I HEART ROVING ACRES YARN

Back in September I wrote about the scarf I made for my mother from yarn she picked out at the Wool Gathering in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  It was a gorgeous variegated yarn from Roving Acres, a family farm in Ohio, and I feared not having enough to finish the scarf so I bought two skeins.  The scarf only took one and I left it up to my mother to decide what she'd like me to make with the other.

She chose a cowl, but most of the patterns I saw took too much yarn.  Turns out she made her own cowl from fabric last year, just a simple piece of material sewn together to make a circle.  I used her cloth cowl for the measurements and then tweaked a scarf pattern from Bernat (found here).  I used smaller needles than called for and added stitches to increase the width.  I then knitted until...well...until I ran out of yarn.  The edges were sewn together to form a circle.  It's smaller than most cowls out there, but just the right size for my mother's needs.  The finished product is 8-1/2" wide and 29" long doubled (or 58" total).  (Complete notes can be found on my Ravelry page here.)

Now, a word about that yarn.  I'm in LOVE with it.  I fondled many skeins at the Roving Acres booth at the Wool Gathering before my mother chose these particular colors.  The yarn is a worsted weight alpaca/merino wool and it's just delicious!  It's warm and wooly, but not scratchy at all.  And the hand-dyeing is just gorgeous.  After making two projects with their yarn I just couldn't take it anymore and had to get some for myself for a hat/scarf project.  Beth at Roving Acres was wonderful to work with and dyed for me the exact color of variegated yarn I wanted.  (They also have an Etsy shop here.)  I wanted shades of gray, from very light up to charcoal, and it came out beautiful.  I'm busily clicking away on the hat.  Hopefully I'll have the finished product to show in a week or two (before the first snow flies, preferably).

It's so nice to get back to working on an adult project after many weeks of creating Christmas stockings.  It's like that giddy feeling that a mother gets when she can finally pick up a novel of her choice after 5,298 readings of Goodnight, Moon.  Priceless...


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*  SO MAD I COULD KNIT

FOUR FABULOUS FREE CHRISTMAS STOCKING KNITTING PATTERNS

When we got our beagle, Bailey, two weeks after our wedding in 1995, I lovingly made her a cross-stitch Christmas stocking, complete with her name at the top.  She died in 2005 and the Christmas stocking has been in storage ever since.  I can't bring myself to get rid of it.  I can't bring myself to pluck the stitches spelling out her name and replace them with one of my four other pets.  My critters have made do with crappy cheap stockings from the grocery store and I often think I really should create something a little more appropriate for beloved members of the family.  On the other hand, a decade from now I don't want FIVE handmade, personalized stockings in storage.

With my newly developed knitting skills obsession, I decided to make each quadruped his or her own stocking, without personalization.  It will be his or hers until time to cross The Rainbow Bridge.  Then it will get passed on to the next guy.  (If my accumulation of animals continues at the same pace of the last nine years, I'll be needing to make more stockings soon.)

I present my recently-finished dog and cat stockings.  Full details can be found on my Ravelry page here.

Frank and St. Jimmi

For my two hounds I chose the Christmas Stocking Knitting Pattern found on Red Heart's site here.  What I quickly discovered about most stocking patterns is that they are big.  I mean they are BIG.  (You will see evidence below.)  The first striped one on the left was acceptable, but a little too large for my taste, so the second time around I went with needles two sizes smaller and got a more reasonably-sized stocking.  As I was hanging them to take the picture, St. Jimmi wandered over and started nosing hers.  It hasn't even had anything edible put in it yet.  I'll have to watch out for that one.  Bailey was always obsessed with her Christmas stocking.  One year she jumped up and got her teeth in it, bringing the heavy silver stocking holder crashing into the fireplace, chipping a brick and nearly cracking the dog's skull.  Once I had children I switched to the light wooden holders shown, where the worst thing that happens is a dog overindulges and gets indigestion.

Snickers and Milky Way
The feline members of the family get very little in their stockings.  Unlike my enthusiastic dogs, who love nothing more than the crackle of a treat bag opening or the squeak of a new toy, the cats usually just look bored and turn their noses up at my tasty tuna-flavored offerings.  Since I needed only enough room for a small can of cat food and maybe a tiny catnip-filled toy, I made their stockings much smaller.  The original Lion Brand Fuzzy Santa Stocking (found here) used their Fun Fur Yarn for both the cuff and the body.  While I love the look of the fuzzy yarn, working with it gives me the pip.  I used plain acrylic yarn for the body, then topped it off with the nice faux fur at the top.


Finally we have the ones that didn't quite work out.  The first stocking I made, Bernat's Happy Holidays Knit Stocking (found here), was made with this cute Christmas variegated yarn.  Unfortunately the thing turned out to be as big as Santa's boot.  Actually, make that BOTH of Santa's boots.  It was not only long but unbelievably wide.  When I hung all the stockings up to photograph, though, Foghorn made it very clear which one she liked best.

Since it was useless as a dog stocking (unless I was giving him a 25 pound bag of Milkbones), I gave it to Foghorn.  And she managed to find a use for it...

The second substandard stocking makes me a little sad, since I think it came out very cute.  It's Lion Brand's Decorated Christmas Stocking found here.   Like the previous stocking, it's HUGE.  Unlike the previous one, though, it's proportional.  I'm thinking of filling it with small toys and hanging it for a decoration on the wall or maybe the front door.  If my knitting math skills were better, I would have redone the pattern to make it smaller.  Unfortunately I'm not at that level of expertise yet.







Now that the stockings are out of the way, I can get to work on filling them.  I have a great pattern from the Stitch 'N Bitch book for a knit Joey Ramone doll.  I think that just might suit St. Jimmi.