Sheep On My Stuff

When Grant and I went to New Zealand in 2005, for all that there were sheep everywhere, there were very few yarn shops that I could find. And the ones I could find were mostly commercial shops with mass-market yarn that I could have gotten at home. :( However, there were a couple of places where I was able to buy handspun yarn local to New Zealand. That was very exciting!

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. :)

Surprise, surprise! I finished something that wasn't a sheep.

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. :)

(This is a quickie makeup post standing in for the post that should have gone up July 3rd. Oops! When I do get caught up, you'll see why I'm behind…)

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. :)

The cross-stitching is still going well, but I couldn't take too much time off from knitting. I started up a Prismatic Scarf, from Feather and Fan. And it's looking nice!

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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!

Like many knitters, I like to knit at the movies. However, I have very few "no-pattern-no-increases-no-decreases" projects right now (I usually do scarves or something), so I hauled one of the few balls of dishcloth cotton I've got left off to the movies with me. After two hours-ish of "21", I had the following:

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. ^_^

This Is A Triumph: Done!
Obama socks: Turning the heel on the first one!
Baby Surprise Jacket: In the works!
Candle Flame Scarf: Resurrected from the WIP chest!

There will be pictures, but I seriously forgot about posting today in the wake of finishing a work project yesterday and getting my epic flying mount in World of Warcraft. Oops! Thursday!

ETA:

Here's the This Is A Triumph wrap sweater!

Yarn used: Microspun, Royal Blue and Mango. Needle size: 4mm.

I was actually told by one person that those are Denver Bronco colors — so I guess this could be a Denver Bronco sweater as well as a Portal Sweater. Makes no difference to me! I'm happy it's finished. :)

A couple of weeks ago I heard about a 20% off sale on all of Ben Franklin's regularly-priced yarn. Since they stock a lot of yarn I like — and I like yarn sales — I went over and looked around at their stuff.

Schaefer Yarns makes some lovely handpainted wool, cotton, and wool/silk yarns, and until then I hadn't had an excuse to try out the wool/silk blend. I finally got the opportunity, because we had a combination of Sale! and SheepLad's Mom's Birthday!

And so I've been hanging onto pictures of this project for a while now, because I didn't want to spoil the surprise. Happy birthday in arrears to my wonderful mother-in-law, who is awesome. :)

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Yarn used: Schaefer Yarns wool/silk in "Eleanor Roosevelt". Needles: 4mm.

It's a gorgeous scarf, and she seems to really like it. :) I might not work with this yarn again, as it was "un-plied" the same way the Soy Wool was, but it felt incredibly soft in my hands as I worked with it, and I'm very happy to have gotten a chance to try it out!

The Bog Jacket continues apace, but I am too lazy to take more in-progress pictures of it. I have, however, passed the 75% mark, and if I can make myself work on more boring garter, perhaps I will finish it this month! (And to think I wanted to have 12 sweaters knit this year. HA. HA HA HA.)

Instead of knitting sweaters, I have been knitting scarves. Let me point you at the following:

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Yarn used: For the Meditation Scarf (red/orange/yellow), Shepherd Multi in Flames by Lorna's Laces, needles 7mm. For the Triple Rib scarf (grey), Wool-Ease in Oxford Grey, needles 5mm.

The sheep modeling the Meditation scarf (on the left, red/orange/yellow) are a pair of wooden sheep with a wool outer coat. Are they doorstops? Footrests? Outdoor sheep? Honestly, I have no clue, but they've been around for years. For a while there, they were my circular needle holders, but that looked messy. And for a while, they lived in the bathtub upstairs, startling both me and SheepLad when we would open the shower curtain to find… SHEEP! (It was the middle bathroom; we don't shower there very often.) Now they live in the library, because we really cannot think of anywhere to put them, but neither do we want to release them into the wild. They have been part of our flock since we lived in Indiana. :)

I have been working on the Meditation scarf since January. I've decided to try meditative knitting, based primarily on the book Mindful Knitting by Tara Jon Manning. The first project is a garter stitch scarf, and the suggested yarn is variegated. I decided to splurge and buy myself some nice new yarn for the project, since all my variegated yarn is acrylic. When I saw the Shepherd yarn from Lorna's Laces (which, by the way, is superwash — not that I can really imagine machine washing this thing, but you could), I thought "ah ha! An excuse to try this yarn out!"

