Another Cowl

This is the last cowl for a while, I promise.

This one is Elis, which happens to share it's name with my middle school, except it's missing an "l."  This was another stash buster, featuring Knit Picks Galileo in Nebula. I got one skein a while back to hit the $50 free shipping threshold. By the way, always worth it.

Tripple Cowls!

Quite a while ago (last fall), I knit a  Bandana Cowl  in Knit Picks Cadena (in Locus).

 And I loved it. The yarn is super soft and squishy and it felt amazing in my fingers. I wore it a lot over the winter, while I froze at work. Not that I work outside, not that the building doesn't have adequate heat (it does, this is Wisconsin), I'm just one of those people who was always cold. And I loved having something I could throw on around my neck when it was too warm to wear a sweater but too cold to go without.

I made another one to eat up the rest of the Gloss HW left over from Array.  This one is a little taller than the it's pink twin. I also used a less-elastic cast-on this time around, which backfired a bit. It still fits over my head, but it's a tighter squeeze.

The third cowl, Present, was made with some Malabrigo I had picked up because it was pretty. I try to avoid buying yarn without a project in mind, but I couldn't help myself.  I'm not totally thrilled with this pattern, but whatever. I still have at least half a skein, so I wouldn't be terribly upset if I needed to frog Present in order to have enough yarn to complete another project.

Beast of Burden

I fell in love with Array last summer, when it was advertised prominently on Ravelry. I ignored the fact that there was a lot of purling and slipping and moving the yarn from front to back on everything single stitch, until I actually had to do it. It was awful.

I did some research and came across a Youtube video on Norwegian knitting and purling. Instead of moving the working yarn from front to back, you move the needle position. It definitely helped, and I'm glad I found it, but still. It had been months, I was bored and sick of it.

So I set it aside for several months. I eventually came back to it, but couldn't remember where I had left off in the pattern. When I did pick it up again, I started in the wrong pattern row but stubbornly continued. I tried to ignore it, and I did for an inch and a half before I decided I had to rip back. Fixed that, re-started in the correct row, but now my tension was different. You can see it in the picture below.

I gave up. Bound off, I'm done with it. It's an inch or two shorter than the pattern, but I never want to do that again. Ever. Ever.