Sheep On My Stuff

Sheldon the Turtle is finished, and almost unbearably cute!

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:

Since my goal is to destash and not to finish a certain ratio of projects vs. starting them, I've felt free to start the occasional project when the whim takes me. Even so, I wasn't expecting this to be my post for today--

--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!

Of all the things in the world to knit, I've found my favorite.

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. :) )

It's Trisia again -- and she's back with a finished epic elekk!

Smile for the camera, girls!

Yarn used: Lion Brand Microspun in Lily White, Royal Blue, and (now discontinued) Silver Grey. Hook used: G (4.25mm).

The pattern (as noted last time) is from Lion Brand (registration required), but now that you can see the finished elekk, you can see all my modifications. It's the legs, the tusks, the helmet, saddle, and banners that make her an elekk, and I left off a lot of the detail. Still -- very cute, no?

 Also in the works: a new scarf (same as the old scarf):

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Yarn used: SWS [Soy Wool] from Patons. Needle size: Supposedly 4mm, from Boyes, but it is a LIE. They're closer to 4.25mm.

Last time I posed ÜnterSchëpenfloppen with the scarf; now I'm posing the scarf with FloppenCousin, a close (but larger) relative. The pattern is the same (Farrow Rib), and the colorway is the same (Natural Earth). This scarf is being done by request, and unless someone else I really love wants something made out of this fabric, that's it for me -- it splits even more than Microspun, which is saying something! Still, it's very soft and looks really nice.

Yarn used: The now-discontinued Merino Light in maroon (#8 on the color card). Needles used: US10.5 -- 6.5mm.

Beautiful Sheep bleats hello!  Here's our check-in to see how I'm doing on the Bog Jacket. Answer: Quite well; I'm nearly up to the bit where I split off the arms and add some more stitches to the arms. It stopped being mindless garter when I had to do waist shaping (waist shaping is my friend, since I have a quite large bustline and quite small waist), and I'm sort of sorry for that, as I was enjoying having something I didn't have to look at at all. But it seems to be working out nicely, and the yarn is much, much nicer-looking on 6.5mm needles than it was on 4.5mm needles.

Thursday I hope to have a finished SWS plus a bit of progress on that Bog Jacket.  Maybe something exciting like the arm-dividing bit?  We'll see.

I don't know if I'm still on track for my goal of stash yarn-to-new yarn and new project-to-old project ratios. Certainly not after today.

Yarn used: Microspun by Lion Brand in Silver Grey (now discontinued), Royal Blue, and Lily White. Crochet hook used: G (4.25mm).

The black sheep is Trisia (of New Zealand, courtesy the Russ Berrie Co.!), named for my mage in World of Warcraft. I don't have a sheep named after one of my Draenei, because I have only two -- Teuthida, who is one of my two main characters (and a shaman), and Ovilya, who is a hunter... and L19. And Draenei are so... tentacle-y. They just don't seem like sheep to me.

Anyway, in WoW, Draenei can ride on giant elephant-like creatures called elekks. Teu's elekk has blue accents -- armor plating, really -- on all four legs, head, sides, and back. I'll be posting a screenshot for comparison when I'm done -- and while it may look like I'm done, trust me, I'm not even close!

This project was primarily started to use up the grey Microspun I had remaining (about a ball and a half, and I used about 3/4 of a ball on this -- the grey bits are almost if not completely done). I then realized I had the perfect blue to match Teu's elekk's barding, and thought, "Ooh! I could make it an elekk and not just an elephant!"

...which meant I needed white yarn. Doh. (Put this in both the "stash project" and "new yarn project" piles.)

Anyway, you can't see it in this picture, but he is missing two legs -- they're crocheted, just not attached. He's also missing tusks, a hat-piece, and a saddle. I may or may not add the horns (yes, they have horns as well as tusks) and I doubt I'll get very elaborate with the back and shoulder barding, but we'll see. Tusks, hat, and backpiece, and I'll be happy. I am very pleased with the leg stripes.

