Sheep On My Stuff

I can't say what it was that made me think Adamas shawl, must knit, RIGHTNOWNOWNOW. It could have been the fact that I was dying to knit lace for myself -- not on a deadline. Or the Yarn Harlot's post. Or just the fact that it seemed like it'd be fun.

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).

The windowpane shawl's going great -- so great I'm eyeballing early August for its ship date instead of late August or early September. If I can get it done before I go on vacation (WHOO VEGAS!), I can ship it out then. Otherwise it's staying home; I'm not gonna take it to Vegas, of all places. Who knows what could happen?

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.

You remember how I had a Sneaky Sheep in my flock? Here, I'll refresh your memory:

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. :)

With some creative editing of timestamps, it will even look like I posted this on Tuesday. *ahem*

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

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

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

And here it is in action. :)

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

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

I am a flurry of packing tonight! The shawl is blocked, but it's going to be Tuesday before you get pictures. On the bright side, you'll get pictures of the shawl on me at the wedding for which I knitted the thing. :) Tune in next time for various pictures and exciting things; I promise there will be some. >_> <_<

The Many Happy Returns shawl continues apace!

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know if anyone else pays attention to these things, but I redid my tags and categories over the weekend. I now have tags for broad categories like "socks", "shawls", "wool" and so on, and categories for each individual project, sorted into the top categories of "in progress" and "finished". It makes for easier navigating for me, anyway! (But boy, it sure shows how many projects I've done since I started this blog. And I'm very happy to say I have 31 completed projects and 6 frogged ones vs. 11 in-progress ones. It's better than I've done, historically!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well! I have the Obama socks!

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

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

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

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

The MHR shawl, day 5:

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

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

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

Yes, yes, I finished the Neapolitan grocery bag and have used one of the grocery bags to go shopping and all and WHO CARES?! LACE!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yarn used: About 4 skeins of "Rose Garden", KnitPicks Gossamer.

Though this is a longtime member of the flock, I'm afraid he's a sheep with no name! I am simply calling him "Small Sheep" in the gallery. There are, of course, more pictures of this project in the October 2007 gallery.

This project has been in the works for a while. I've wanted to do this shawl ever since I saw it in Cheryl Oberle's "Folk Shawls", and I know I cast it on eons ago, but when exactly? I'm not sure. At any rate, it only picked up speed once I'd taken a break from the Mystery Stole, which languished and languished and languished, but I finally blocked the sucker on the 24th.

For a while there, I really thought the (Not) Black Shawl was going to be on my needles forever. It starts from the center and spirals out, so you're knitting progressively more and more stitches until your head threatens to explode. Luckily, mine never did. Whew!

I used a number of needles on this project. I started out on DPNs, then moved to 3.75mm Addi Turbos, then changed to 3.75mm Addi Turbo Lace needles, then finally ended up on KnitPicks Options 3.75mm needles, and stayed there, switching out the cable and eventually ending up on a 47". Of these, I have to say that the Options were my favorites. I'm liking them even better than the Addis right now, and that's saying something.

I'd originally wanted to use the Rose Garden colorway because I'd tried it out before on a Pi Shawl and found the spirals of variegated color really endearing. Unfortunately, I really don't like the way it came out on a square shawl. The spiral effect makes for an optical illusion that makes my nice square look kind of crooked. I'm sure most people won't even notice, but it makes me a little batty. This, too, will not be the shawl I keep, and if I make it again, I'll be making it in a solid color.

What else is on needles? Well, a pair of socks that's languishing, and a potential blanket project in which I'll be knitting squares. Apart from that, though, my thirst for lace has not yet given up:

Yarn used: KnitPicks "Shadow" in Jewels Heather. Needles: 3.75mm Options Harmony.

It's the Flower Basket Shawl from this post, modeled this time by Zodiac Sheep. Zodiac Sheep is a little Ty sheep that's meant to represent Aries the Ram, and the year of the ram and such. However, being by Ty, it is not threatening, but rather fluffy, made of pastel colors, with a little bit of glitter. He's a diva ram, that's for sure. I love him. :D

As you can see, it's grown a bit since the last time. I think I had three chart repeats done that time; now I have eight and am working on the 9th. I just wish I could commit the pattern to memory; it doesn't seem to be sticking so far. It's short -- ten rows, five of which are plain purl; 10-st repeat -- but that doesn't seem to be helping me just yet. In any event, I'm enjoying this pattern a lot more than I expected to! The only catch is that I don't know how long my yarn will hold out. I have just two balls of this stuff, and while I've barely made a dent in the first, a full-size shawl will take an awful lot more than 8 repeats, and since this is one of those patterns that gets bigger every row, I won't be able to count my repeats at the end of the first ball and say "Okay, X number of repeats minus one for the edging." I'll probably just start adding a lifeline every repeat when I hit the second ball -- with the Options needles (and that little hole for the key), that should be easy enough. Tip of the needles to Ginger, who passed that idea along to me. :)