would seem totally useless if I didn't know I'd need it for sheep faces.

And that's all for non-lace yarns! Now for the lace. Oh, lace yarns. How I love you. You take up so little space, but you provide so very many hours of knitting enjoyment!

	The leftovers from my Windowpane shawl.
	Two gorgeous hanks of Oregon Coast. I don't know what I'll knit this into, but this is my color, so I'll probably keep it, whatever it is. Maybe another Adamas shawl.
	Gloss Lace Bare NOM NOM NOM. I have a project all picked out for this.
	Gloss Lace Sterling OH MY GOD THE JOYOUSNESS. I love this yarn to distraction. I don't know what I'll do with it, but it will be something glorious.
	The label on this one reads "Baruffa Decato", and it's some of the softest laceweight ever. It's also lighter weight than Shadow — cobweb weight, maybe? It's lovely. I'm using it in the Mystery Stole 4 project. So far so good.
	A beautiful hand-dyed yarn I bought from djinnj on Etsy. The picture doesn't do it justice. I'm not sure what to do with this, but it'll need to be spectacular. (I am very, very lucky I've been trying to be good about buying yarn lately, or there would be a lot more hand-dyed from Etsy in my stash.)
	This one is called "Leprechaun", and I have something in mind for it. I just don't have the pattern yet. :) Which may be just as well, since I have so much in the knitting queue…
	I have this crazy idea that I'd like to knit a shawl or a blanket in a ring… to represent the Stargate. This would be great if I decided to do it in laceweight, but I'm thinking a Chappa'ai blanket would beat a Chappa'ai shawl, so I'm probably going to use this on a project that'll coordinate with the Leprechaun yarn above.
	More laceweight. So much of this multicolored stuff is discontinued laceweight from KnitPicks. I don't know why they got rid of it, but I'm glad I ordered it when I did!
	My favorite of the discontinued Gossamer colors. I look forward to knitting this into something. :)
	Pink is so very much not my color. But it'll be a great gift. :)
	Two hanks dark purple heather. I'm sure I'll find something to do with it.
	This has a pattern and coordinating beads, but it's going to be a while before it works its way to the top of the knitting queue.
	I love this color. I think this is going to need to be rectangular; it's definitely going to be for me.
	I think I have just enough of this to do an Adamas shawl, and if not that, a Diamond Fantasy for sure.
	Leftovers from my Adamas shawl. I'm amazed by how much is left; that shawl really doesn't take a lot of yarn!
	KnitPicks Bare: just when you think you've used it all up, no! There's more! I'll figure out something to do with it. :)
	Some grey Zephyr, probably enough for a very lightweight scarf.
	White Zephyr, enough for… um. I don't know what. :)
	"Rose Garden" seems like such a weird name for this color, but I do like it quite a bit. It's very vibrant and cheerful. Maybe I should do something with this that actually features roses.
	Yarn for the Top Down Purple sweater — Sierra Pacific Glenisla. It's the yarn of the month over at Ben Franklin Crafts here in Redmond, and I'm not sure what I make of it. It's a little rougher than I might like, but then it hasn't been washed or blocked. It is pretty, and it's certainly not too scratchy to work with — a pretty standard texture for a feltable yarn that isn't lucky enough to be Cascade 220. :) I bought seven balls, and the sweater used six (almost precisely). I made the second size, 40″, but it goes from 36″ to 56″. It's a neat pattern, and I'll post pictures of it soon. :)
	Purple yarn for contrast to the above, for the same project. I bought 200g, but only needed 35g. The rest is going into a feltable bag. Or perhaps "feltable bags", plural.
	Swish DK Merlot Heather. I ordered one ball of this so Grant could see if he liked it better than the Cobblestone Heather for a sweater I'm planning to make him. It turned out he did, so I ordered him more of this, and am keeping the Cobblestone Heather for myself. :) :) :)
	The aforementioned Cobblestone Heather. Can't wait to decide on a project for this. :) I have 1845 yards of it, so I basically have plenty for anything I want. :)

And we're done! Shocking yet marvelous!

