A Leap Day Bunny (And Friends) Party!

There's a new bunny in the Wool House!  Meet Christopher Bunny and his tiny pocket friend,  Comby.  Christopher Bunny came as a kit from Barrett Wool Co.  

The pocket friend was supposed to be a tiny bunny, but since Comby helped us knit, I modified the pattern to make it a cat.  I dyed the kit's white yarn to (sort of ) match Comby.

Christopher has a darling fair isle sweater and he's also supposed to have a pair of green and white striped pants...still to come, I think, although I like him with just his sweater, too.  He (and his sweater, jacket and pocket Comby) was a fun knit.  The kit yarn was really nice and the pattern was very well written and I learned a couple of new techniques - a very nice Christmas gift :-).

 As I was posting progress pictures on IG/FB several folks chimed in that they, too, were making a Christopher Bunny, so just for fun we are going to have an online Leap Day Tea Party this Saturday!  

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I don't really remember hosting tea parties as a little girl, but for some reason the first thing I think of now when I see cute rabbits (and other animals) dressed up is "They need to have a tea party!" @auntiereg and I set up a cute party for our Miss Maggie Rabbits last summer and now that I've started my Christopher Bunny and several other friends have as well...yep, we're gonna need to have another tea party! . 🐰 . Being rabbits, the obvious party date is Leap Day. Leap Day...rabbits...get it? 😆 But this party is not just for rabbits. All animals are welcome! If you are working on a new friend or have thought about trying to make a new friend, use this as a push to give it a try. Already finished yours? Perfect! Not a crafter, but you have a special stuffed friend who'd like to come to the party? He or she is of course invited too :-). . 🐰 . On February 29th, Leap Day, post a picture (Instagram or FB) of your party guest and tell us a little bit about him or her if you'd like, especially if vintage... Use the hashtag #leapdayteaparty so we can all find each other. If you've used a commercial pattern, please share what it is. If the design is your own, let us know. 😀. 🐰 . This is just a fun party and not affiliated with @susanbanderson or @barrettwoolco or @aliciapaulson or any other of the delightful designers who inspire us to knit, crochet, sew and needle felt all these sweet stuffed animals. . #leapdayteaparty #carrotcake #missmaggierabbit #christopherbunny #knittersofinstagram #crochetersofinstagram #stitchersofinstagram #needlefeltersofinstagram

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Feb 12, 2020 at 10:17am PST

You don't have to be an IG or FB user to participate. If you'd like to just email a picture of your party guest, Christopher, Comby and I would love to meet him or her :-).  You can also just play along at home ;-).

My Magic Hat

My first finished item of 2020.  It's just the 3rd folks, so I'm really killing it so far!  Actually I basically finished it at the tail end of 2019 (better late than never!) and just added six extra stitches yesterday ;-).

Why did I add six extra stitches yesterday?  Let me bring you up to speed...

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Well, I’m taking this as a good omen for the new year! I (finally) finished my Forest from the Trees hat and I added some red and blue duplicate stitches in the trees to symbolize Peep (my favorite cardinal 😍) and another favorite bird, blue jays (thanks to @juliezickefoose Jemima) and as I am (still 🙄) sitting on the porch, a pair of blue jays just came in and checked out the feeder! I very, very rarely see them here. They apparently didn’t like my “cooking” and didn’t stay, but what a surprise! I’m thinking the hat drew them in and maybe it’s magical 🤔. Must cast on an owl hat. No wait, add owls to magic hat! BRB 😀.

A post shared by Sara Dunham (@thecrazysheeplady) on Jan 1, 2020 at 6:37am PST

If you look closely (click to biggify) at the top picture, you can see the two brown stitches now up in the tree.  I actually added two "owls"...a pair...and then decided I wanted three owls, so they are a small family.  And yes, I realize that I probably don't want a owl mixed up in a tree full of my favorite smaller birds, but these are kind owls and are only here "visiting" ;-).

