The kettle-dyed Wool of the Andes wasn't quite colorfast (I am still not sure all the loose dye came out, though it does not appear to have shed onto Grant's shirt), so it took forever, but eventually the sweater was complete. And today (his first day back to work since the blocking was finished), he even wore it. Awwwww. What a sweetheart.

Grant models his birthday sweater!

(Yet another bad cell phone picture, this one from the iPhone. We're just out of luck on cameras lately.)

He appears to like it! We're currently pondering which sweater will be his holiday sweater from me. Now that I've gotten started making sweaters, I don't seem inclined to stop. :)

It's also hard to say, because some days I work on a project for ten minutes here, half an hour there, and other times I am literally slamming out stitches as quickly as I can for as many hours as my hands will put up with it. That's been the case yesterday and today (although today I had to go run errands as well). And 4.5 st/1" still knits up hella fast. So:

2009 Birthday Sweater, Day 2

It's almost impossible to tell scale and progress here, but the sweater is finished (save for some weaving under the armpits — sixteen stitches per side) up to about 3" above the armpits. The cables on the sleeves are going to go all the way up to the collar, and they're mirror images of each other. (I am very proud of myself for not having screwed them up yet; cables are kinda new for me, but now that I've been working them on this project and they've been turning out so well, I'm hungry for MORE MORE MORE.) All measurements indicate that this should fit, although if it's a bit snug, this particular sort of wool will block a little big.

I've been experiencing so much pattern scatteredness lately — I keep starting projects and starting projects and starting projects, and finishing nothing. It's nice to have something where I've just been able to work it and see it coming together almost instantly under my hands. I just hope it looks as good on Grant as it does on the needles, because it is really looking pretty great on the needles!

Also, I'm sort of envious. Now I want one of these for myself! Except that my version would need side shaping, bust darts, and a V-neck, and I'd probably give it cables up the front, too. Maybe next project… hmm… maybe I should order yarn. >_>

I do not know how the seed stitch blanket project is going; haven't measured it lately. It is still on the needles, and I am approaching the end of The Largest Single Continuous Ball Of Yarn I Have Ever Had In The House (due to splicing from the project I unraveled to start the seed stitch blanket). It is finally cold enough I'm excited about working on it, though!

I have several (new) pairs of socks on the needles, and am thrilled about them all. :)

However, my whole world is currently being consumed by the following project. (Sorry for the horrible cell phone picture; our camera batteries are all refusing to recharge…)

Grant's birthday sweater, 2009, after one day of work.

This is what's known as "last-minute birthday insanity". My adorable Grant is more than a little hard to shop for, and I had thought I didn't have time to knit him a birthday present. But then this morning I had a flash of inspiration, figured out what I wanted to knit, and knew I had the right yarn in the house for the job. What's more, that yarn knits up at 4.5 st/1", which makes it a quick-knitting project.

I had never really thought of myself as a fast knitter, but it seems that when a deadline is looming and I have a dozen episodes of Enterprise to catch up on, I can really move. ^_^ The sweater currently has half its body (up to the armpits) and 1.25 sleeves (up to the armpits); the worrisome part is that at the armpit point, I will be about halfway done. I still think I can do it, but a.) not secretly (which would require me to stop knitting when Grant is home), and b.) I won't be able to have it washed and blocked by the actual birthday, which is unfortunate, because it will definitely require both (the yarn is not quite colorfast).

On the other hand, he seems quite enthusiastic about it, and the cable on the sleeves is the only complicated thing about it; the rest is so easy I can do it while reading. (I've been reading the World of Warcraft comic — I didn't realize the Varian Wrynn storyline was written by Walter Simonson. o_O And I've been reading Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden and only haven't been throwing it across the room repeatedly because it's on my Kindle, which wouldn't tolerate such treatment.) I'll still take good-luck wishes, though. XD

More or less. What was wrong with it? Well, the thing people say about flat gauge being different from in the round gauge turned out to be really true on this project. I stared at the different yoke and sleeve gauges for a couple of days trying to decide if I could live with it, and eventually the answer was no.

So I ripped back, went down a needle size for the yoke, and voila! It looks great. I just wish it'd looked this great the first time around.

