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Now that is my kind of holiday spirit!
Bea Rocks the Flock, by Victoria Jamieson, was published in May, 2009. I first saw a copy in a vendor booth at Knitters’ Day Out in September. My local public library has it, so I can review it! It’s been about a year since my last fiber-themed children’s book review…
This is a cute book with whimsical, colorful illustrations. It has the same premise as Woolbur – an individual sheep disturbs the flock by expressing her/himself and not blending in. Like Woolbur, Bea despairs at being told that sheep cannot be unique. So she leaves the flock and heads for the big city, in search of a place where others appreciate her. Perhaps predictably, once she reaches the big city, she has a hard time finding her niche. She tries lots of silly things (from being a cloud, to posing as one of the lions at the New York Public Library, to participating in a dog show). At the dog show, she wins a prize for being the Most Unique Dog. Getting this prize makes her doubt the Rule of Sheepdom (that sheep are not unique). She misses her friends, so she returns home. It turns out that her friends missed her, too, and are happy that she has returned. Together, they make a new Rule of Sheepdom: Beeeeeee yourself.
I read this with my 5-year-old and 7-year-old. It maintained their interest. When asked what his favorite part was, Boy 2 said “when she goes home to her friends.”
This book has a few fiber arts references. When Bea prepares to leave the flock, she loads up her backpack with wool dye, yarn, and her lucky knitting needles. She uses the dye to transform herself into a pink poodle for the dog show, and she knits a rope with which to hang herself in a tree. In the end, though, I would put this book in the category “books with characters who just happen to be sheep” rather than the “books about actual sheep and what happens to their fiber.” It’s cute – but Woolbur already stole my heart.
B – A four-eyed monster eating a boy
I started these last January (I see I had 8 small ones then) but clearly didn’t make a ton of progress this year – now I only have 11! Still, they do look nice – and I will certainly make more. I should cut a deal with myself to make a ball as soon as I finish each pair of socks – that would help my numbers! 
And, I whipped up a couple of those Kristin Nicholas ornaments I linked to the other day. The crochet was fun – I might do more of these sometime!
I finished Ed’s hat today and am really pleased with the way it came out! Here’s my in-house hat model:
I had a hard time reclaiming the hat from Boy 1 after our front porch photo shoot, so maybe he needs one of his very own. I have plenty of yarn left – the finished hat weighs in at 64 g.
I spent a fair bit of time yesterday playing around with the decreases. I learned that the pattern looked best when I only did decreases on the light-colored rounds (which are more knit-y than purl-y), and you have to do some fancy float dropping on the patent stitches to make the line of the light yarn nice and straight. The decreases go down by 2 stitches each time, also in order to preserve the two-color columns. And to get a nice rounded crown, I began the decreases every 4th round and then sped them up to every 2nd round, ending with 8 stitches at the top. It took me a bit of swatching to figure all this out – here’s the evidence:
And before I know it, it will be time to pack away some sock yarn and plan appropriately interesting-yet-simple projects for travel knitting. Any suggestions?
Back in September, I took a class on Estonian patent stitches with Merike Saarniit. This technique is really interesting; it creates a reversible, cushy, smooshy, warm fabric with lots of air pockets in it. I decided to practice by making a hat for my friend Ed, who needs a warm hat to keep his (not very hairy) head warm when he’s in Portland. 
This technique is really quite captivating. I recommend it!
Piggle is done!
My sister-outlaw suggested this pattern for her older daughter, Allie, who is two-and-a-half and always wears pigtails. The pattern calls for DK weight yarn. I used some sportweight sock yarn from my stash. When asked what her favorite color was, Allie replied “green yellow purple red green.” I figured multicolor was a good choice.
This hat is a lace pattern. Normally I would never use a self-striping yarn with lace, but it sort of works for a child’s hat. The lace makes the hat very stretchy, which is good. Hat holes are also good if you live in a warm climate like east Texas! You can really see the lacy holes in this photo.
I used one entire 50 g ball of this yarn plus just a bit of the second ball.
I used Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off on the pigtail holes – this technique originally appeared in Knitty.com. Here’s a video by Cat Bordhi that shows exactly how to do it:
If I knit this again, I would knit the waste yarn for the holes in stockinette, not in pattern. It would have been much easier to pick up the stitches that way.
Merry Christmas to Allie from her auntie! And many thanks to Lily for being such a great hat model! (It was actually kind of hard to get a photo of the hat holes, because she instinctively turns toward the camera!)
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