I’m having so much fun with Loop-it, a new novelty yarn by Red Heart. After my knitting experiments with it in my last posts, I decided to try something else.
One night, when I had some knitting friends over, I grabbed a pair of 1″ [25mm] ‘broomstick’ needles and cast on 8 stitches. (Honest, there was no wine involved.)
What happens when you take the whole strand of Loop-it and knit it with broomstick needles! I love the subtle pink undertone in the Ice Ice Cream color.
Within 4 rows, I had used the lion’s share of a whole ball of yarn (Loop-it has 7.6 yds [7m] per ball). I ended up with this swatch of knitting!
After it came off the needles, I saw a sheep in this piece. You might well see a poodle, but as a knitter and spinner, I usually see a sheep.
The three of us got quite a giggle out of this piece, which you have to admit looks like something that got trimmed off a poodle!
After the giggling was over, I tinkered with this bit of knitting and turned it into a reasonable sheep! With a little button eye and some bits of black ribbon for legs, it makes a very cute applique on the corner of a baby blanket. Here’s how I did it:
I took a knitting blanket from my knit-and-purl class samples (I also teach classes), then grabbed some 1″ [2.5cm] grosgrain ribbon, and one of those clear plastic buttons frames you embellish with yarn. I also grabbed black thread and couple yards of black double knitting weight yarn.
First, I fashioned legs from the ribbon, pinned them onto the blanket and stitched them down with black thread.
Grosgrain ribbon makes suitable legs for a little sheep.
Then, I took that whole swatch in the second photo above, cinched in a ‘neck’ with white baby yarn, and laid the piece on the blanket so that the body was fairly centered over the legs. Continuing with the baby yarn, I stitched down the belly. When I got to the tail, it happened that this was where the short, cast on tail of yarn was, so I looped it up into a tail and tacked that down as I went.
Then, I tucked in the long tail of yarn under the body and kept sewing around the back of the sheep. I sewed the head down last, on a bit of an angle to give it an air of grazing.
To make the eye, I wove the black cotton yarn through the button form, then anchored it onto the head of the sheep.
The final result of my giggle knitting – a sheep on a blanket!
Knitting with a full strand of Loop-it isn’t really practical, but you have to love that little sheep!
In my next post, I’m taking a look at another novelty yarn by Red Heart, Pomp-a-Doodle, and in the post after that, I’ve combined the two yarns into a poofy project. In the meantime, click on the link I provided to Pomp-a-Doodle.
You’ve seen how much fun I’ve had with Loop-it – can you imagine what I’ll do with this?
This is part 3 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 2: Introducing knitting needles to Loop-it yarn
Go to part 4: Pomp-a-Doodle – yarn without pomp and circumstance
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