One More Thing

Sometimes when I am in the middle of a project, I get bored with it and I look for something to knit that is pretty and mindless - sort of a palate cleanser.  The criteria for this sidetrack pattern is that it has to be something where the pattern is easy to remember and has no charts.

In the middle of knitting the My Cup of Tea socks, I got bored.  I wanted something easy and quick.  I had just watched Leslie of The Knit Girllls podcast pull out her mostly finished Willow Cowl and she said she made it in a couple of days.  Well heck, I can do it in a couple of days too, to get my mind off the socks.

I had already ordered some glitz sock yarn from Gynx Yarn in the Dusk colorway.  What made me order glitz yarn, I do not know.  I had never done, maybe that was the reason, but mostly it was because I loved the color:

I had already done one Willow cowl with DK weight yarn which was big, bulky and not my colors, and when it was done, I promptly found it a new home:

Because of the heft of that yarn (Confetti Yarns Temptation, unnamed colorway), I could only make four rings, and I ran out of yarn before I could make the picot bind off.

The upshot of making the first Willow is that it was so easy and fast to knit, that the ladies in the knitting group agreed that we would all make one to wear to Rhinebeck.  One skein of sock yarn, one US #5 needle and you're good to go.  Last year we made orange hats, and it was hot as heck at the festival - too hot for a hat.

The cowl looks weird while you're making it, kind of like a child's skirt.  With this yarn, which is soft, squishy and lovely to work with, there's just the right amount of glitz which I think you can see if you embiggen the picture:

And at the end of the third day, I bound off and this one has the picot edge which you have to sew down:

This one is looser at the neck, prettier and has six 'rings'.  Because it's made with sock yarn, it's lighter in weight and looks better laying flat.  If it hadn't been raining all day here, I would have some decent pictures so you could see the true colors of this cowl.

I know I'm on a cowl kick lately, because I also finished the Eleanor Cowl which I like, but don't love.  This cowl I love.

Now, I have to get back into spinning because I committed to spinning a new-to-me fiber by the end of the month so the next post I write will be about that.  I just hope it will be an enjoyable spin because I have 8 ounces of it!

Back to the grindstone.

Oh!  And before I go, I mentioned that Stitches East (in Hartford, CT) was the week before the NY Sheep & Wool Festival when actually it's in November - and thank goodness!  I have a lot of supplies I have to gather for my rigid heddle class and I just hope it's all stuff I have in stash.