Fawkes

I finished the orange shawl yesterday. Blocking is the most miraculous thing in knitting. That blob of orange ramen noodles turned in to this:



My shawl inspired by Dumbledore's phoenix. I started it a year ago, churned it out quite fast until I hit the first beaded row and then apparently lost my love of it and it sat at the bottom of my WIP basket.



Every now and then it when I saw it in there it tugged at my mind, but for some reason I decided I didn't like beading it.





I'm terribly sorry dear shawl, I don't know what was wrong with me.



It also got a quick bath with some dye before blocking. I wasn't liking how the yellow streaks pooled, it competed with the lace. A little orange overdye and now it's much more subtle.

Ironically the pattern is Spring Things and it is decidedly NOT spring now. When I saw it I thought it looked much more like feathers and would make a perfect Fawkes. Yarn is Knit Picks Shimmer. I love the alpaca/silk, didn't care for the color repeats.



Now I'm off to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I. Not quite the midnight showing but 9 am is pretty good!

Contest!

I sometimes think about the thousands of skeins of yarn and copies of patterns I've sold that never make it in to Ravelry and wish I could see it. I would love to find out more of what my work ends up as (it's one of the best parts of my job!)

To that end, I'm announcing a contest. Add your Sheepy Time Knits items to your Ravelry Stash and Projects. Every week for the rest of November I'll be drawing randomly from that week's added entries and giving away prizes. Free patterns, stitch markers, some other odds and ends, even some yarn.

There are 3 categories, Stash, Projects knit with Sheepy Time Yarns (any pattern), and Projects working Sheepy Time Knits patterns (any yarn). If you happen to use both my yarn and pattern that counts as an entry in both categories, and the same yarn can be added as stash and a project. WIPs count! It doesn't matter if you're finished, put them in. (I might disqualify a project that only has 3 rows knit though.) Pictures are required! That's the fun part. I may also pick an additional winner with a photo I love.

Here are some of my favorites so far:

Jtdalzell's Vulcan Boyfriend Socks in Fangorn Forest Yarn That Shall Not Be Named - the green version of the Vampire Boyfriend socks from Knitty (also proving that 330 yards is TOTALLY enough yarn to make a pair of socks)

Alysania's Hanging Vines of Envy In Green Eyed Monster Sheepy Feet (the very first club colorway soon to be released as a regular color). And honestly she has so many great projects it was hard to pick one.

flssgrl's gorgeous baby Swirl Hat

CrookedRow's Deciduous, which she made into a yummy looking scarf.

For stash I can easily sort by "recently added", but for projects, the options are to sort by recently started or recently completed, so please temporarily pick the current date when you enter your project for your Start Date (even if your project was started ages ago but hadn't made it into Rav). You can also add your projects to this thread.

Edited to add: if you have entered a project but haven't added pictures, you can add them now and change your start date to qualify. I noticed lots of no-pictures projects.

Have at it, contest starts now!

2 blobs

The Surprise Jacket is so named because it looks like a blob until you finish and fold it up. Mine is growing but still looks like nothing much.


But if you fold it just right you can sort of get the idea


If only half at a time.

It would be bigger, but I've been distracted. Remember this blob of orange ramen I posted last week?

Well now it looks almost exactly the same as it did a year ago, except it has teeny beads.


The lifeline is where I quit working it because the bead row drove me crazy. Well the looming Harry Potter movie has me wanting to finish it. It turns out to be not *quite* as insane as I remembered. I picked it up on Monday and 2 days later I've done 3 bead rows. It takes about 2 hours to do the 60 beads in 1 repeat. Next repeat will have 66, and I think I'm doing at least 1 more after that unless I go insane first. The pattern calls for 3, When I started I was thinking 5, but we'll see. My standards might have gone down.

No loose ends

I've been working on the surprise jacket and decided it was a good opportunity to show off a technique I've been meaning to blog about. I hear all the time people avoid doing stripes because they hate weaving in all the ends. But stripes don't have to mean more work at the end if you weave them in as you go.

When you are ready to change colors knit the first stitch in the new yarn to anchor it. You want to carry the old yarn and the new yarn along together. Here I am changing colors but it works just as well for starting a new ball of yarn that won't splice. I am a continental knitter primarily, so the first method is how I normally do it.

Here is how I run them through my fingers, but you can do whatever is comfortable for you. The new yarn (green) is on the right and the old yarn (brown) is on the left.



Now you want to duck under the old strand to pick the new yarn. Knit this stitch as you normally would.

On the next stitch, work above the old yarn.

You just keep doing these 2 stitches, working alternately under the old yarn and then above it, working 4-6 stitches depending on how slippery your yarn is.

Here I'm showing how it works if you are a thrower. Hold the old yarn in your left hand and the new yarn in your right hand as you normally would. It doesn't matter how you hold the old yarn, just keep some tension on it.

Insert the right needle in the next stitch.

Now pull the old yarn forward, between the new working yarn and the new stitch.

Wrap the stitch as normal with the new yarn.

Then put the old yarn back behind the needles. This series of maneuvers
works 1 stitch behind the old yarn.

Now work the next stitch with the old yarn in back.

These are the exact same 2 steps as shown above for continental knitting. Alternate working in front of and behind the old yarn for 4-6 stitches.

Here is the back of the work, with the brown yarn woven in. I can now just snip it off and move on. On the next row I will weave in the tail of the green yarn, leaving no extra work. This is the same method you can use for trapping long floats when doing colorwork.

Speshul Snowflakes

It's hard to believe it's been a whole year since I started the Speshul Snowflakes Yarn club. It's been really fun, I've managed to keep up with everything and get to know some of you better and haven't had to fake any deaths. So we're keeping it going.

Most people re-subscribed but we have a few spaces open right now. I'm dyeing samples for this month tomorrow and choices will be out next week. After that prices will be going up, so now is a good time to sign up! If you haven't seen it before, we offer 2 colors and several yarn bases every cycle (every other month) for you to pick from. We guarantee always a sock yarn and a soaker yarn will be included every month, and then often offer several other things for you to try. And I try to catch very different colors every cycle.

Here's a few previous colors

Drama Llama




Teal Deer



Blackberry Martini



Berry Pie



Foggy Dew




Tequila Sunrise (with Poolside pattern)

Surprise

Wednesday morning I had actually caught up on all my work by 11 am, for the first time in weeks. Finally marking off the list from the previous week, I decided I'd earned a break, and I was going to ignore all the blanket squares and knit.

I've been wanting to make an Adult Surprise Jacket ever since I'd been to camp. I kind of had NaKniSweMo in the back of my mind, so when I finally had time to work on it, I picked out some Peace Fleece from my stash and spent some quality time with my copy of The Opinionated Knitter, paper, pencil, and calculator.

I knew I wanted to make alterations to the pattern, because the boxy look is way better on babies, and that has been the one thing keeping me from knitting that sweater immediately.



By the end of the day I had a sleeve and had cast on for the second one. Love.

(And I do realize that this means I am now working on 4 sweaters. Shut up.)