Sheep On My Stuff

Sometimes self-striping yarn gives you a perfect, awesome, amazing pattern.

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!

...the Many Happy Returns shawl is done, and tomorrow I will block it! (I'll take pictures then.)

...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!

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.

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. :)

First, the part of a scarf:

Yarn used: Lion Brand Wool in Blue and Orange. Needles: 4mm.

This sheep hails from the mall. She comes from a baby store, and is actually the third of her family to join the flock. There's another one who looks just like her but happens to be twice her size, and there's the original, who has been in the flock just over a year, and is holiday-themed. She has earmuffs (though, strangely, they are not on her ears) and a nice red-and-white scarf. I may need to knit scarves for the other sheep sometime soon.

The pattern... well, it's being improvised, and it's double knitting, which is new to me. I'm not sure how it's going, but at least I haven't ripped it out yet.

Yarn used: Essential in Shale Multi, KnitPicks. Needles: 2.5mm.

I cannot for the life of me remember where this sheep came from, which makes me think it was probably a present from my parents. :) I just keep looking at this picture and going "AWWWW!" So. Cute.

I wish I had even the faintest clue what I was doing with the socks. So far I got nothin'. I'm sure I'll figure it out once I'm done with the ribbing section.

Yarn used: Lion Brand Microspun in Silver Grey. Needles: 4.5mm.

This sheep plays music, much like Twinkle Sheep, but I can't remember what song. I know it's not "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." It might be "Mary Had A Little Lamb." (A not-very-surprising number of musical sheep play that one.

So this project has a bit more story than most. A friend of mine recently had a baby -- two months early! While in the midst of reading about her adventures as the brand-new mom of a preemie, I got a knitting newsletter whose charity of the month happens to be a knitting program for premature babies. I'm not knitting for that specific charity -- it's in Iowa and I was hoping for something more local -- but I did a bit of research and found that the local chapter of the March of Dimes collects blankets and other knitted items for preemies, and that Microspun is one of the preferred fibers, as it's very soft and machine-washable.

I have issues with acrylic yarn. It hurts my hands to work with it, and I'm not fond of it. However, like most knitters, I cut my teeth on it, and so I still have some left in my stash here and there. I happen to have just enough of this to make a nice blanket (and, honestly, might have enough left over to make some tiny preemie caps), and I'm very happy to be able to get it out of my stash. (At some point, I may break down and collect all my leftover acrylic and take it to Goodwill, where knitters who are looking for a bargain and don't mind acrylic will hopefully find it and take it home.)

At any rate, the pattern is a very simple k10/p10 (repeat for a total of 160 stitches), 14 rows per square. I eyeballed the height, but that should be about right -- they may be just a little long. I plan to do a couple of rows of single crochet around the edge when I'm done with the knitting; it curls just a teeny tiny bit, since the squares are stockinette, and that should even it out some.

Musical Sheep is in fact sitting on a crocheted project of mine. I can take a picture if anyone's interested in an ancient crocheted blanket. It is really very cool-looking. :)

There are still three projects hiding around my house that I haven't gotten onto the blog, so if I don't make significant progress on my current WIPs by Tuesday, that's what you'll be seeing. >_> With any luck, I'll finish up the blanket, at least, and maybe pick up another one of my languishing WIPs.

Two finished pairs of socks this time!

First up, there's the Regia 4-ply mouline socks in brown. (You may remember them from the post on WIPs or this post on socks.) They're finally done! Here are a couple of pictures...

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Yarn used: Regia 4-ply mouline in brown. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Modeled here by a mom and two lambs, and then that small Ty sheep, who bleats that there should be some continuity in pictures of sheep and projects; I'll try to take pictures of projects with the same sheep throughout all the parts of their creation.

Then there's the pair of brown socks that I found 1/4 of the way done in a drawer, oops that I just finished. These are for me, and took a surprisingly short amount of time once I got them out of the drawer.

