Gloria Cowl

Oh my goodness.  I love Noro Silk Garden Chunky.  A wonderful, warm yarn.  I used 1 1/2 skeins to knit this cowl.  The Gloria Cowl is a simple, quick and satisfying knit.

I wasn't sure whether I would keep the cowl or not.  I'm not really a "blue" person.  I ended up giving it to Tiina and the blue looked fantastic on her.

Stacked Eyelet Cowl

The pattern can be found here.  I used US Size 4 circular needles (24 inch).

The second photo shows the true color of this luscious yarn.  The first photo better shows the pattern and eyelets.

I finally abandoned the Sunday Market Shawl and decided to "test knit" this cowl pattern.  I thought this would make a good Plan B item for Kelly if she didn't groove on the Noro Striped Scarf.  Being a kinesthetic learner and an ace reviser, my knitting within a project inevitably improves the more I knit said project.

I do love this Noro Cash Iroha.  It is silky and luxe and these skeins have held up well to repeated knitting and frogging (of the Sunday Market Shawl).

The cowl is warm and soft.  It was easy to knit.  I practiced Elizabeth Zimmerman's cast-off method, but abandoned it about halfway through because it didn't seem to be doing much to prevent the curling and I thought I might run out of yarn (you cut a long tail for this method of casting off and I am very bad at approximating tail length for a project with this many stitches).

(This link is awesome!  It looks like I may have been doing the EZ sewn bind-off incorrectly :-p)

The curling is not a deal breaker for me, especially once the cowl is on.

Leaves of Grass 1.0

I owe Kelly a knit.  I awarded some 1000th post prizes over at my other blog and Kelly was a winner.  She chose "knit" as her loot category.  I asked her for color suggestions and one of the colors she mentioned was yellow.  I had a skein of buttery yellow Cascade 220 in my stash.  (A single skein plucked out of the Modern Yarn sale basket in their old location.)

I pattern crawled on Ravelry, but nothing leapt out at me.  One thing led to another and I pulled out my Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Volume One.  I found a pattern I liked called Leaves of Grass.  Inpsired, I did some rudimentary math, cast on for a cowl with the Cascade 220, and knit, knit, knit.

You can see from the photo on top that the cowl was way too big.  I did finish it so I could try it on, and it was, indeed, way too big.  Victorian neck ruff big.

Another thing: Cascade 220, in my opinion, is too scratchy for a cowl.  It's a great workhorse yarn, but I prefer something more luxe to cozy my neck up to.

My son helped me frog the cowl and rewind the yarn.  Loved that :-)

Tamarind Cowl

What a great pattern.  You can find it here.  (Scroll down for it on the free pattern side.)

I knit this for my sister's birthday.  The yarn was a handspun picked up at the Garden State Sheep and Fiber Festival a few years ago.  The color was Rosewood and it was 100% merino wool (so soft yet look at the stitch definition on that cowl!)

A lovely knitting experience all around.