This is the part where I repeat "I'm a process knitter, I'm a process knitter" and that I like the act of knitting every bit as much as the finished project… but I'm awfully glad to be nearing the end of the sleeves/yoke part, I have to say.

In celebration, today he got a gorgeous sweater and a surprise pair of socks. :D Here are the socks:

Yarn used: Knit Picks Essential Oak Kettle-Dyed. Needle size: 2.5mm.

The pattern's improvised to be ribbed down the leg with ribbing on the top of the foot as well. I finally have his stitch/row count down (75 rounds ribbing, 60 rounds on the foot, 64 stitches), which means I can improvise in the future. I'm curious how the ribbing on the top of the foot will work out for him; I think it'll be a nice way to keep the sock snug.

And of course, the sweater!

My dashingly handsome husband in the sweater:

Yarn used: Swish DK in Merlot Heather. It took just over 13 balls, just under 14. It's knit in the smallest size. Grant normally wears a medium. It blocked just a wee bit longer than anticipated.

and a closeup of JUST the sweater:

and detail on the pattern:

I am pretty absurdly proud of the seams:

It looks great on the inside, though I don't have any pictures of that. But I would show this to any knitter in the world and be perfectly proud of my work, inside and out.

And because he loves me, he was willing to pose with a sheep to fit the theme of my knitting blog:

This is the Wondrous Woven Cabling (by Nancy Marchant) pattern from Arans & Celtics: The Best of Knitter's Magazine, and it was lovely to work! I also want to credit, as always, The Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques by Nancie Wiseman. For you Ravelers:

I love you, honey! Happy 8th anniversary, and may we have as many years together as life extension technology can possibly provide us! :)

The sleeves are done and blocking and still damp. I keep wanting to go in there with a hair dryer, but I know better! I'm so close to having Grant's sweater done — and he's been going to work in sweaters this week, because it's been so cold! Aaaaaaaa!

I said before I was going to use all that lovely Cobblestone Heather we bought for a sweater for me, but screw that. If he's willing to wear sweaters I make after all this time, I am so knitting him another one.

I originally had — I thought — sixteen balls of Merlot Heather. I have 12 ball bands for sure from used balls, and there's a half-ball left with which I'll be doing the neckline and sewing seams, plus two full balls after that. That makes 15 — which means either one ball has gone entirely missing, or I tossed a ball band before I realized I wanted to hang on to them for easy yarn tracking (which is more than possible). I'm going to assume that I did, in fact, use up that missing ball, which means I have now used 13.5 balls of yarn on this sweater, or nearly 14 balls (nearly 1722 yards) of DK-weight yarn by the time I'm through. Whoa. That's a lot of yarn! Almost a mile! You can imagine I'm pretty thrilled about what this does to my stash totals (using up nearly 700g for a single sweater = WIN).

It does leave me with a little extra yarn, with which I'll probably make a hat of some kind. :) But not until after I finish most of those mystery projects. Man, there are a lot.

It's not that I haven't tried. Oh, I've tried. However, perhaps part of the problem is that I was trying to knit him sweaters with leftover bits of Wool-Ease. Which is 80% acrylic, and not colors he was really excited by ("Hey, I have 14 balls of Woods print! You like Woods print, right?" "…").

So this time I made him grope my yarn in order to pick out a fiber, and we went to the website to look at colors together, and then I ordered some of the tentative first choice and one ball of the tentative second choice. Of course, that meant the second choice came in first, and so I ordered more of that. :D

Then we needed to find a pattern. And you know something that this whole process has taught me? Don't give people too many choices. Seriously. If I thrust three types of wool at him and say "pick one!", then it's easy for him to make a decision. If I gave him one ball of every kind of fiber in my stash, there's no way he could make a choice. Looking at colors wasn't tough — there were a lot of colors, but only a few were of interest. Then we narrowed it down to two — and again, it was very easy to make a choice between two colors.

As I was saying, then we needed to find a pattern. I suggested a couple different things — plain? Textured? Cables? Grant said that he liked Aran patterns. Armed with the knowledge that too many choices is kinda dangerous, I grabbed up my copy of Arans & Celtics, marked five or so patterns I thought he'd like, and showed them off. They got responses like "No", "No", "No", and "Hey, that's kind of neat", and finally "Oh! I like that — would you like knitting that?"