Well, it turns out the Shepherd yarn is gorgeous, glorious, beautiful, fantastic, and lovely to work with. I couldn't be happier about it. :) I took a ton of pictures (one per day's work — I did not successfully get to the meditation knitting every day or it would've been done far sooner), and have linked you to their album. Click on the image to see!

The sheep modeling the scarf on the right — the Triple Rib (grey) scarf — is named Ultra Soft Lamb. That's what F.A.O. Schwartz (in partnership, I can only gather, with Russ Berrie, for there is a smaller sheep that looks just like her made by Russ directly) named her, and that's what we call her. She is, in fact, ultra soft, and she's one of the few sheep who really isn't very anthropomorphized at all. She's got hooves, four legs… lamb shanks, so to speak. But don't worry! She is not on the menu. (Lamb is never on the menu around here. Would you eat kitten? How about puppy? This is how I feel about eating lamb.)

The Triple Rib scarf is based on a pattern from a stitch dictionary (k3 p3 on the right side, p1 k1 on the wrong side), and while I love the pattern to little bits, I'm just becoming less and less fond of Wool-Ease as time goes by. I know the sheep are giving it their best! I know they're contributing all the sheepy glory they can! But, alas, there's not much that can be done. It's still mostly acrylic, and I still don't care for the stuff!

But I care enough about it to try to use up the rest of it in another blanket project. Behold, the Powers of Two blanket:

Yarn used: So far, five different colors of Wool-Ease by Lion Brand. Needles: 4.25mm, subject to change without warning.

You may look at that sheep and think, "Oh, another sheep." But no! That's a special, glorious sheep. That's Pink Pads Sheep (ignore the tag, which reads "Muttons" — what an undignified name for such a wondrous sheep). Pink Pads has the distinction of being the sheep with the largest ego in the entire flock. In my flock, that's one hell of an achievement. All my sheep are awesome, and all of them know how great they are, but Pink Pads sort of takes it to a whole new level. When you hug her? She knows it's because she's the best sheep in all the world. When she sits upon the shelf, she tends to climb to the highest vantage point (on top of the other sheep, don't you know) and survey all the bedroom around her, thinking to herself And they got all this just to impress me! How excellent of them.

Pink Pads claims that she is the only sheep cool enough, fashionable enough, to model such an awesome project as the Powers of Two blanket, and thus I have acceded to her wishes and given her the modeling job.

The Powers of Two blanket is a mitered square project. It's a scrap blanket, all in all. My self-imposed restraint is that each square must have a number of rows/ridges equal to a power of two. So 2² (4), 2³ (8), 2⁴ (16), 2⁵ (32), and so on. (So far the largest squares have 32 ridges, and the smallest have 8. I will probably go as high as 64 or 128, and as low as 4.) The fact that I can work on this project away from home as well as at home is great — I can seam or work in squares as I progress. There will never be trouble finding a place to put them, because each square can fit perfectly in other squares. If all else fails, all I need to do is make tiny squares to fill in room. :) I look forward to seeing how this shapes up; I have a lot of Wool-Ease I can put into this blanket.

I'm back with three projects to show off! Here we go:

Yarn used: Sugar 'n' Cream cotton in purple. Hook used: I (5mm) by Susan Bates/Boyes).

I like loofas. I use a loofa daily. When I saw the crocheted, cotton bath puff, I thought it was kind of a neat idea. And it was indeed fun to crochet! It also used most of a ball of cotton yarn, which was handy — I have tons of that put away in various places. But in terms of usability, not so much. It's heavy, doesn't absorb water well, and doesn't lather much. I'll stick with washcloths. Well, really, I'll stick with my loofa, but sometimes I use washcloths when traveling.

