FO: Hand-dyed cowl

This is the story of a sadly unloved skein of yarn. Well, maybe not unloved, but rather one that made mum go ‘meh’. She dyed it during a workshop on acid dyes but wasn’t sure of the colour combination. Not being a particularly enthusiastic knitter, she wasn’t sure what to do with it so I volunteered my services to make her something pretty from it!

A beautiful skein

I knitted it following the nice simple Irisa Cowl pattern from Knitted Bliss with a few mods. I did one more repeat of the slip stitch pattern to make a slightly wider scarf. Luckily I had just enough yarn to make it long enough to wrap round twice!

Wrapped up warm

Pretty colours on a dreary day!

I’m especially pleased with the way I managed to join the two ends. I undid the cast on edge and grafted them together. It’s pretty hard to spot the join.

See it right in the middle there?

And of course, the finishing touch :)

Lovingly labelled

FO: Leafy Cowl

Until now I never understood the love for cowls that is apparent on any knitting blog or Ravelry. But now I do.

It’s a scarf you can wear around the house without getting the ends in your dinner or dipping in the washing-up bowl. You can wear it out and about without getting tangled in your bag strap (not just me surely?!)

It’s a scarf stripped down to the bare essentials – it clothes your neck and nothing else.

Enter then, my first cowl. 

I enjoyed knitting this, a nice quick knit with a simple but pretty colourwork pattern. I did have issues to begin with as my 40 cm circulars were occupied by another project and so this was started on dpns. The stitch count was rather too many for my needles though and the yarn quite slippery so gathering up fallen stitches was a regular annoyance.

I used two complementary self striping yarns so in some parts the colourwork pattern almost disappears as the colours blend so well.