Sheep On My Stuff

Most of the knitting I have scheduled to finish by the end of the year is done -- just two more projects to go. Unfortunately, I keep screwing the one I'm working on the hell up, thusly:

Step 1: Begin knitting.
Step 2: Knit about 40 rows.
Step 3: Realize that I'm knitting the wrong number of stitches.
Step 4: Rip out about 40 rows.
Step 5: Repeat step 1.
Step 6: Knit about 80 rows.
Step 7: Realize that I left something out around row 40.
Step 8: Repeat step 4.
Step 9: Repeat step 1.

With any luck, I have now gotten all necessary mistakes out of my system and will be able to continue without error (well, much error) from here. But sheesh. Twice?!

In other news, I picked up a copy of Knitting For Peace by Betty Christiansen recently. It's a collection of stories about charity knitting organizations, with a few patterns gathered up for some of those organizations. The point isn't the patterns, though, it's the ideas and suggestions for sending knitting to charities. It's full of great ones, and instead of giving out addresses and contact information that could be out-of-date by the time you get the book, they provide websites and email addresses that are more likely to be updated regularly or at least stick around indefinitely, as well as giving some tips on how to Google for the information you might need to track down more local charities. I'm really excited about the prospect of dovetailing my stashbusting with some charity knitting -- next year!

I love my custom sheep dearly! I especially love it when a design particularly lends itself to the vertical stripes found on a sheep. And after totally blanking on doing this for months and months and months, I have finally gotten it together and collected the directions for these sheep mods!

For a rainbow sheep,

* Cast on in purple.
* Change to blue after row 9.
* Change to green after row 13.
* Change to yellow after row 21.
* Change to orange after row 27.
* Change to red after row 33.
* Head is red.
* Face is black.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, tail and ears are black.

(I also sewed a small piece of gold ribbon on this one to indicate that he is a married queer sheep.)

For a Bi Pride sheep,

* Cast on in blue.
* Change to purple after row 13.
* Change to pink after row 27.
* Head is pink.
* Face is dark grey.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, tail, and ears are all dark grey.

Despite the simplicity of this design, this is probably my favorite sheep mod of the bunch. I adore my Bi Pride sheep! :D :D :D

How about a sheep that evokes that Jayne Hat look? A sheep like this walks down the street, you know he's not afraid of anything!

* Cast on in orange.
* Change to yellow after row 13.
* Head is yellow.
* Face is orange.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, ears, and tail are red.
* Make a small (I use a 3/4" pompom maker) pompom for its head.
* Optional: Instead of a red tail, make a larger (1") pompom for its tail.

You can overlap colors from the rainbow sheep to make the Jayne Hat sheep if you like, though I used a darker red for Jayne than I did for the rainbow sheep.

What about a Leather Pride Sheep?

* Cast on in black.
* Change to navy after row 5.
* Change back to black after row 9.
* Change back to navy after row 11.
* I cast off in black on rows 12 and 13, but this is nitpicky and optional.
* Change to white after row 17.
* Change back to navy after row 23.
* On rows 27 and 28, I cast on in black, but this is nitpicky and optional.
* Change back to black after row 29.
* Change back to navy after row 33.
* Change back to black after row 38.
* Finish body in black.
* Head is black.
* Face is white.
* Ears are white.
* Inner legs/tummy, hooves, and tail are black.
* For the heart, make an appropriate amount of I-cord in red, then sew on in a heart shape. It will felt down into a more heart-like shape than it looks when you sew it on, but you can shape it with your fingers once it's out of the washing machine if it needs a little more help.
* Optional: Find something to use as a collar -- I got this piece of vinyl-with-rivets ribbon from the quilting department at my local craft store. o_O (They have ones in camoflauge, too.) Or perhaps you could find a hat!

I wish to disclaim that I do not mean these sheep are the "world's finest" sheep, in that all the sheep I have made or owned are very fine sheep, and I believe the world's finest sheep are the ones in my flock, thank you!

But those of you who are comic book fans will understand the title of the post once you see this:

A pair of superheroic sheep, made as a gift. :)

I'm not much for sewing, so the costumes were rather difficult for me. And I used a nice permanent marker for the emblems on Supersheep. However, the modding (this is the FiberTrends "A Felt Flock" pattern from Bev Galeskas once again) was quite fun!

Baatman is made entirely in black, all parts. No tail, as it would interfere with the cape. Not too tough!

Supersheep, however, is cast on in blue. I switched to red for rows... I want to say 8-13, with the legs maintained in blue. Then blue for the rest of the sheep, white for the head, red for the back hooves, white for the front hooves. Ears in white. No tail, as it would interfere with the cape.

I have to say, when I started taking pictures in the window of the craft room, I didn't realize what a neat background that would give me. I really like the leaves. :)

...I was lucky enough to get to marry the love of my life. :)

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.

ETA: As I finish and post about the surprise projects in this list, I'll be updating the post itself!