\o/ \o/ \o/

And so I have begun! I have completed the back piece and started on the front piece. At that point, it's two sleeves and a lot of seaming. In the interest of making the seaming really easy on myself, I have added two knit stitches of selvage per side on each piece. (In retrospect, I could have knit this in the round, but I was being cautious.) I'll want to block the pieces before trying to seam them. (I may end up blocking the back piece today, since it's done and I want to see what it'll look like blocked.)

The only alteration (besides the selvage stitches) is that I've done the shoulders in short-rows, and rather than binding them off, I plan on doing a three-needle bind-off. However, instead of just picking up stitches for the collar, I really did bind them off. I'm trying to remember who it was that pointed out that a bind-off at the collar is done for a reason, to add stability to a sweater. Ah ha! It was the Yarn Harlot. I have been there and done that with neck bind-offs, and I will not repeat that mistake this time!

So far so good. The sheep are helping.

I'm really happy with it. It's made with Sierra Pacific Glenisla, a 100% wool, feltable yarn which happened to be the Yarn of the Month at my favorite LYS. The pattern, worked from the top down, was really easy to follow and involved no (!) seaming. And, most importantly for me, it fits properly! (I made the 40" version; there's a smaller one at 36", and it goes up to 56".) I was a little worried about that, because I'm short, and knitting it for the first time, I had no idea how I would go about shortening the thing — it's not constructed in a simple manner, as you can see.

The yarn could be nicer. It's just a little on the scratchy side, and I'm going to try washing it to see if that helps any. As for the pattern itself, I'd like more waist shaping — another thing that I didn't have any idea how to implement the first time through. It looks kinda bulky from behind on me.

But ultimately, it makes me really happy. :) I'm really pleased with the way it came out, and I might be tempted to make it again at some point — but there are so many things out there I'd like to knit that repeating a project seems silly until I've gotten through some others. My Ravelry queue is 117 items long, for heck's sake! And I have three projects on needles, and two I haven't started that have early December deadlines.

I also have a bit of leftover yarn from this sweater project, and an idea in my head for a felted bag to make with it. I'm looking forward to seeing if I can make it come out the way it looks in my head. :)

Clockwise from bottom left, you can see a stack of books I'm currently reading ("Communicating In Sign" is on top — I've been taking an ASL class at my local community college, and have been reading as much ASL/Deaf culture stuff as I can get my hands on). This is not all the books I'm reading. This is just the two books I am reading that are stashed in the bedroom. There are three books I'm reading in the study, two in the middle bathroom, three in the back bathroom, and a pile downstairs waiting to be tackled. It's kind of like a sickness, a ravenous appetite. Unfortunately, reading this many books at once results in not finishing anything at all. I need to buckle down and start finishing things!

Piled between the books and the alarm clock are my abacus bracelets and a couple of stitch markers.

Next is my alarm clock, with lamp on top. Yep, the lamp lives on top of the alarm clock. Why not — it fits! The clock is one of those things that will play CDs (that's why it's big and flat like a sandwich) and has two wake-up times, though right now we're only using one. It also has different settings for weekday and weekend, so we don't have to remember to turn it off over the weekend and turn it back on during the week. I usually wake up about five minutes before the alarm goes off.

Hand lotion in the back; useful when you're knitting and have dry skin.

Black object is a rear speaker. Yes. It lives on my nightstand. I suppose we could put them on the floor… or something… but the nightstand is where they have always lived.

Far back corner is a Kleenex box. All hail Puffs Plus With Lotion. It saves my nose every time I get a cold.

Foreground, in front of speakers: three sheep. There may be a fourth sheep hidden under the knitting project. They're sneaky, sheep.

Foreground, right: knitting project and its chart. I recently switched it to a 32" needle instead of a 24" needle. I may need to switch it right back when the sleeve stitches get put on holders. I also just tried it on (it's top-down and the stitches get put on thread) to see if I could make myself a sweater one size smaller than I was thinking, and the answer was a resounding "Hell, no". Sigh. I really wanted to be on to the next part of this sucker. But no. I've got another eight-ish rounds to go, and then I should be ready to divide sleeves. Yay!

On the bright side, I have another diamond finished (well, nearly!), and will be dividing off for sleeves soon. It'll be so much faster when I'm no longer doing so much increasing — not to mention how much less bulk there'll be on the needles, at least for the time being.

