Sheep Shots

I came very close to losing it yesterday.

The Other Half has decided that we need a new snowblower, and though he may very well be right (haven't started Old Faithful that we bought used for a couple hundred bucks back in '01 for the season yet), do we have to hit every single hardware/home improvement store in the Greater Lehigh Valley to check prices and specifications? And do we realy need something that honkin' big? And where are we planning to park it? (Garden shed is full of lawn mower and garden cart and chair cushions.)

So, okay, we hit two Tru Values and a Home Depot, and a stand alone hardware store. In four different cities. Feel my pain.


It did not help that my weekly trip to the Tree to check for bargains was thwarted by four hundred seventy-nine other people and their unruly children who had the same idea, and that the normally narrow aisles were stacked with additional boxes of goodies. It made for a totally unpleasant experience, except that they had the little fleecy blankies back and I grabbed 6 of those and some totally cute fleece booties.

I know that they are barely big enough for a newborn, but they are so freakin' cute.

On a happy note, though, my Native Support group's Mitten Challenge ended with thirty members contributing 581 warm articles of clothing to the kids at the Cheyenne River Reservation. They made 363 hats, 28 scarves, 110 pairs of mittens, 19 pairs of socks, and 61 pairs of slippers. An impressive total, especially for such a small group. I was pleased to award prizes to two contributors, drawn at random by my friend Rabbitch . She can take both the glory and the blame.

Another member of the group (list owner Marilyn) has raised a new challenge: scarves! (It gets mighty cold in SD in the winter.) We're already off and running on this new challenge.

I'll be posting "recipes" for scarves as I plot them out and knit them up, but to get started, I sorted my yarn oddballs (all ack, sorry) into girl colors
and boy colors:




















Then I cast on using two strands of girl colors, joined with an overhand knot using long tail cast on. For this first scarf, I was aiming for about 42" (for about a 4 year old[?]) plus fringe.

I left a double tail (both strands) of about 10" and cast on loosely, 172 (rough gauge is 4 stitches/inch) stitches on a circular needle (to accommodate the number of stitches). I wanted it loose and squonchy, not stiff as a board, so I used a size 10.



Then, I just knit across, leaving a tail of about 10" at each end, and cutting the yarn at the end of each row. Color placement is totally random, just pick a color ball out of the bin, knit across, cut, turn, start the next row with a different color.

I'll go back and knot and trim those loose tails into a multi-colored fringy tassely thing after I finish knitting. I think I'll probably stop at 5-6" unstretched. I'm at about 3.5" now, with lots of beige, two shades of pink and lavender left.

Then, I'll do the same with my boy colors.


I have some other ideas brewing, so watch this space.



Update:

All done. Finished size is 52" long X 5" wide. Plus fringe.






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