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Yarn used: Essential by KnitPicks, in Cocoa. Needle size: 2mm.

Modeled here by a Russ Berrie sheep I call Woola; she's part of a family whose tags all proclaim them "Woolo", but seems much more a ewe than a ram, and anyway we have several Woolos. It's good to be individual, even in a flock. :)

Now, as for goals for the new year:

I've decided I want to start working up some of the stash. I have a very nice room in my house devoted to stash yarn, and a lot of nice little boxes to keep yarn in. Yarn should, therefore, not be taking over the rest of the house. (A lofty goal that I bet few of us, craft room or no, can actually achieve.) In the interests of working with the stash (and after all, I love the yarn, or why else would I have it?), this year I plan to:

• work two stash projects for every one new-yarn project

• work or throw out one in-progress project for every two new projects I start

This gets sort of complicated when I have an in-progress project that needs another ball of yarn (that's new yarn, but it's a WIP! But...), but I'll figure out how to work it as I go.

The two projects above are languishing WIPs, which means I could start up to four new projects under my own rules. ^_^ But I have so many WIPs hanging around -- and I finally seem to have the desire to finish them -- that I'm just going to hold onto those "new project" vouchers until I can't resist anymore. :)

I also have a non-knitting-related goal for the year: a fitness goal! This year I'd like to get into shape and run my first organized 5k. In fact, I'd like to run a lot more than one. :) For every organized 5k I run this year, someone's getting a sheep. I'll be donating a sheep to a family via Heifer International every time I finish an organized 5k.

How am I doing so far? Well, I'm working through the Couch to 5k running plan. I'm halfway through week 4, although I've actually gotten as far as week 7 in the past. I'm really motivated this time around, and I look forward to tracking my progress. I'll be updating the fitness goal page as I go, so check there for updates. :)

Yarn used: Essential by KnitPicks, in Burgundy. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Ta da! I have a finished pair of ankle socks. The leg length is perfect -- 4" seems to do the trick, even though it looks far longer than ankle-height on the needles. I am quite pleased with them, even though I had to rip back parts of the second sock twice. Both times were a matter of symmetry, which is something I don't normally have to do for the plain socks I make, but becomes more important when you're working a pattern of some variety.

Anyway, now that these are out of the way, I have two other pairs of socks to finish and a shawl to bring out of hibernation. The timing couldn't be nicer on these socks, though. It's cold today, and I am happy to have a finished project and a warm pair of socks on my feet.

Well, the ankle socks from last time turned out... badly. Badly enough I only knit one sock and then gave up. So poor Douglas doesn't get to model a finished object as well as the socks in progress. She protested (bleating at me as I tossed out the failed sock, and then bleating louder and more indignantly as I revived a newly-found pair of socks), and so I have brought her back to model a pair of red socks in progress:

Yarn used: Essential by KnitPicks, in Burgundy. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Douglas bleats that she's happy to be back, and promises to convince me to model the socks in a slightly more interesting fashion when I have them finished.

It's a pretty standard pattern -- 2x2 rib down the leg for four inches, then one of those heel flaps where you do s1 k1 across and p across the next row. Ribbing continues on the top of the foot. Toe is kitchenered.

I actually found this pair of socks in a closet, with about 2" done on the second sock. I was immediately overcome with the need to finish the second sock, so despite the fact that I have two other pairs of socks in progress -- not to mention a shawl, dammit -- this one got bumped to the top of the queue.

Two other pairs of socks in progress: one of them has been resurrected from the knitting queue, where it's been langushing a while. It's a simple pair of socks, this one for SheepLad. Made of a brown "mouline" yarn from Regia, it's an attempt at recreating his favorite pair ever of handknit socks.

Yarn used: Regia 4-ply mouline in brown. Needle size: 2.5mm.