I'm still really enjoying both the project and my abacus bracelets (I've got one for the larger cable and one for the smaller cables), and lately SheepLad has been watching Lord of the Rings, which has given me an unexpected bonus knitting time with the husband. And talking of which, I hear hobbits from the next room. Off I go!

Still — since Tuesday I have completed one entire repeat of the diamond panel on my Cable-Down Raglan! :D

Yarn used: Zitron Polo in colorway 41 (grey, slightly heathered). Needles: 3.75mm.
Sheep: Ovistine, from the Auckland airport in New Zealand.

So here's one of my unpopular knitting opinions: I like cable needles. I really prefer working with cable needles to working without 'em, even though many people (especially lately) dig the on-the-fly, without-'em method. So cable needles are an integral part of a cable project for me; I tuck the cable needle behind my ear when I don't need it and pop the stitches onto the thing when I do.

Here's a shot of the project with my essential tools for cabling:

The cable needle is part of the set from KnitPicks (here). I'm using the smallest needle, and so far so good — though I'm honestly not sure if I wouldn't be happier with my Brittany Cable Needles instead. I may switch to the Brittany when I do my next pattern repeat.

The other item is a Knitter's Abacus Bracelet. Like the poster there, I heartily endorse the ones made by Hide And Sheep; they're beautiful, put together very well, and shipped fast fast fast. :D (Though I found these on Etsy, I actually bought them through the actual storefront on hideandsheep.net; the Hide And Sheep website had the two colors I desperately wanted (Starry, Starry Night, grey and black, and Stardust and Denim, sodalite and dark blue), and why make them pay Etsy listing fees if I don't need to? :) I think I may have to order some stitch markers, too, and if I'm lucky, I'll be able to get ones that match the bracelets.

Anyway, if it isn't obvious from the picture what you do with an abacus bracelet, there are nine small beads (to represent the ones) and ten large ones (to represent the tens), and at the end of every row (or the beginning, as you prefer), you slip one of the small beads through the loop of four beads. After you reach nine small ones, you slip those back to the starting side and slip a large bead through.

So clever! So awesome! So much better than my katcha-katcha row counters — I just put one of these on my left wrist and I'm good to go. (I may end up wearing two when I start the part of the pattern where I'm juggling two kinds of cables. We'll see.)

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. ^_^

So in addition to the This Is A Triumph wrap sweater, I have completed a baby surprise jacket that I'm calling the Hobbes Jacket:

Yarn used: Microspun leftovers! Black, white, and mango. Needles used: 4mm.

I hate sewing on buttons, but for this project I was willing. ^_^ (I have another one coming, too, for which I'll need to sew on another five buttons. Someday I will do frog enclosures instead.) Back in the '80s there used to be a device that would automagically attach buttons for you. I wonder if that still exists (and how it would work on yarncrafted projects).

The sheep posed near the Hobbes Jacket is Meredith Rodney McSheep, named for Rodney McKay of Stargate: Atlantis. I'm not sure he really likes being so near something so orange, but perhaps the fact that it's mango (really!) and not citrus will appease him. What do you think, Rodney?

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. :)

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Yarn used: Lion Brand Microspun in Royal Blue and Mango. Needles: 4mm.

The Mango I bought doesn't quite match, and the color change is suspect:

But it's the best I can do, and it's good enough, and it's actually fairly hard to notice in person unless you're under some really awful florescent light.

I forgot to introduce the sheep on Tuesday, though I think you've seen these two before. These are the official traveling sheep — PicoÃœber and Reclining Sheep. They've been to England, New Zealand, Canada, Las Vegas, and Indiana. :) They're sized appropriately for carryon bags, and never complain about having the hotel rooms to themselves.

I have, at this point, done all the seaming (and let me tell you how proud I am of it — it's fantastic) — all that's left is an I-cord border for the back neck and little I-cord ties. I'm going to be putting the dual-orange side inside, so that it won't show when the baby's wearing it. Um, no, I still don't know what baby! Ah well. It's been fun to knit.

That said, bleh, stockinette! I won't be doing another baby project in stockinette anytime soon. I can see why Elizabeth Zimmermann favors garter stich so much — I think I'll probably do a Baby Surprise jacket in garter in the near future.