Here's where things went a little...awkward.  Last night I had a dream that I was sitting on the end of the bed and the little blond chicken was sitting next to me (yes, in the house :-o) and outside the window were five new brownish-black chickens gathered together looking like they, too, would like to come in the house...so there may be a glitch or two.

Project notes:

This is the Forest for the Trees hat by Mary Scott Huff.  

I used a partial skein of the new white Lamb Camp Legacy yarn and I dyed it using Jacquard acid dyes.  I promise I will get the yarn posted soon.  It's lovely.

I noticed on the projects page that some folks had trouble with the hat being too short, so I added three extra rows...and if I make it again I will probably add three more somewhere.  I am hat challenged...or pointy headed.

I used duplicate stitches to add some cardinals, blue jays and owls and changed the top to brown to look like a pine cone :-).

It was a fun knit and I give it a thumbs up...and will now wait patiently for my owls to show up.  Owls...Not Chickens.

It's Wovember Again Already?!?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Good grief.

Today, being November 4th, is Day 4 and the prompt is "Wool in color".  My first thought was to post a picture of some Jacob roving and praise the color GRAY...but then I remembered I actually had a colored wool project started that needed a blog post.

I thought it might be fun to show the two original GRAY colors that were then overdyed to make Not Gray colors.  I used the rocks around the blanket flowers as my setting since the flowers have a nice "fall" feel to them...

...and then I noticed that if I tweaked a couple of the unused colors (yellow and burgandy) I could almost match the flower colors...

I think the obvious tweak on the yellow is just to add a little orange.  The burgandy...I'm not so sure I can change enough...but I think I'm going to try...and if it works...and I like it better than the current colors...

Hey, it wouldn't be a knitting project if it didn't hit the frog pond at least once ;-).

Jumping On The Bandwagon

When I saw Mason Dixon Knitting's headline "Bang Out A Carbeth" Wednesday I was immediately intrigued.  That's a super cute sweater and I just happened to have Rebecca Boone yarn burning a hole in my stash.  It would be perfect!  

The sweater is short and wide.  Rebecca Boone is short and wide!  We're going to bang it out?  Anyone who's gotten between a Cotswold and food has a particularly good understanding of the word "bang"!

20 dug through the stash basket and pulled out Rebecca Boone's pretty silver yarn.  He grabbed the Baaxter Black's yarn as well.  Just in case.  

"Just in case, what, 20?!?"  

"That I'd be short on yardage or not be able to get gauge?!?"

"Just sayin'..."

Well, it would have been a game of yarn chicken...if I'd been able to get gauge :-(.  Looks like we're going to [Baaxter] Out A Carbeth.  There is enough yardage and the gauge was spot on.  The only thing I'm not 100% sure on is his color.

By itself, it's not bad.  It's a darkish grayish brownish with an almost tweedy quality.  Next to the shimmery silver Cotswold though it looks a bit drab.  I may be letting that sway me.  And I shouldn't.

Still, I cut a few short samples and mixed up some possible overdyes. 

One thing I really enjoyed about the Elizabeth shawl was the use of color over her grays.  Baaxter didn't let me down either.

Even though muted by the darkish grayish brownish, I felt like the colored colors were too...colorful.

These two were my favorite.  You're shocked, right?  I like both of these naturally looking browns.  I like Baaxter's real natural color as well.  Any thoughts?

Wednesdays Are For Knitting?

I spent some time off and on today working on putting together a Yarn Along post.  I wound yarn into balls for my next project, took some pictures, tried to figure out what I wanted to post, took some more pictures...and now that I'm sitting down, at the last minute of course, to put a post together I find that there is no more Yarn Along :-(.

I completely understand.  Blogging is a lot of work.  Families are a lot of work.  I can't imagine trying to do both.  Well, I sort of can imagine.  There are times when it might be almost a week before I can get a new post put up.  Having to do one on a schedule...well, we know where that would end up - at the last minute of course...if at all.

