Sheep On My Stuff

Grant and I have often talked about having me knit us Christmas stockings. The ones we have are velour and quite plain. So in a last-minute burst of energy, I knit Grant an argyle stocking -- which required kicking him out of the downstairs for the last three or so days before Christmas so I could finish it in private. >_>

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. :)

I did not do so well taking pictures this year! I'm afraid all I can say is that I did this hat in this yarn:

And it was lovely! :)

Here's one of my mystery projects! I knit a lovely lace shawl for my cousin Kristen. It's in the undyed equivalent of Gloss Lace from KnitPicks, and it took precisely three skeins (although I don't believe I got the recommended number of repeats out of it). The pattern is "Kimono Shawl" from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls, one of my favorite shawl books:

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!

It is, however, marginally a sheep:

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...)

The trouble with the holiday knitting crunch time is that I can't post anything about what I'm currently knitting -- which leaves me with little to blog about. (Also, am deathly busy with knitting projects -- not so busy as to be run ragged at the edges, but busy enough to think zomg can't take the time to do a book review for the blog, must knitknitknit!)

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. :)

...spill root beer on a current project...

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!

I have recently become incredibly enamored of entrelac. I love the little triangles, I love knitting backwards (I'm doing that instead of turning my work), I love the interlaced look and feel, I love how variegated yarns look when knit in entrelac, and of course, I love how cute sheep are when holding entrelac-in-progress.

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!

I present to you a quickie two-day using-up-the-stash project: SPIRALING PASTELS OF DOOM!

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. :)

Most of the knitting I have scheduled to finish by the end of the year is done -- just two more projects to go. Unfortunately, I keep screwing the one I'm working on the hell up, thusly:

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!

I love my custom sheep dearly! I especially love it when a design particularly lends itself to the vertical stripes found on a sheep. And after totally blanking on doing this for months and months and months, I have finally gotten it together and collected the directions for these sheep mods!

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!