Sheep On My Stuff

I had thought that I wasn't going to be able to show you a picture of the last-minute emergency rainbow squares I made for the charity blanket last month. By the time I remembered to take a picture, the squares looked like this:

However, luckily for this blog, the recipient (the person who's sewing the squares together) took some pictures of the squares as they came in! Hooray! And so here's the rest of the squares I made for the acrylic/synthetic blanket:

I got thirteen of those suckers done in a weekend, destashed all of my yellow, blue, and red Shine Sport, used up a bit of my Dark Horse Fantasy, and helped complete a blanket. :)

I have also managed to create six wool rainbow squares. Unlike the synthetic blanket, I'm not making squares with interesting stitch patterns; I'm just making stockinette squares and letting the color provide the interesting part. (I'm using leftover yarn from the rainbow sheep.)

Love comes in many colors.

I can't say what it was that made me think Adamas shawl, must knit, RIGHTNOWNOWNOW. It could have been the fact that I was dying to knit lace for myself -- not on a deadline. Or the Yarn Harlot's post. Or just the fact that it seemed like it'd be fun.

It was ridiculously fun, and as the pictures prove, this is a good house in which to be a sheep:

Do I know what I'm going to do with this shawl? No. Orange is not really my color, so... no, I have no idea. And yet it's finished and it's lovely.

I am really quite proud of it. :) However, the urge to knit lace hasn't gone anywhere. I'm currently working on the Flower Basket Shawl and Mystery Stole 4 (which I'm doing in grey with purple beads, and will be taking pictures of as I work through the clues). Hurry up if you want to join the Mystery Stole 4 group -- signups are going on through the 12th and then you're out of luck until the pattern comes out (and it won't be free then).

The windowpane shawl's going great -- so great I'm eyeballing early August for its ship date instead of late August or early September. If I can get it done before I go on vacation (WHOO VEGAS!), I can ship it out then. Otherwise it's staying home; I'm not gonna take it to Vegas, of all places. Who knows what could happen?

Anyway, in order to keep track of how fast I need to knit to make my target goal, I've made another spreadsheet.

(For those of you curious about formulas and such, it's a Google Doc!)

Since it spirals out from the center, I actually counted the number of stitches, not the number of rows, so as to be able to divide them out equally. There are over 92,000 stitches in the shawl! Will I make it? If so, it's going to be close.

You remember how I had a Sneaky Sheep in my flock? Here, I'll refresh your memory:

Well, it turns out Sneaky Sheep has been going on missions. So far he's managed to infiltrate the study, while I was raiding Tempest Keep:

...the bathroom, as I was brushing my teeth...

...my bedroom window, as I was going to sleep...

...and now the kitchen cabinets!

(For fun and prizes, find the bonus sheep in each of those pictures. There are eight, plus an "extra".)

I do have other things going! I've been working on shopping bags, and two friends have graciously agreed to help me test a pattern. (It's crochet, requires about 300 yards of not-too-stretchy yarn, and roughly an H hook -- mileage varies.) I'm also working on a shawl project, but it's a gift for someone; as such, I won't be posting pictures of it until it's complete and in the hands of the recipient. :)

In the beginning there was one white sheep:

Who eventually was joined by one grey sheep:

And life continued as usual. Then I got it in my head to make a rainbow sheep... and I bought some grey variegated yarn... and and and and...

And then I started knitting sheep for charity. Eventually the flock looked like this:

Yarn used for nearly all the sheep: Cascade 220. The camo sheep is made with Patons Classic Merino. Needle size: 6.5mm (US 10 1/2).

The front row have gone to their new homes, raising money for the California Marriage Equality initiatives; the back row... those are mine, and now I need to find places to display them. :)

When making four sheep of the same type, with multiple color changes, I felt it behooved me (ha! Get it? Be"hoove"d me?) to make them all at once, so I could see if I had enough purple for the sheep rumps first, and enough blue, and so on. As it happens, purple may not be the one I'm running most short of by the time this is all said and done -- it may be red -- but I definitely had enough purple, which was a relief!

Here's the sheep assembly line!

And a close-up of sheeps in progress:

Plus a picture of how they are size-wise as compared to a sheep that's been felted just once. Bear in mind the sheep is not stuffed -- he'd look a lot bigger if he were!

The KnitPicks Options needles have been a godsend for this project. I just move the needle tips from cord to cord as I go -- easy as could be!

I did start another blue/grey variegated sheep, but after working a couple of rows, I realized I'd rather be working on a color I haven't worked before. So I'll be casting on a camouflage sheep tonight. :D

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. :) )

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!

Say hello to a blast from the past! The Powers of Two blanket has come out of hibernation (boy, has it).

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

Pink Pads Sheep is confused about why I'd ever want to feature a project without her. She's that kind of sheep, you know; the sort that's about half wool (and polyester fiberfill), and half ego.

Oh, excuse me. She's now bleating that it's more like one-quarter wool and fiberfill, and three-quarters ego.

Now she wants me to go get her a nice patch of organic wheatgrass.

The things we do for sheep.

With some creative editing of timestamps, it will even look like I posted this on Tuesday. *ahem*

Here's what the MHR Shawl looked like before I blocked it. A lot of people think lace looks like crap before it's blocked; I think it looked pretty good, honestly. This is a very geometric pattern, and it's based on garter stitch, so it lies quite flat. Except for the border.

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Yarn used: Bare Merino Laceweight from KnitPicks. Needles: 4mm.

Here it is pinned out and wet-blocked. It was dry just in time for the trip!

And here it is in action. :)

It was perfect -- the day was wet and cold, but we had to go outside anyway -- had we not, we would have missed the ceremonial firing of the cannon!!! However, my shawl kept me dry and warm and comfortable. Yay!

Thursday: the finished Obama socks! I may dig up some pictures of me working on the Obama socks, too, as people took pictures of me knitting all weekend long. (Trivia: It does wonderful things for your ego when Oleg Volk says that pictures of you are cute.)