My birthday's Friday. Can I destash 13,221g of yarn before September 26, 2009?

(Okay. Can I at least come in under 26,441g before 9/26/09?)

I can try!

I'll continue keeping tabs on it as I go. I have one week before my 30th birthday, and on September 26, whatever totals I've got, I'm going to try to be down to half that number by my 31st birthday. As of September 26, 2008, all previous goals are declared null and void — it's all about destashing, baby!

Destashing 12,663 grams of yarn is gonna be tricky. No argument there. The key may end up being making sheep. A lot of sheep. Or hats. I'm only sorry more of my stash doesn't lend itself to sweaters, but it does seem to be mostly two or three balls of any given yarn. Still, I'm not going to let myself get discouraged! I think it can be done. In the first eight months of 2008 alone, I made 39 projects entirely out of stash yarn, including three shawls and a sweater. I can do this!

In the meantime, how about some more stash photos? We have 70 to go, and I'm not going to do them all in one block shot — we've got one more stash post to go (so I'll be finishing right around my birthday, excellent timing). Let's start with sock yarn.

	This might end up being a turtle eventually. It's very turtle-like and pretty!
	…I might have bought this for being a turtle someday? I'm not honestly sure. This may end up getting put in the "trade/sell" category.
	Another option for turtles.
	Cascade Fixation, a wool-free sock yarn — I made socks for someone allergic to wool out of these, and this is what's left over.
	More heresy: I am not fond of Koigu KPPPM. Leftovers from a pair of socks.
	This made some neat socks. I knitted them in Leeds, England, while there for a Highlander convention. :)
	Oh, Regia Mouline, the only kind of Regia I'll buy these days (apart from Regia Silk), because my husband likes it. It's got such great memory, I can see why he's fond of it.
	Leftover Regia Crazy Colors. This has actually been destashed, but I'm leaving it in because I have a story to tell about it! I made socks for my mommy out of this, even though, let's face it, Mom wears flip-flops in the house and not woolly socks, and has done so for the last 25 years. But I was new to the world of knitted objects and had not yet figured out that Mom Likes Hats! (Mom lives in Indiana where it gets cold and snowy in winter. Apparently, one of her hats was actually stolen at one point because someone liked it so much. Now I make her hats every year. :) )
	Austermann Step, with jojoba and aloe! No, really. I'm not sure how that works out, as I have not yet knit with this. I got this yarn in Vancouver, B.C., on a trip where the real find was a ton of Cadbury. I also bought a bag of Smarties, and truthfully, I do still like M&Ms better. But the people in Canada, not being barbarians, appreciate Cadbury. That alone would be worth emigration.
	Fortissima Socka, in a grey that looks a lot like that Regia Mouline. I plan to make socks for Grant out of this, in hopes that he'll like them as much as the Regia ones (this yarn is easier to get; I can get it at the yarn shop that's within walking distance to my house).
	Another yarn I bought with the thought of making turtles.
	Fancy yarns don't usually seduce me, but black/grey ragg (or white/grey, or white/black) is one of my weaknesses.
	Who else got some Essential while it was still kinda scratchy? I did. This is what I call "Essential v1″; it's nowhere near as good and soft as v2.
	More Essential v1.
	Essential v2 in Cocoa. Man, this is nice stuff.
	Essential v2 in Burgundy. Someday I'll make cabled socks out of this and wear them around Christmastime.
	My favorite sock yarn, bar none. It's Essential v2 and it's grey. I don't need anything else.
	Essential v2 in Navy. Grant has been known to accidentally run off with one navy sock and one black sock. Clearly we need more light in our bedroom in winter mornings.
	Essential Meadow Multi. Not sure what I'll do with this, but I will probably make it into socks despite being kind of tired of self-striping sock yarn.
	Felici Pebble. Okay, I may be tired of self-striping sock yarn, but this stuff is gorgeous.
	Essential Dune Twist. Mmmmmm, ragg yarn! R! I say R-A! R-A-G! R-A-G-G! SOCK! R-A-G-G-S-O-C-K RAGG SOCK! Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo! RAGG SOCK! …okay, if you remember that, you win at life. :)
	Black and grey ragg yarn. In Essential. Be still, my beating whatever. ^_^

Okay, there's one more stash post coming, and then I'm FINISHED. See you next week; I'll be turning out the rest of my sock yarn and my laceweight!