*
Yarn used: Lion Brand Microspun in Royal Blue and Mango. Needles: 4mm.

In fact, there's a bit more than that, but I've now run out of orange yarn, and that means this project is stalled until I get more. It shouldn't be difficult. But then, of course, I'll be left with more scraps of orange to get rid of! Maybe I can put an orange collar and cuffs on another baby sweater or somesuch.

Short post today, because I have a Cold of Doom and I'm not really full of energy. Hopefully I'll be feeling better Thursday!

However, today I've got the finished pictures of the Grey Lacework Sweater:

*
Yarn used: Wool of the Andes Bulky Hand-Dyed in Storm, a little less than 5 skeins. Needles used: 7mm.

It fits like a charm, though I had some issues with the neckline. Necklines are still, apparently, my bane. This one is more or less square, but looks more like a scoop neck on me. I worked back and forth on the shoulder and back stitches for about 6 rows, continuing to decrease at the raglan points, then worked back and forth without shaping for another four or so rows. Then I picked up stitches around the gaps made by not knitting the front stitches (three per side was enough, and luckily, the lace pattern hides the holes neatly), knit one row around, and bound off. In the front, the bind-off was fine as-was, but in the back, I bound off and decreased 1/3 of the stitches as I did it (so the bind-off alternated k1 and k2tog in order to keep that neckline from being saggy in the back). Worked like a charm, though the neckline is no longer what I'd call "stretchy". OTOH, I'm not sure I wanted it stretchy.

Baabet is so enamored of this sweater she keeps trying to convince herself she can block it to her own measurements. I'm afraid that just isn't the case, Baabet! Sorry!

I'm down to just 10 projects on needles at this point, which of course means I'm starting up something new. I have several skeins of leftover Microspun, and I'm going to be putting them into a project here shortly. Just needed to swatch first. More and more lately, I'm finding that I'd rather swatch to a gauge that's appropriate for the yarn and needles (needles big enough to provide appropriate drape), and then adjust the pattern to fit the yarn rather than adjusting my yarn and needles to fit the pattern. It's working out well enough for me so far!

Once you've thrown out the entire pattern and you're not even looking at its measurements anymore, you are not really knitting the same sweater. I borrowed the lace pattern. That was it. Here's how we're doing so far, with a bit of aid from Baabet:

* *
Yarn used: Wool of the Andes Bulky in Storm. Needle size: 7mm.

I'm getting 5.5" to one pattern repeat horizontally, and 1" to one pattern repeat vertically (more or less, with blocking taken into consideration). I might add that this is a wider gauge than the pattern calls for, on smaller needles. Yes, I am a Loose Knitter. ^_^

Introducing Baabet properly, she is a lovely pink sheep by Ty, part of the Ty "2.0" collection that, I gather, is out there to compete with Webkinz. Basically, you register your plushie online, and you can then play games (and the website stores your toys, too, so you have a "collection" online as well as off).

I would have bought all three if I had found them (there are purple and white ones, too), and I really didn't buy them for the online component. :D But the games are adorable. Because there are three sheep toys, there are also three sheep games! They're very, very cute.

But back to the sweater! I've got quite the curvy figure, so I need waist shaping. But how to accomplish waist shaping in lace? I had two options:

*

Fill in the spots with stockinette, or fill them in with yarnovers? I finally decided that the yarnovers looked better. If only I'd decided that earlier. :) But this is knitting up so quickly I can't complain about much. My next big decision is going to be what the heck to do about sleeves!

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

Total yarn for this project: say 4 balls of Sportweight to be safe, which is maybe 1500 yards. Beautiful Sheep, I couldn't have done it without you!

Of course, this project is not without its flaws. For one thing, I did not realize that all those short rows were not just tapering the sleeves (and I have to say, they did a great job of that), but also turning the sweater into a V-neck. The original plan calls for a straight high collar, and if you look at what I did to disguise that, you'll see it right away:

As you can see, what I did was just to pick up stitches at the appropriate V-neck place. It came out looking pretty good. I think I should probably sew a couple lines of thread through the fake inner plackets and then cut them off — if I'm going to do more work on this thing, that is.