I am going to try to keep on a Wednesday "accountability" schedule.  Remember a couple months ago when I mentioned "Make Yarn, Use Yarn"?  I think that will be the theme.  Keep after me!

One last shawl picture.  I took it off the blocking boards, worrying that it would all spring back to jumble...and it, of course, did not and I love it even more than I did before.  Actually, there may be more pictures at some point.  I have an idea for a fun "photo shoot" with Liddy.

And moving on to my next project.  This yarn doesn't really look familiar, but it is.  It's the Renny yarn.  I've worked a little on this off and on for about a month or so.  Renny and I needed to do something to get our groove back.  

We made a few color changes and I took pictures all along the way and maybe I'll pull them out and share at some point.  I've also switched patterns to something I think will fit the yarn (and me) better. I'll talk more about that later as well.  Always learning! 

And if you've made it this far and are thinking "yeesh, I wish she'd stop talking about knitting and yarn and just post some more lamb pictures!"  Here you go :-). 

A Liddy story and more Lamb Camp tomorrow!

Yarn Along - Make Yarn Use Yarn - Week Two

So far, so good...even if the Yarn Along post (that I am GOING to do every week this year!) is a day late.  I even doubled up posts for Tuesday so there wouldn't be a conflict for Wednesday.  Sigh...

I've now spun two bobbins of Liddy and a small skein of Emily/Annabelly on the CPW.  At the house I clocked 310 yards of Hershey on the Joy.  I also found (another) hat pattern I just can't live without, so Miss B and I dyed some stashed Jester yarn for that.  We also dyed some roving for her and half of a 2013 Elizabeth fleece that I found when I cleaned up the barn last year.

We started with a skein of medium gray and a skein of dark gray.  I also had a skein of dark green and medium green Jester already dyed from a project from several years ago...unfinished, like so many others, languishing in my stash.  

I was happy with the dark green, so left that as is.  The light green (far right) got over dyed to make the dark navy and dark brown.  The dark blue was done with one of the three blues I have that I didn't think to make a note of.  I'm pretty sure we added some black to darken it as well, but again, no note.  Make Yarn. Use Yarn. LABEL Yarn :-o.

The brown was done in stages.  First we used red over the green and then over-dyed that with yellow. We still weren't happy, so over-dyed that with brown.  Jacob is a great yarn for beginning dyers because it takes a ton of abuse.

The white is a small skein of Annabelly I'd had to spin to finish off the collar of the Jester sweater several years ago.  I love that she is going to be part of this Jester project as well :-).  She was the first of the Belly lambs he adopted all those years ago.

I should have been ready to cast on, but I decided to take down of the Christmas decorations yesterday which then gave me too much time to stew on everything and this morning I decided I wasn't absolutely happy with the dark green, so we over-dyed it a couple more times again.

The small squiggle of yarn next to the original light green is where we started.  The brownish green next to it is the dark green over-dyed with orange and the skein next to that was the same original dark green over-dyed with brown.  I think I'm leaning towards the orange green at this point.  Now I just need to "git knittin".

Here is the hat.  It's Gone To The Mountains by fellow Yarn Along-er Andee Fagan.  Here is the story behind the pattern.  Not only is it really pretty, but the pattern is for a good cause as well ;-).

Here is the Hershey skein.  New followers are probably wondering what I used to dye this chocolate color. Actually, you are probably wondering why a grey sheep is named Hershey in the first place, now that I think about it ;-).  Here is why.  Isn't he cute?  And wow, look how young everyone looks! And the "big white lamb"?  That ended up being Rocket - Andy and Levi's dad :-).

I have a couple neat books to share and I'd include one here, but I need to go haul all my house plants back in the house.  Yes, after several days in the single digits, it's been raining and mid to upper 60s. Everyone got out for a good shower and drink and needs to come back in in the off chance it hits freezing tonight.  Plus, I'd like to actually Cast On and Use Yarn!  

Joining in with Ginny...