First off, say hello to the classic I Really Don't Know Why I Have This Yarn At All yarn, two balls of Maggi's Linen:

Seriously, I have no clue. I guess I thought I was gonna make sheep or something. Anyway, there's 100g of it. I listed it as "will trade or sell" on Ravelry, and 300 people have it stashed, so who knows? It might get picked up. (I destashed some yarn that was listed "trade or sell" last week. AWESOME. For those of you on Ravelry, look here. I will send you that yarn for the cost of shipping. (I know some of it is scraps and some of it is crap yarn, but seriously, I will send you as much as you want for the cost of shipping. Take a look.) Big thanks to Ravelry's NeedleNerd and SleepyCat for helping me destash — a total of 1020g have been destashed thanks to these two! If only I were letting myself count that towards my goal. But no, the rules are set; it's September 26 or bust. Still, that does mean less I'll have to destash after that!)

Anyway, here's the rest of today's mishmash:

	Knit Picks Sock Garden Hydrangea. Yes, I ordered it just for the name. (Hydrangea is kind of an in-joke amongst me and some of my writer friends. You Don't Want To Know. :) ) This is destined to be a felted sheep eventually.
	Happy Feet sock yarn in a lovely brown. But the thing is, I'm kind of done with fancy sock yarn for socks. I'll probably make this into a shawl — it might be a small one, but it'll be pretty. Or I could do the Adamas shawl again; it only takes about 800 yards, so I could manage it easily.
	Knit Picks Memories Rocky Mountain Dusk. Again, it's lovely, but I'm done with pretty sock yarn. I just want plain boring socks at this point. Or maybe lacy ones. Anyway, regardless, Not This In Socks. So another shawl, maybe. I'll probably never get sick of lace shawls.
	Sock Garden Hollyberry. This just screams "Christmas" to me, but in a good way. I'm thinking there need to be some Christmas Sheep made out of this, but they do need a feltable red or green face yarn! I'll probably need to order some Palette to get a good match.
	Gloss Cocoa. Isn't it gorgeous? I don't know what I'll do with it, but no doubt I'll think of something.
	Gloss Dusk. There's an Alice Starmore sweater I want to make out of this.
	Palette Tan. Maybe a Fair Isle hat, with the next one…
	Palette Nutmeg. I actually have two balls of this, but I thought I only had one, so this is the picture I took.
	Matchmaker Merino 4-ply, dark grey. Um. Something. Arm warmers. I don't know.
	See above, only purple!
	See above two, only black!
	Oh, God, I almost don't want to knit with this so much as I want to sleep with it. It's cashmere/silk, and it's gorgeous. I have thought about making steampunk Victorian handwarmers/armwarmers for a couple of friends of mine (one of whom is allergic to wool, and thus, hey, maybe cashmere?), but have yet to find an appropriate pattern. OH MY GOD IT'S SOFT.
	I really haven't got the faintest idea what to do with this. I mean, it's bright white, and I seriously doubt it will hold any dye. Um. Hmm. Ponderponder. But it's quite soft!
	I needed black…
	…and red. I did! No, I'm still not going to say why.

Okay. So, all told, now my totals look like this:

There is so much more sockweight coming you cannot even imagine. There's a ton of laceweight, too. However, much to my surprise, there's only 5435 grams of sockweight and 3335 grams of laceweight — yes, the entire stash is now photographed, uploaded to my gallery, uploaded to Flickr, and entered into Ravelry, ZOMG — and I can say for sure that I have 25,326 grams of yarn total.

I'm really not sure what I'll have by the time my birthday rolls around; if I continue knitting and avoid buying any more yarn, I will probably not have much more to add to the spreadsheet — the only yarn in the house that isn't in here is the ball and a half of blue Shadow that's being made into the Flower Basket shawl, and since I intend to finish that by the time my birthday hits, it may not need to be counted. This said, the Puyallup Fair is going on right now, and I intend to go and look for yarn. :) Maybe I'll have destashed and knitted up enough by then to make it a zero-sum proposition.