The husband sweater is going really well. Front and back are done, blocked, and seamed at the shoulders and sides. One sleeve is done; the other's about 30% done. Once they're both done, I'll block them, and then I just need to seam them, sew them in, and do the neckline. Yay!

Note the difference in how the cables look unblocked vs. blocked. Big difference!

I've been going kind of crazy in the last couple of days. It's not that I'm tired of the husband sweater -- I just have a lot on my plate for the upcoming months. First of all, I'm knitting a shawl for my cousin Kristen's wedding. (It's the first time anyone in my family has gotten married since me and Grant, so I'm excited, and I want to knit something beautiful and meaningful for it!)

After that, I need to be sure to knit my mom's traditional Christmas hat. (I knit one every year, but this time I'm using very exciting yarn and a brand-new pattern!) I know it's only October, but it's never too early!)

(I have, of course, cast on for both of these.)

I'm expecting yarn in the mail from another friend, who actually knows that I'm knitting for her because she was in charge of sending me the wool. :) When I get that, I'll have a shawl to cast on.

I may or may not have time to knit a couple of toys for a friend of mine from WoW -- I won't know until the shawl, the shawl, and the hat are done. -- ETA: Don't have time, unfortunately!

And I went kind of nuts and thought "Oh, hey! If I rush it, maybe I can make socks for my anniversary for Grant!" So I've been working on that, too.

And did I mention I'm making sheep for charity?

I wouldn't mind knitting a _______ _______ _____ for my ______________, either, and if I finish my ______ ______ _____ or my _______ _____, I'll probably give one of those to my ___________ for _________ -- but man, that's a pipe dream right now.

As you can guess from all the blanks, these are all surprise projects or secret projects, and many of the people I'm knitting for either know about this blog or get linked to it frequently via other sources. :) I promise I'll know what I'm talking about when the gifts are delivered to the people they're being knit for -- but for the time being, blanks are the way to go. ^_^

(I did finish one of the charity sheep, but it isn't felted, stuffed, or sewn up yet.)

I do have one hint: in all the projects above, I'm using wool and silk and that's it. ^_^

After seven years of knitting and nearly eight years of marriage (8 years on October 21), Grant finally decided to let me knit him a sweater. :D

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've had two balls of Cascade Eco-Wool sitting around in my stash for... man, four years or so. No kidding. I bought it from The Fiber Gallery in West Seattle when they first opened, opening week, and as a result, the skeins (long since wound into balls) carried a faint whiff of fresh paint, even years afterward. I'd just never figured out what to do with them.

Clearly the ideal project was... a scoop of fudge ripple ice cream?

No, seriously, I've been taking advantage of Ravelry's pattern finder lately. I did a search for any project that would take between 600 and 800 yards of an Aran-weight yarn, and came up with the Hemlock Ring blanket by Jared Flood. It's a lap-sized blanket with a center motif and a LOT of feather and fan extending out from the center.

I'm intrigued to see that many people managed to get a perfectly flat blanket out of the deal, and many other people had a very ripply blanket (like I did, although blocking helped). This is one of those lovely things about Ravelry -- it's always great to see the different things different knitters come up with. :)

Mine, as I say, started very ripply:

and got better after blocking:

Cuddly and sheep-approved!

This marks the first time I've ever had to block a blanket. It's also the first blanket I've ever made that's 100% wool -- no acrylic whatsoever. :) And I'm very happy to say that after a bath in Eucalan-enhanced water, it smells a bit of eucalyptus and a bit of damp sheep, but not at all like paint (the paint smell dissipated pretty fast once I started working up the blanket).

Another home-brewed pattern, but this one isn't quite ready for prime time yet.

I will grant you, it is a somewhat schlumphfy-looking bag. It's basically a prototype. It was also something for me to do with the leftover yarn I had once I was done with the Deep Purple Sweater. And since it was made in a wool I probably won't use again (and may not even be able to find again), I'm going to be writing down the pattern not for this yarn, but for a much more accessible felting wool, Patons Classic Merino. (It shouldn't take more than I have left, which is a little less than two balls. I hope.) I don't have a lot of experience felting, so I even made a gauge swatch for this. And I'm glad I did; this yarn reduces by about 33%, whereas the Patons Classic Merino reduced by 22% width-wise, but only by about 5% height-wise. (You can bet that'll require some different calculations as I work up the second bag.)

I am very pleased with how close to my mental image this bag turned out to be, though! And the flap was a cinch. Between this and a felted wool trivet, of which I do not yet have pictures, I managed to use up the rest of the yarn I had left from the Deep Purple project, which makes me very happy, too. And I'm getting better with the photos, I think, even if they're all being taken in the same windowsill. Credit to Jared Flood and David Reidy -- Jared Flood for the tip, David Reidy for the interview in which Jared gave the tip. (The tip was to use natural light, but try to get it sideways to your project rather than right behind it. It turns out the craft room windows are perfect for that.)

I finished a sweater!

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. :)