It turns out I actually started crocheting before I started knitting, but I seldom do it anymore. But once in a while I see a really cute crochet pattern and must try it out. If you're interested, this one is from the Lion Brand website. You need to register, but once you've done so, you can find the pattern here.

Yarn used: The now-discontinued Merino Light in maroon (#8 on the color card). Needles used: 10 point freaking 5 -- 6.5mm. This feels crazy huge after all the socks.

This next project doesn't look like much in the picture, but that's okay -- it doesn't look like much yet at all! It's a Bog Jacket, from the book pictured. The idea is you take a "square" of fabric and make strategic cuts to make a jacket, but in knitting you can do it without all the messy cutting, and with invisible seams. I started this before, actually, but on size 7 needles. I took a good hard look at the project and decided that the fabric was much too stiff. It's looser now and has much more give to it, plus the yarn is going further, obviously, which is a bonus -- because this is stash yarn (yay) and I've only got 15 (very small put-ups) balls of it. However, I do think I'll make it.

The sheep pictured is named Beautiful Sheep. She's one of the oldest ones in my flock, from Bloomington, Indiana. She's actually made by Gund, as are many of my fine sheep.

A friend of mine in WoW saw the original Hedgehog the Grey and offered to do a craft exchange with me. E makes little bags, and so I now have a new bag to keep my knitting accessories in!

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Knitting bag for me!

Look at all the sheep. :) The sheep next to the bag is Ovistine, who is named for one of my most-often-played WoW characters. Then there are the sheep on the bags, and finally there's the sheep in the bag -- a measuring tape! Pull her tail and you get a measuring tape; squeeze her tummy and it retracts. Somehow I have only two of these sheep, but they are of course my favorite measuring tapes.

Here's the hedgehog I knitted, in various stages of completion:

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Yarn used: Cascade 220 for the dark brown, Wool of the Andes in Chestnut for the paws, and Lion Brand Fun Fur for the "spines".

As you can see, felting shrinks a project a good deal (and here we have a good argument for using the same sheep throughout the photography process!). The pen sheep... I have no idea where she came from, but it's not the only pen/sheep combination I have. This one lives in the study, in a pencil cup, near other desk sheep. :)

Next up: Holiday (and later) scarves!

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!

I got the "Huggable Hedgehogs" pattern from FiberTrends for my birthday from a couple of my World of Warcraft friends, complete with yarn and stuffing and whatnots. :) Here are the results:

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To the left, pre-felted hedgehog; to the right, post-felted/stuffed/face-added hedgehog! Same sheep in both pictures for size comparison. Yarn used: Cascade 220 for the grey wool, an inadvertent scrap of Wool-Ease for the black, and I'm afraid I can't recall what the eyelash yarn is. Eyes and nose are the small plastic kind that you poke in from the front and secure with a button thingy.

I'm terribly pleased with how he came out. He's cute and soft and fluffy!

The sheep in these images is a Russ sheep, one of my favorites. He's about a handful worth of sheep, and usually lives on my bedframe. :) I can't remember where we got him, but I think he's a post-Seattle sheep.

Now for the other thing I've been working on (in addition to the Flower Basket Shawl, which looks much the same as last time):

Yarn used: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, Chestnut. A little over a skein so far.

It looks kind of like a misshapen lump, doesn't it? Well, hopefully it'll be out of that uncomfortable adolescence soon and headed toward the finishing stages, because I've got yarn for about four more of these in that brown, plus one or so in light grey and one in drab olive (all different 100% wool yarns). What is it? I'll give you a hint in the form of a link. Next time I should have it done, and the next one will probably be on needles.

The sheep in this picture is another sheep from Russ Berrie. Russ makes wonderful sheep! This sheep always seems to be offering a flower (and he's not the first sheep in the collection who looks like that). I think it makes for a very spring lamb-type look, but it decidedly isn't spring anymore! Indeed, we are getting into winter, and I plan on getting socks going again soon. SheepLad needs warm feet! :)