posts tagged: colorwork

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the year of the sheep!

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The year of the sheep is coming up in February! Starting Feb 19, it’s the year for yarn-lovers of all kinds, and for those who honor the Chinese lunar calendar. One of my cousins on my Chinese side is expecting her first baby in March, and so I felt that this little girl needed something sheep-themed.

pepperknit | year of the sheep sweater

I used the basic formula I’ve done before for another cousin’s baby: the Placket-Neck Pullover from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts (the pdf is available free online here) with some charted colorwork. I actually sketched this little sheep while at lunch with Amy Herzog at TNNA; I wanted the sheep to have a “puffy” feeling to it. I marched them along the bottom edge (facing each other at the middle front and back to back in the middle back), and added a little contrast band underneath. Because of the legs and face, there was some juggling of 3 colors in a single row for a few rows, and I did normal Fair Isle for the legs, twisting the floats in the gaps, and then when I got to the heads I just cut the yarn and did each face as its own little patch of intarsia. Intarsia in the round normally wouldn’t work, but because the bottom row of the faces is just one stitch, I just pulled the yarn back behind to start the 3-stitch top of the head. A little bit of just “making it work” and it worked pretty well! Here’s the chart I used (using green for the sheep body because I didn’t want to color in the background!).

pepperknit | sheep chart

I knit the six-month size, so hopefully she’ll be able to wear it in the fall, while it’s still the Year of the Sheep. The background yarn is Cascade 220, the sheep’s fluff is Manos (from my Stonecutter), and the legs and face are Universal Deluxe Worsted. I did a three-needle bind-off for the underarms and everything else was done according to pattern. Oh, and I added that sweet little flower to the front in Mrs Crosby’s Carpet Bag.

pepperknit | year of the sheep sweater

pepperknit | year of the sheep sweater

Do you want to knit something sheepy, too? I’ve marked several great patterns on Ravelry and I’m sure I’ll be making more during the year. Obviously you’ll see similarities to my color choices and those in Julia Farwell-Clay’s Welcome to the Flock. I can’t resist all those little stuffed toys too. How will you celebrate the year of the sheep?

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mitten garland

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Looking for a cute decoration to make for winter? Thinking about your gift knitting? Might I suggest a perfectly lovely pattern designed by yours truly a few years ago, that I somehow never blogged about?

pepperknit | knit mini mitten garland

Little intarsia argyle mittens, all strung up. Mix and match colors for the hand, the diamond, and the criss-cross, or do it all uniform. They can teach you a bunch of different techniques if you haven’t tried them before, from ribbing, increases/decreases, intarsia, and duplicate stitch! Each one comes together fast, and they are so stinkin’ cute. I think they’d be adorable strung on a mantel, around a door, or if you celebrate with a Christmas tree, strung around that. Because they are actual complete mittens, you could make 24 of them and turn them into an advent calendar by tucking little treats or messages inside to open each day.

The originals were knit with Universal Yarn’s Deluxe Worsted Tweed, which comes in a range of really rich colors. The pattern is in 50 Knits for Year-Round Giving, and there are plenty of other projects in there that you might want to make in the coming months!

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a little nautical sweater

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This summer, family beach week is going to be a little quieter, because we’ll be missing a whole chunk of our family. They’ll be staying home, anticipating the birth of my cousin’s baby, the first of our next generation! So while I’ll be laying on the beach, catching crabs, and eating my fill of fried oysters, they’ll be putting the finishing touches on a nautical-themed bedroom for the little one.

nautical placket neck pullover

And to go with that, I knit him a sweater.

Though our family is much more crab-oriented, I thought little whales and anchors would be more easily graphed; I charted out the band of them and put it on a slightly modified Child’s Placket Neck Pullover by Joelle Hoverson. I’ve knit this sweater before, and I know it comes together fast; this was helpful because it took 3 tries before this finally worked right. First I didn’t like the charted pattern—too spread out—and second it was gigantic (a friend with babies saw it and balked, then I looked at the measurements and that one was more like a 2 year old’s!). I did tweak the stitch counts of the sweater to fit my chart as well as the CYC-given measurements for a six month old. Now, I don’t know the first thing about babies, but it looks super small, so here’s hoping it’s a very cool fall in Georgia, because I’d been hoping he could wear it in the winter!

nautical placket neck pullover

The yarn? Good ol’ Cascade 220. Sorry to my cousin: you’re going to have to hand-wash this garment.

nautical placket neck pullover

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macro mitts

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macro mitts!

There’s so much to catch you all up on—TNNA and VK LIVE—but I knit! I knit! And I can’t hold off on showing you my first finished object of 2011.

My online BFF Lauren has really taken off as a designer, and she’s always coming up with clever little projects, which is just my type of project. A while back she posted a picture of a WIP that had a thumb gusset to die for and an off-center motif that I loved so much, I volunteered to be a test knitter.