Baaaaaaaaaa!

Meet Anu.

Pattern: Estonian Sheep Puppet, Spin-Off magazine, summer 2006
Yarn: My handspun, app. 15 wpi 2-ply
Needles: U.S. 0
Details: I knew I'd make one of these sheep puppets as soon as I saw them. Soon after I bought some corriedale "truffles" (2 oz. balls of roving from moorit sheep) at Rising Meadow Farm's shearing day, I spun the yarn (1 oz. each of two colors). Corriedale being corriedale -- very sproingy compared to the shetland used in the article -- I got about 120 yards out of each ounce spinning to 15 wpi instead of 88 yards per once. Nice.

I was so eager to start knitting it up, that I didn't even bother to wash and set the yarn (the horror). I pretty much followed the instructions as written (it has you mix and match patterns for the lower border, body, and arms), although I made the ears a bit longer (by about 4 rows), because I thought it would look a little funnier that way.

I was adamant that all the yarn be my handspun, so I used my spindle to make short lengths of yarn for the facial embroidery. I was dealing with such small amounts that I didn't even have to wrap yarn around the shaft. I just spun as far as I could reach, then doubled it over for a 2-ply. The light brown is more corriedale from the farm, the black is a bit of dyed merino from Deep Color Studio in Berkeley, and the blue is a wool/silk blend from Crosspatch Creations.

Happily, Anu has found a buddy here.