The sheep loofa is decorative only. I wouldn't want to risk destroying a SHEEP! by showering with it too often! And no… that isn't the only sheep loofa in my collection.

Yarn used: Wool-Ease Sprinkles in Burgundy Heather. Needles used: 5mm.

Here's another of my "use up the Wool-Ease" projects. This one's a farrow-rib scarf, and I have to say, farrow-rib is becoming one of my favorite stitch patterns. This is probably kid-sized. The knitting part was finished ages ago; it took me about a month to bother sewing in the one remaining yarn end. Oops.

Not-A-Blanket-Either Lamb is happy to be featured on the blog; her twin brother showed up to model the March of Dimes Blanket, but she hadn't gotten a turn in the spotlight lately. :)

Yarn used: Wool-Ease Sportweight in Wheat. Needles used: 3.75mm.

The second Bog Jacket is working up a lot faster than I'd expected! Given that there's an extra 70 stitches on the needle due to the gauge change, I was expecting it to take forever to get to this point. Instead, I've nearly gotten it done up to the armpits, where I then get to do interesting stuff again. The garter's not so bad, though! It gives me something to do while I read, watch movies, and so on.

Beautiful Sheep is happy to be returning, and bleats that she will volunteer to keep modeling Bog Jackets for as long as I keep making them. I'm not sure if that's a vote of confidence or not. *eyes sheep suspiciously*

So I've decided to modify my stashbusting/WIP-completing goal for the year (seen here).

• Old goal: "work or throw out one in-progress project for every two new projects I start"
• New goal: Complete, frog, or throw out 1.5 projects for every 1 project I start.

1.5? Well, it's a ratio, and the point is merely to finish more than I start (rather than to finish only half as much as I start, as was the previous goal, or to finish as many as I start, which is only keeping even). So far, my ratio is 10:13 (or 0.8:1), which is not so great. But I did toss or frog four projects I was never going to complete over the weekend, which bumped up my stats and cleared out one of the secret caches in which I store my stash. Ideally, by the time we hit the midway point for the year, I will have cleared the yarn caches out of every room except the yarn room (which is where the yarn stash belongs), and the yarn room will be clean instead of having yarn piled on the futon.

Don't get me wrong; I love having a stash. But my stash contains a lot of yarn I don't love, and I'd like to be able to rotate out yarn I don't love in favor of yarn I do love. I'd also like it more organized. And, oh yeah, on Ravelry. But a smaller yarn footprint is one step towards all of that (or so I hope), and thus I am going to try to keep completing projects just a little faster than I start them.

It looks nice.

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Yarn used: Soy Wool Stripes by Patons, in "Natural Earth". F-. Would not use again. Needles: 4.25mm by Boyes. Don't buy the size 6 needles expecting them to be 4mm just because it says so on the label — it ain't so.

It's just that… well, this yarn has Issues. It splits (it's not plied per se), and then there's the color factor. The stripes are very, very pretty — but you also have to match them up precisely.

Which would be easier if the yarn didn't have constant breaks (cemented together by knots). And the breaks wouldn't be so awful if they didn't tend to splice the yarn together at random color points. Or, sometimes, you get a really awful spit-splice in the middle of your yarn that triples the width of a black stripe. Or two colors that aren't in sequence might get matched up. Seriously. This blew, and the first one wasn't a picnic, either. I won't be buying this yarn again, and I can't recommend it to you guys, either. Patons? EPIC FAIL.

The remnants of three balls of yarn. There's about another eight inches of stripes here — but not in a sequence I can use to extend the length of the scarf as it is.

On the bright side, FloppenCousin is extremely cute.

"Yes, I made this scarf!" says FloppenCousin. "Or at least I am posed very attractively with it." (Actually, she said "Baa! Baa baa baa? Baa! Baa baa! Baa baa baa baa!" — so I am translating.

It's hard not to forgive a project when a cute sheep is atop it.