*

Yeah, it's sort of mutated, and when I put it on, one side's longer than the other (and I have no idea how that's even possible, because it's the same number of rows exactly). But it's mine, and it's finished. I did it. :) And, hey, I think it fits quite well — it's the right length on body and sleeves, it buttons over the breasts, it has waist shaping. I can only go up from there.

And meanwhile, I have some more work on the Powers of Two blanket:

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease, worsted weight. Needle size: 4.25mm.

Pretty spiffy! The squares just above the big green square on the left mark the upper left-hand corner. I'll be expanding to the right to fill it out and define the upper edge. When it's wide enough, it'll be time to start it growing down.

It turns out that I have a TON of the "white" (actually natural), light brown, dark grey, and red yarns in my stash, so I'll be using those fast and furious as I go. I'm hoping I won't run into problems with having nothing but those colors by the end of the blanket.

Last but not least, I've dragged something out of the UFO (unfinished objects) pile:

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease, worsted weight, "Pines". Needle size: 5mm.

The adorable sheep modeling this vest is Dorset Horn. She (yes, she — in the Dorset Horn breed of sheep, both rams and ewes have large, impressive horns) comes all the way from New Zealand! One of my many sheep from the New Zealand flock. In New Zealand, the tourist shops are full of sheep. It is nothing short of a woolly paradise.

The vest looks like a whole lot of nothing right now, for which I can only apologize and say: It is a lot of nothing right now. It's simple garter up to the armpits, which is about one inch further than I've got it at the moment. Sorry! It'll look more interesting next time, especially if I run out of yarn and have to substitute in some black. Most importantly, this comes from the UFO pile. I have no idea how long it's been sitting around unknit, but it's no short amount of time. It definitely predates the beginning of the year. Not only will knitting this up net me a vest, it'll get my ratio up.

Current stats for the year:
15 projects started up new
22 completed/tossed/frogged projects
11 completed for the year to date (yay!)

WIPs:
7 have been on needles since before the beginning of the year
14 currently in progress/hibernating

And the vast majority of this year's projects have been from stashed yarn (almost a 5:1 ratio of stash:new), which is also making me pretty happy. (Of course, that doesn't count the yarn that came into the house for projects but hasn't been used yet… which bumps that ratio down some. But I'll take my victories where I can get 'em!)

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

I've got one half done completely, except for edging and perhaps notions, and the other half is nearly there, too. Strangely enough, all those short rows are leading to a V-neck — which I don't mind, but it's a surprise, I'll say that!

I'm not sure what I'll do for fastening. I may do a zipper. Buttons are probably out, although I might be able to create buttonholes if I do an I-cord edging. The fit looks good so far, but I'm sure a second edition of this sweater would look even nicer. I'm pretty happy with the sleeve length and the waist shaping, though!

Meanwhile, the Powers of Two blanket is going along, as is the second project from Mindful Knitting. I've got a few more squares done on PoT, but nothing really worth taking pictures of. And as per the last time around on Mindful Knitting, I'm waiting until I have a finished project to post any pictures.

Tuesday! Will I have a finished sweater, or will weekend mean spending all my time with the adored SheepLad? I'm betting on the husband, but I think I'll get the knitting — if not the edging or the fastenings — done. :)

Yarn used… you know this already, right? Wool-Ease sportweight in Wheat, size 4mm needles.

Even Beautiful Sheep is having trouble making it look interesting. I've finally cast on the extra sleeve stitches, though (I did short rows first). Hopefully next week I'll have pictures of a sweater to show you.

To make up for that, here are two completed dishcloths that have been sitting in a box in my yarn closet for months.

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Yarn used: Sugar 'n' Cream solids, size 4.25mm needles.

Finally, finally, finally. Say hello to Little Ty Sheep, returning to model the dishcloths. Awww.

The yarn closet is looking better now! Well, actually, it's looking much the same (full of yarn). However, I have found the rest of the craft room, and I am delighted. The unfinished objects now have a place. The finished objects that may or may not find their way to Etsy have found a place. And I got rid of another couple of projects in the bargain — one frogged, several tossed. This delights me — and bumps my completed/frogged/tossed-to-new ratio all the way up to 1.6 for the year. Yay!