It is about time to make a list of Projects I Want To Have Done By December, though. And the Mystery Stole by PinkLemonTwist has started up, and it looks like it's going to be gorgeous — I'm using a grey laceweight called Baruffa Cashwool and some gorgeous purple beads. I'm also getting started on some of the projects I have had on the needles forever (one Baby Surprise Jacket is done, just needs buttons, and if I'm really lucky, I'll have enough yarn for a second), and I need to re-measure myself and figure out which size of the Cable-Down Raglan I'm knitting (I started out knitting one size, but I've lost 15 pounds and a shirt size since then; I may need to rip back a pattern repeat).

Also, if anyone knows how much yardage a Baby Bog Jacket takes, can you let me know? I'd like to use up about 800 yards of Dark Horse Fantasy on it, but I don't know if that's quite enough!

However, luckily for this blog, the recipient (the person who's sewing the squares together) took some pictures of the squares as they came in! Hooray! And so here's the rest of the squares I made for the acrylic/synthetic blanket:

I got thirteen of those suckers done in a weekend, destashed all of my yellow, blue, and red Shine Sport, used up a bit of my Dark Horse Fantasy, and helped complete a blanket. :)

I have also managed to create six wool rainbow squares. Unlike the synthetic blanket, I'm not making squares with interesting stitch patterns; I'm just making stockinette squares and letting the color provide the interesting part. (I'm using leftover yarn from the rainbow sheep.)

Love comes in many colors.

It was ridiculously fun, and as the pictures prove, this is a good house in which to be a sheep:

Do I know what I'm going to do with this shawl? No. Orange is not really my color, so… no, I have no idea. And yet it's finished and it's lovely.

I am really quite proud of it. :) However, the urge to knit lace hasn't gone anywhere. I'm currently working on the Flower Basket Shawl and Mystery Stole 4 (which I'm doing in grey with purple beads, and will be taking pictures of as I work through the clues). Hurry up if you want to join the Mystery Stole 4 group — signups are going on through the 12th and then you're out of luck until the pattern comes out (and it won't be free then).

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!

*
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.

*
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!

*
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:

*
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!

*
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:

*

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.

*
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?

*
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, ÃœnterSchëpenFloppen 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 pictures, download the thing yourself! See how nice the new chart is?)

Seriously, that first printing was the worst chart I've ever worked from, bar none — I'm really glad they reprinted it.

After a couple of days of trying to work on this, though, I realized that what I really wanted was to cast on new lace. Okay. I tried three different patterns before settling on Anya:

Yarn used: Shadow, Campfire, Knit Picks. Needles: 3.75mm… I think.

The sheep in this picture is another of our New Zealand sheep. Look how cute! I don't think this sheep gets enough attention.

Naturally, after I cast on Anya, Interweave Press released The Top 5: The Best of Interweave Knits Readers' Choice Awards as a free download (until May 15th — if it is after 5/15/2008, you're out of luck, guys, so hurry!), and I was overcome with the urge to cast on a Cable-Down Raglan. Only in grey, because everything I knit (that I plan to wear) is grey. Okay, it's not, but I love grey.

Yarn used: Zitron Polo, Grey. Needles: 3.75mm.

This would be Ovistine again (I'm reasonably sure she's modeled on the blog before). I'm 14 rows into the first repeat on the center (and sleeves) cable, and so far so good. It is just possible that I didn't swatch as thoroughly as I should have, but if it's coming out oddly, I can rip back and restart. I have a ton of this yarn, so I'm glad I finally found something to do with it!

Other things on the needles now: Baby Surprise Jacket #2 (bus knitting), Obama socks (I keep not posting a picture of those — it's okay, they're boring navy socks, nothing to see here, move along), and a few hibernating projects (like the Powers of Two blanket). But I'm happy; I got my post in on time today. ^_^