Moose sock blockers and a few FOs

The sock blockers I bought have arrived! Check out the moose-y goodness:

Mr. Mmmyarn’s socks look quite stylish on them, although the height of the cuff covers up part of the moose:

Pattern: own
Yarn: 1 skein Steinbach Wolle Aktiv Effekt; 75% wool, 25% nylon; color: 02
Needles: size 2 double-points

I doubt I’ll use the blockers to block the usual plain socks I make, but if I ever make fancy entrelac or stranded socks I’ll use the blockers for their intended purpose then. In the meantime, I do think they allow socks to photograph much better.

I finally finished the baby sweater. The theme I was given was “the sea and the sky,” so I picked blue for sky and water, white for clouds and seafoam, and tan for sand. Button-shopping was a pain; the recipient requested airplanes and there were simply no buttons imprinted with airplanes to be had in San Francisco (or at Stitches West, for that matter), so here we have the little cars I found instead:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece; 80% cotton, 20% wool; about 3/4 skein of the blue and not even 1/4 skeins of the white or tan
Needles: size 4 for ribbing, size 6 for body
Size: 20″ = 1 year

I heard the baby is a large-ish baby and although he’s only about 5 months old this sweater may not fit him after all. Humph. I hope it fits. The sweater really doesn’t have such a balloon shape, I just didn’t have time to block it before sending it on its way.

In an effort to knit from my stash and also reduce the size of my stash, I actually gave away (alert the media!) a large ball of rayon chenille I knew I would never use to someone who said she could use it. I also pulled out some of the acrylic stuff I bought years ago and made a cage cozy for a local animal shelter:

Pattern: own. (Really, just a dishcloth: cast on 3, increase with yarn overs on each side every other row until you use up one skein, then decrease to the end of the second skein. You can’t see the yarn over pattern in the edges in this photo.)
Yarn: 2 skeins Lion Brand Homespun; 98% acrylic, 2% polyester; color: 350, Elizabethan
Needles: size 8
Size: 24″ x 23″

Cage cozies are used in animal shelters to give animals a bit of padding and warmth in their often cold cages, to give them a bit of comfort in the form of a security blanket that’s theirs alone, and to make an animal up for adoption look more attractive to prospective adoptive parents. Looking at this, uh, “square,” I see my garter stitch technique is apparently in want of improvement. The cozy is slightly longer than it is wide and it has a tendency to relax into more of a parallelogram than a square. I yanked its edges like crazy to prep it for its photo shoot.

WIP update: Socks for me are underway (bus knitting), I got started on the “Lily of the Valley” shawl (Knitter’s, Summer 2004), the to-be-felted bag is waiting for the rest of its i-cord, and my red cabled sweater is languishing again until I can drum up the enthusiasm for v-neck calculations. I also have some finished singles ready for plying. So much knitting, so little time…