Here's a picture of all the Wool-Ease I have left. Some people stash Homespun and then try to get rid of it; for some it's Red Heart. For me, it's Wool-Ease:

Yarn exhibited: A shit-ton of Wool-Ease in every imaginable color. Most of it is Worsted, a little bit of it is Sport.

Exhibited along with the yarn is the cutest Kleenex box cover ever made. I could try to make something out of crochet or plastic canvas, but I couldn't beat that, and I don't think I can be bothered to try. That Kleenex box cover comes from New Zealand (you can't really see it, but there is a New Zealand logo on its front). Those are two of the sixteen to eighteen sheep that came back with us from New Zealand in 2005. :) Yes, I brought home a flock. (Also some souvenir yarn. Most of it is still in the stash. I almost don't want to knit with it! Some of it is gorgeous, though — hand spun, even — so someday I'm sure I will.)

What am I gonna do with all that Wool-Ease?, you may be wondering. I'm going to make practice sweaters. I would like to make sweaters that look like they belong on a human body, and this is where I'm gonna start. The Bog Jacket 2 is actually part of this project, being made out of (so far) two balls of Wool-Ease sportweight. (It will take about three by my current estimations… maybe a little more, maybe a little less.)

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Yarn used: Wool-Ease sportweight in Wheat. Needle size: 4mm.

I've reached the part where I put in the yarn that separates the front of the sweater from the sleeves, and I've been doing my short rows again. This time I've decided to just say "the heck with doing them at random". Instead of being random, they form a V pattern that goes in sort of a reverse-raglan shape from the center of the back towards the arms. When I go "up and over", I'll reverse the shaping on the other side. I hope it turns out okay; the whole idea is to get nicely-shaped sleeves, and I'm just at the point now where I've cast on (invisibly) for those extra sleeve stitches. Pleaseworkpleaseworkpleasework!

Speaking of working, look how hard Beautiful Sheep is working at her modeling job! Ignore the part where she's nibbling a small piece of grass out of the waste yarn in the short row detail picture. She's helping, really!

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.

The end of a bog jacket, as modeled by Beautiful Sheep.

Now, I know I should listen to Elizabeth Zimmermann when she says things like "12-13% of [k]". I know this! But I looked at my knitting and I looked at my arms and I thought, Oh, geez, 16 stitches won't be nearly enough to make full-length sleeves! So I cast on 40.

A rough estimate about how many stitches I am over the mark? 24. *facepalms*

Well, there was that. There was running out of yarn. All these, oh yes, I was prepared to deal with. But then… take a look at the picture.

Take a look at where the tan waste yarn is on the left, and at the beautiful grafting job I did on the right.

*&@$*&@$!!! I grafted the wrong *&*&*&%#% part! TWICE!!! (Because I had to rip out the first grafting due to doing it wrong.)

OMG, y'all. There are times it's worth struggling with a project to make it come out right, and times when it's not. When you've got sleeves that are about a foot too long, that's not a time to struggle the rest of the project into shape.

Now, I do want to make another Bog Jacket. I really, really do. The side shaping was fantastic, and the garter actually looks good draped against my body. Seriously, this has potential, it does.

But not this time. And this is why I decided to make my test sweater projects out of stash yarn — so I wouldn't feel bad when I threw it the hell away.

I'll be swatching and casting on again today, but this version of the bog jacket is toast.

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Yarn used: The now-discontinued Merino Light in maroon (#8 on the color card), Lion Brand Wool-Ease (worsted and sport-weight doubled) in Black. Needles used: US10.5 — 6.5mm.

The gist of the sweater is that (shaping aside) you're knitting a square, and where the tan waste yarn is, I'll separate sleeves from body and later weave things together. (I'll take more pictures of the process when I get there.) I did discover that I'm running out of maroon yarn faster than the project is reaching completion, so I've dug some black Wool-Ease out of the stash and started using that as a stripe on the top. Hopefully it'll look good… and I won't run out of that before I'm done. I suppose I could dig out ivory Wool-Ease at that point, but I do hope it won't come to that.

I'm not really a big fan of knitting with Wool-Ease (though I don't mind crocheting with it) due to the high acrylic content. It just hurts my hands to work with it, since there's no give. However, this should flush a bit more of it out of my stash!

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 ÃœnterSchëpenfloppen 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.

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.