Duplicate

When I saw the sheep hat that one of the women in my knitting group made, I was smitten! I knew I had to get the book and make one too.


The pattern calls for intarsia in the round to create the sheep's legs, and you're supposed to use one strand for both of the front legs and a separate strand for each of the back legs. As you can probably visualize, this creates a long (14 stitches long, in fact) float in the back, and it was hard to maintain the right tension. One solution would have been to use a separate strand for each leg, but I decided to use duplicate stitch instead, and I'm glad I did! It makes for a neater back, IMO:



You're supposed to make French knots for the eyes, but I always have trouble with them on knits. They tend to slip and slide through the holes of the fabric, so I used duplicate stitch to make the eyes too.

I had so much fun making the sheep hat that as soon as I finished one, I cast on for another. That's a rarity for me to make 2 of the same thing! The knitting went quickly, and both hats are now done.



All this baby knitting had my husband nervous, but they're not for me. One has already gone to a colleague and fellow knitter who recently returned to work from maternity leave, and the other will soon head to a good home.