So as you can see I have been busy and at last have finished my new patterns. Wooohooo! It's such a nice feeling of relief! There has been a lot of tweaking and trying out different arrangements of stitches and shaping and I have gone slightly stir crazy knitting sheep heads (over 40 to date). So now I am really looking forward to knitting something different - maybe I will reward myself with a bit of scarf or sock knitting and as soon as I've finished this post I'm popping over to Loop's website for a little restorative yarn shopping :)
There are two sheep patterns; a boy ram and a girl lamb. They both include options for 2 types of horns; a big curly pair and a narrower pointy pair. They also both have lots of suggestions for yarn colourways and although the animal pattern is written for knitting in 2 colours (one for the woolly part of the head and body and another for the smoother face, arms, legs, ears and tail) it can be knitted in a single colour if preferred.
The girl lamb pattern has plain coloured tights and knitted on shoes and comes with 2 dress patterns; one is worked in 2 colours with a Fair Isle/stranded technique and the other is knitted in a single colour with an arrangement of knit and purl stitches which give a textured pattern. Both are based on a honeycomb design (see below: the first 2 dresses are made from the Fair Isle pattern, one has the lighter colour as the accent colour defining the pattern and the other is reversed; the third lamb is wearing a dress from the textured pattern and has the pointy horns).
The boy ram pattern comes with a pattern for shorts and a sweater that uses a slipped stitch pattern to give an interesting nubby texture. The sweater is written for knitting in 2 colours but these are never used at the same time across the same row, instead it's worked in alternate 2 row stripes with the slipped stitches giving the appearance of a more complex pattern. If preferred it can be worked in a single colour (see below: the first sheep with no horns is wearing the sweater made in a single colour, the other two are wearing sweaters knitted in 2 colours).
Both patterns are now available as instant downloads on Ravelry and my website. Buying any two of my animal patterns together gives an automatic discount of £1.25 (to apply the discount you'll need to use the 'add to basket' rather than buying one at a time)
If you give either of them a go, I really hope that you enjoy them. As always I'm here to answer any questions that arise and there will be a knit along over on the Little Cotton Rabbits Ravelry group so that's a really good place to pop in and leave a message if you need help with any aspect.
Thanks x