Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The matching cowl

I finished the cowl to match Carol's Winter Garden Hat:

It was quite a simple adaptation; I just knit the size L hat up to the crown, then repeated the first 12 rounds, then did two rounds of purl and cast off knitwise.  The end result is long enough to tuck up over your chin, if perhaps a little wider than I intended - so difficult to tell what superwash wool will do when wet blocked.


But pretty!

Carol put it on the instant I gave it to her and didn't take it off again so I think it was a success.  Really it's such a delight to mke things for Carol, she appreciates them so much.  We knitters all need a Carol in our lives (though perhaps a version who doesn't make us do face-down planks after thirty minutes of other ab and arm strength training.)

In related news: I was very aware of using up stash yarn for the cowl project.  Yes, it's come to that.

I stocked my stash a year or so ago with single skeins of the artisanal yarns I love, and mainstream cottons I used to love and - oops! - don't like to knit with any more, and other things I've designed for lots of times already that are not so fresh or inspiring these days.

And it must be faced: you pretty much need for pattern-writing the sorts of yarn every local yarn store across the country is selling, things that people who use the patterns can easily find to replicate what you've done (even though most of us substitute other yarns most of the time.)  None of which I seem to have left in the stash.

In conclusion, I need to go shopping. Yet I have no space for more stash, or much yarn budget now that I think of it.  Still, needs must... designing patterns is turning out to be like writing fiction: not something you have much choice about.

I'll just have to knit faster and clear out a little more room, that's all.  Who knows - maybe this will be the year my Christmas crafting is done in August?

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