Small Ty Sheep returns (from the post on Current WIPs, which are not so current anymore), bleating insistently that she didn't get a finished project picture, either, and therefore deserves another shot at the spotlight. Since I like to keep my flock happy, I went ahead and posed her with SheepLad's socks-to-be. (Sock-to-be?) We'll check in with her again when I've made some more progress on the socks.

After a few projects with 2mm sock needles, 2.5mm feels huge. And to think I used to work exclusively on 3mm Inox dpns. :) My last pair of socks -- no picture yet -- is another pair of ankle socks in a white/black ragg yarn from Regia. I think that one's on 2mm needles, but I'll need to check again when I'm taking pictures.

I've been busy!

Last time I mentioned I was working on a mystery project. It's not that much of a mystery if you link right to it, though, and now that the project is done and in the mail, I feel good about posting about it. So:

Helmet Liners, for Operation: Helmetliner. Yarn used: Brown is Chestnut, Wool of the Andes, KnitPicks; Olive is Deep Olive, Classic Wool Merino, Patons; Grey is Pearl Grey, Lion Wool, Lion Brand.

The sheep so nicely modeling the helmet liner is Bridal Sheep, who spent several years wearing a "Bride-to-Be" veil that I had somehow gotten when I was engaged to SheepLad. The veil eventually got passed to another of my friends, and the sheep... you know, I'm not sure if she ever did get married. She's a very heavy, sturdy sheep, and so she spends a lot of time in the summer sitting in the doorway, making sure our door doesn't slam shut.

This was an awesome project. It's quick, it used up some stash yarn (okay, I went out and sampled two kinds of yarn that weren't in the stash because I was curious how they were to work with!), and it's for a good cause. The pattern took a little bit of fussing at the very end, but for the most part it was very easy. I ended up doing the decreases with a combination of the two-circulars method and the magic loop method, as it turns out, and oh man, I might not want to do the magic loop for socks (too much work), but I love it. I might have to keep it in mind for small things like hats and such in the future.

After the helmetliners -- five of them! -- I wanted to start up the Sea Turtle project from Kath Dalmeny's World of Knitted Toys. But the truth is, I wanted a tortoise, not a sea turtle, so I decided to start improvising my own pattern:

Yarn used: Essential sock yarn from KnitPicks in tan, brown, and black.

The sheep there on my desk is a tiny little plastic sheep, possibly related to Pokemon in some way. It was a gift from my dad! It lives on the desk full-time, near one or the other of the monitors.

I suppose you can't really see the scale on this project, but that's sock yarn being knit on 2mm needles. As a result, it was hurting my hands a bit, and I was improvising the pattern, and it was making me slightly nuts, so in a fit of desire to do something that didn't require a pattern...

Yarn used: Trekking XXL, as if you can't see that!

I started socks. I like ankle socks, so I can get several pairs of socks out of one large ball, or one pair of socks for sure out of a smaller ball.

The sheep so happily modeling the sock and the sock yarn is a little black-faced Suffolk ewe named Douglas. Why is a ewe named Douglas? I don't know. I'm sure she's a girl, but her tag proclaims her name to be "Douglas", and unlike the sheep I have named "Muttons" and "Jiggles", I don't think that name's objectionable, even for a ewe. So she's named Douglas. That's all right; my favorite fictional astrophysicist genius is really named Meredith.

But the socks, the socks. You know, strangely enough, I don't have second sock syndrome. It's the first sock that trips me up. If I finish the first, I'm very, very motivated to finish the second, because then I'll have a pair. Until the first is done, though, I just have yet another knitting WIP.

In this case, thwarting my own desire to do something pattern-free, I decided to experiment with a different kind of heel shaping. I'm doing an afterthought heel on this one, which I've done only a couple of other times before, ever, and I'm not sure how I'll like it. What I really want to try out is a short row heel, which I think would be terrific, but I haven't found good instructions for that yet, and I'm not ready to strike out on my own!

Hopefully next time I'll have a finished pair of socks and some more progress on either the Flower Basket Shawl or the Tortoise. Happy bleatings!