Skip to main content

Honey Cowl

Staying true to my commitment that should I buy new yarn I must use it, another project was found and completed.

The newly purchased Ella Rae, Lace Merino yarn that is DK weight needed to be used.  There was enough yardage to make a nice sized cowl, but I wanted to be sure to use a pattern designed specifically for this relatively light weight yarn.  A quick search turned up this pattern, Honey Cowl by Madelinetosh.  Remarkably I knit the pattern using the sized needles recommended and followed the design as written.   (This is such a rarity that I have to stop and congratulate myself.)

The Ella Rae yarn is that lovely variegated type that is taken full advantage of by this pattern.  It uses a slip stitch honeycomb combination of four rows repeats.  Whenever a stitch is slipped the colour of the yarn from the previous row remains.  Then a stitch is purled which mixes colours.  The blending of this subtly variegated yarn yielded a final product that is beautiful, IMHO.


I also used a new cast-on technique, the cable cast-on.  It was surprisingly simple to do and created a dramatically improved look to my usual knitted cast on.  The new cast-on and my old cast-off were supposed to look similar.  You can check it out below for yourself.



At any rate, this will be a gift for someone who needs a variety of neck wear to keep warm, so the pictures are close-ups to help keep the suspense.

So if you have one hank, skein or ball of DK weight yarn, want to make a complicated looking end product that isn't complicated, give this Honey Cowl a try.  And the nice thing about it is it can be completed in just a few hours.  This ticks off all my boxes for a nice gift idea; perhaps it will for you too.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms.  (BTW
2 comments
Read more

Ode to the Cat

It has been six months since Mike, the cat's, passing.  I think of him every day and miss him especially when Paul is away.  Mike was a being in the house with me and we were close.  Grieving his death has been muddled with my Dad's passing and sometimes I feel guilty about that happening.  As time passes the ache becomes less hurtful for both and I am starting to get mostly good memories in its place. Recently I helped celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday with Jami, my poet and overall very creative friend.  Guests were asked to select one poem written by Neruda to read to the small group who gathered for the celebration.  I picked this one: Ode To The Cat -- Pablo Neruda There was something wrong with the animals: their tails were too long, and they had unfortunate heads. Then they started coming together, little by little fitting together to make a landscape, developing birthmarks, grace, flight. But the cat, only the cat turned out finished, and
1 comment
Read more

Knitting-Related Guinness World Records

I had to share some of the Guinness World Records connected with knitting.  It is amazing to me the type of skill, stamina and unique characteristics these record holders have in common. How about trying to knit with these SPNs?? Ingrid Wagner and her large needles and knitted swatch The largest knitting needles measured 3.5 m (11 ft 5.8 in) long and had a diameter of 8 cm (3.15 in). Ingrid Wagner, a rug and art creation artist, from the UK used the needles to knit a tension square of ten stitches by ten rows at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on March, 10 2008.  (And I complained about getting certain SPNs stuck in my clothes.)  See how this swatch was done with merely 5 people managing the needles.  And what about the yarn?  It is truly ex-bulky.  It looks like they're knitting in a warehouse, but with a wingspan of almost 24 feet or 7 m, you'd need all that space.  Or how about the longest piece of finger knitting that measured 4,321.4 m
Post a Comment
Read more