A Little Something

I have a great aunt (not a Great-Aunt) who gives me little gifts that she sends along every time my mother comes to visit. She collects lots of shopping bags for my plarn. She collects elephants to pass on to me because she knows I love them.

She has had a few collections of her own over the years, but one of the latest is sheep. She has porcelain sheep, sheep mugs (think "I Love Ewe"), sheep plaques, landscape paintings with sheep, etc etc. But I don't think she has a knitted sheep.

When I saw this pattern, I thought it was the cutest sort of primitive craft sheep. So I gave it a whirl.

I used the homespun I got at Red Purl, done by Kallie, for the body and some Patons wool I had laying around for the head. And the legs are fancy striped pipe cleaners.

The knitting is very quick, but there's all that fiddly sewing and stuffing that I apparently don't like. I don't actually feel like I dislike it, but I've noticed work like this is always the last thing I will pick up. Too much thinking, I think.

But in any case, I got it done in time for my mother to bring it back to her. And I think it turned out pretty dang cute too.

Technical notes: The pattern is done on straight needles with the double knit method. This makes the knitting much looser than if you just work it on dpns or circs. Considering it has to be stuffed, the knitting should be snug and close. I would recommend following the directions but using dpns or circs to work in the round. Mine unfortunately showed quite a bit of the white stuffing and would be at risk of losing stuffing if it was actually going to used as a toy. You may also notice that I skipped the horns.

Good Things...Little Packages

Have you been wondering what happened to the little projects I wrote about starting in this post? (Be polite: say, "Yes," even if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

I have finished the delicate pink cotton bib (pattern here):

It was a fun project, especially good for "travel knitting." I think I'll add a couple more for the gift. Not the kind of bib I think I would enjoy using (on a child--not myself), but I assume perfect for the person who likes the very similar cotton knit washclothes everyone's doing these days. I certainly hope the person I give it to is such a person. What's great about them is that the bib can protect the baby's clothing during dinner and then afterward be dampened and used to wipe off hands and face as needed. Then it's time for the laundry...

The other small project was the toy ball in Toronto Maple Leaf colours:

Now this was really fun. Lots of short rows and knitting "backwards."

The pattern is brilliant in how it works to achieve the swirls. It could be written better, but it gives you a really good start to getting this done.

The knitters out there can see how the rows line up horizontally in the following picture:

So even though initially it seems you might knit along the length of the stripes, you actually knit across them with short rows. "Short rows" are where you stop knitting before finishing the row and then turn around and go the other way. It's a very effective way to shape knitting into 3D shapes. In this case it also means you do a lot of short rows of only 9 or 10 stitches. Turning a project around that often can be a real pain so I prefer to knit "backwards" (moving left to right). It's a little more awkward, but still more convenient and efficient than turning so often. I've included a short video of knitting backwards in case you want to try it yourself.

Go forth and experiment!

What's on Your Needles?

That's a common question among knitters and thread topic on discussion boards. Having just finished two major projects (the Snowflake Illusion Blanket and one other I will post soon), this morning I spent some time preparing for and starting a couple projects. They're smaller and easy to pack and carry along. (Ie. what I call "travel knitting.")

1. A cotton bib for some lucky baby who's expected this year.

It will turn into a diamond shape, getting wider and wider until it starts to get narrower and narrower. They're are lots of patterns out there, but I liked the shape of this one, and how the straps flow naturally from that shape and then around the neck. The pattern was written up by Merin and posted on her blog here. I found it on Ravelry.

I will add that there was another pattern that I liked a lot but it was $3. I probably could have figured out the pattern just from the pictures, but decided in this case that would be close enough to stealing not to do it. I think knitting has a lot of grey area of what's actually protected, what's original, etc. But in this case I didn't do it. It didn't hurt that it was the same designer that put up a wonderful shawl pattern on knitty.com (for free) I plan on making as soon as I convince myself that I would wear it.

2. A toy ball. Knit up with swirling colours and stuffed. In one way, not a very practical gift, but in another, kids have to play with something! And knitted fabric is really easy for little hands to grip and hold. These colours were chosen because they resemble the Toronto Maple Leaf colours. (Just a little hint to who the recipient will be.)

And 3. I'm still plugging away at my toe-up socks. I think last time I posted about them, I was still working on the swatch. I've gotten a little further since then:
I'm following Kristin Bellehumeur's very excellent tutorial. Or mostly following. (It is a "tutorial" for making your own socks, not a "pattern," so I am allowing myself some leeway.) I couldn't find it when I was ready to cast on, so I followed another pattern and used a different number of stitches. The tutorial said to increase to 64 sts which matched what I had swatched, but it was way too big. So I frogged back to 44 sts. And even though by measuring this should be almost 2 inches too narrow, it fits great. So I'm going with it. (Apparently socks need some stretch.)

I did follow the tutorial for the short row heel, and I invite you to admire it:
You can see it sort of straining across the top of my foot (diagonal line from the heel) and this is pretty typical for short row heels as far as I've read. But it was a good tutorial and I wanted to follow it. I have in mind another tutorial to show toe-up heel flaps, but I will worry about that in the next pair. Meanwhile, these are fitting well, and feel great, so I think that is the main thing.

My wool is holding up well. I was...well...I was somewhere between "curious" and "concerned" about how the wool would stand up because of all the breakages I had while unravelling it. But it wound up into a ball with no troubles, and even when I had to frog back the toe the wool held up like a champ. (Phew.) It also seems that I will have plenty of wool which was another not-quite concern that I had.

Last night I gave myself some extra knitting time after work by leaving my car lights on at lunch. (Oops!) As I waited for my ever-helpful hubby to show up, I looked all the 2x2 ribbing I have to do for the cuff square in the face. And I couldn't do it. So I've added a little twist to the rib:

I will put that in every four rows moving the twist to the next rib to the right each time. So it will sort of make a spiral around my leg. It should spiral twice before I get them long enough. I thought I was going to just make some very basic socks so I could try out the pattern/method before getting fancier, but it's just too much plainness. Having something (anything) go on in your knitting every 4 or 6 rows--be it a colour change, a cable, or some other pattern--is a great tedium buster. And after knitting for 30 minutes, being able to look back and say, "Oh, I did 3 twists" or two stripes or whatever, is so much better than just looking at an ocean of sameness and not being able to see your progress. All part of eating the elephant one bite at a time, I guess.

And now that I have lots of knitting ready to take with me, I guess I have to give it up at home for a time and get to things like laundry, cooking, and doing the taxes...