Sheep On My Stuff

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!

So happy!

It's been nearly a year since I started this (you can tell because the gallery was started on March 4, 2008), but it's done! Done! *does a happy dance around the living room*

Now I just need to weigh the leftover yarn and see what I ended up using. I think I may have inadvertently used some sportweight in the border, which I hadn't realized I still had. In any event, I'm extremely pleased -- it's a stashbusting project and it came out beautifully! Yay! I need more of those. :)

ETA: I was able to take 922g of yarn off the stash worksheets after finishing this project! (I obviously used more yarn than that, but the stash was weighed with this in progress.) I'm out of "yarn debt"! My destash weight is now at 555g -- a positive number for the first time this year!

It wasn't so long ago that I was talking about cannibalizing the Powers of Two blanket for yarn. It's not that I didn't like it, it's just that the pattern had been making me nuts for a while. It just wasn't fun for a while there, and I'd put off working on it and put off working on it and put off working on it until it seemed like I was never going to finish it.

I guess this was just one of those blankets that was meant to be small. Afghan-sized, even.

Uber-Woolo there is sitting in the little space which is all that remains unknit on this blanket. I am really looking forward to finishing it, which is making me work on it that much faster!

It'll need a border when it's done, probably in black, and when I'm done with that I'll need to decide if it needs a backing, too. It might. It might not. If it does, I'll look for something sheepy. :D

I'm up to four (and the center square plus first stripe on another). I'm definitely enjoying how these are coming out, although it'll be really ironic if I need to go buy more yarn in order to finish a scrap project. I keep telling myself I can make small blankets, but I'm not sure I believe me!

For the last several years, I've thought about quilting. I love the idea of it; I love the idea of turning geometry into artwork. :) I love the idea of making things beautiful and neat and tidy and orderly, or going with the "crazy quilting" thing and making order out of chaos. Or chaos out of order! In short, it seems just awesome.

And thus I have stayed far, far, far away from it. I own a rotary cutter for sewing, but that's as close as I've ever gotten. I have lots and lots of hobbies, and never feel like I have enough time for any of them! Quilting would just be one more thing that would have to fight for its time with me, and I don't want to give up my knitting or cross-stitching or crocheting or reading or writing or World of Warcraft. (Although maybe that's something I should think about -- if I ever stop playing WoW, I can start quilting. It might help with the withdrawal pangs. But it's not too likely -- I just got myself a second account. >_>)

Anyway, recently -- probably due to my newfound lust for Vera Bradley bags (I own a book cover and three different bags and a wallet now. My only defense is that, since they're all in a discontinued fabric, they were severely discounted -- and also they're amazingly perfect as knitting bags, since they have tons of pockets but no zippers to catch on your work!) -- I started thinking that it might be cool to make my own bags and book covers. After all, then I could have bags and book covers with sheep-printed fabric!

After a while I ended up looking at books (I hear Eleanor Burns is awesome) and eyeing fabric and very, very nearly buying a self-healing mat and one of those enormous rulers. I held off at the last minute, and the urge seems to have passed... sort of.

I've had a bunch of Wool-Ease around forever; I had plans to make a mitered-square blanket with it. However, the mitered-square blanket has been languishing under the bed for months, and I had all these quilt pictures in my head, and I thought, "Scrap Log Cabin Blanket GO!" Two squares later, I haven't even made the slightest hint of a dent in the Wool-Ease. Not even a little. A square is about 80g, and I have a total of 2315g. It looks like I'll be able to make roughly 28 squares (without reclaiming the wool from the Powers of Two blanket); it would take 36 to make a queen-sized bedspread. On the bright side, squares take up very little space around the house and are easy to do while reading. On the not-so-bright side, I bet I won't be finished with this until September. On the other bright side, September is when blankets start becoming needed around the house...

Anyway, here's the other way in which quilts have insinuated themselves...

I own this beautiful book of cross-stitching patterns by (or inspired by?) Paula Vaughan -- one for each month of the year. This is the very beginning of the February quilt. I'll need to get more floss if I'm going to finish this one, but I can get along for quite a while just on the floss out of the stash.

...sigh. It sometimes seems like I'm never going to dig my way out of my stash or finish any projects.

But at least I haven't started quilting yet.

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

I finally used up the last of this yarn making a 1x1 rib scarf. I'm afraid the wool isn't very soft (it ain't Merino; my best guess is it's Romney, since that's what most sheep are there), and even a soak in Eucalan didn't make it really soft, but I could wear it out if it were cold, which is what I plan to do with it. :) I'm not giving this scarf to anyone; it's mine! It's a souvenir from the best vacation I've ever taken, and I'm really happy with it. :)

Grant and I have often talked about having me knit us Christmas stockings. The ones we have are velour and quite plain. So in a last-minute burst of energy, I knit Grant an argyle stocking -- which required kicking him out of the downstairs for the last three or so days before Christmas so I could finish it in private. >_>

I made it out of Cascade 220, with a heathery light grey for the main portion and some really nice print/hand-dyed yarn for the red and green. I had some leftover blue and yellow for the little lines...

...which, in retrospect, and if I ever do argyle again, I'll do them in duplicate stitch; doing them as part of the pattern was an unnecessary pain in the butt! But for my first argyle project, I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way. Next time I'll save myself the work! :)

One thing I used that was really, really helpful was -- well, were; I used several -- fish-shaped yarn bobbins from Pony. I ordered mine from SpinBlessing.com, where they're now on backorder, but if you poke around you may be able to turn them up. The shape is great, and the bobbins are substantial enough not to feel like they're getting all bent out of shape as I wind yarn around them. :)

All in all, a wonderful success -- the only problem now is that I don't have a stocking of my own! But I've got an aran one in the works. :)

I did not do so well taking pictures this year! I'm afraid all I can say is that I did this hat in this yarn:

And it was lovely! :)

Here's one of my mystery projects! I knit a lovely lace shawl for my cousin Kristen. It's in the undyed equivalent of Gloss Lace from KnitPicks, and it took precisely three skeins (although I don't believe I got the recommended number of repeats out of it). The pattern is "Kimono Shawl" from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Shawls, one of my favorite shawl books:

I had it done in plenty of time to ship, but ended up procrastinating and then bringing it with me to the wedding. I hope she liked it!

I have recently become incredibly enamored of entrelac. I love the little triangles, I love knitting backwards (I'm doing that instead of turning my work), I love the interlaced look and feel, I love how variegated yarns look when knit in entrelac, and of course, I love how cute sheep are when holding entrelac-in-progress.

The only thing I'm not loving is that I'm having trouble figuring out how to calculate gauge for it. I tried a normal stockinette test swatch with the proportion of my head (56 cm) and got something that seemed like it was about five triangles too big. Then I tried cutting out those five triangles and got something that wouldn't fit a newborn. I'm working in between now. When I get it figured out, ZOMG! ENTRELAC FOR EVERYONE!!!!!! I'm thinking scarves. I'm thinking mittens. Socks. Felted and non-felted bags. Pot holders. Entrelac is good for everything!

What I'd really like, after my holiday knitting is over, is to make myself a big fluffy soft warm wool blanket. :) We'll see if I get the time to do that before winter ends. I really hope I do!