Meandering Through Cowl Patterns

While knitting, I spend a lot of time dreaming about what else I want to knit.  The last few days I have been wearing this and generally admiring it.   

I have spent way to much time looking at it, admiring the colour change and flow.  I love Kauni and long colour changing yarn.  I can hardly wait to knit the Kauni sweater I have planned to knit as this is.  Garter stitch in a plain yarn and Kaubi stockinette.

Wearing this also makes me want to knit cowls that will work with each of the sweaters I knit.  I have always worn my shawls as neckwarmers in winter and as shawls in summer.  The disadvantage of my shawls is the ends untucking and getting in the way.  Cowls don't have that problem.  

Why cowls you might ask.  Because I cant seem to knit a turtleneck that sits right on me.  I have a short neck and jowly chin and find they just bunch up my sweater when I wear them.  It's okay wearing one as an under layer to the days sweater but I don't want to wear one everyday all day.  I can take a cowls off on sunny afternoons when the house warms from the sun shining in.  

Here are a couple that I wear all the time.  

Three colour Cashmere Cowl by Joji Locatelli

Topsy Turvy Moebius by Susan Rainey 

Huh Tub by Natsha Sills

I think there will be more of each of these plus a few more of the Litmus Cowl by Jude Harper which is a plain narrow tube that is striped.  It is perfect when wrapped twice around your neck.  

I am certain there are a bunch of other great cowl patterns out there that will be perfect to wear with my knits. I think today, in between my knitting time, I will take a gander and see what else I can find.

Good Places

While all the things to knit in the future are calling to me and waiting for me, I did the responsible thing and stuck with what is on my needles.  The London Fog continues.

I am on to the last section of stockinette before the last rounds of garter.  I feel pretty good about this because I had no idea if I was going to have enough yarn.  There will be just enough yarn to get to the length I want and a skein and a half for sleeves.  It's a good place to be.

Avoidance and Resolution

I had a profound revelation yesterday about one of my projects.  I was watching Bobbie of the Inspired Knitting podcast yesterday.  She did a 2 part Frog or Finish podcast and it was really interesting to watch her assessment of the WIPs.  Somewhere in there, she spoke and it made me think about my own avoidance troubles with a project I wasn't quite into. 

I have loved my colourwork Scandinavian Star vest pattern since I started knitting.  I planned for it and started to knit it several years ago.  It was one of the projects I was going to knit and finish this winter.     I have been avoiding both my older colourwork projects.  It isn't that I was avoiding them, I realized.  It was that I was avoiding one of them.  The Star Vest is knitted bottom up and that is what it was all about.  I utterly loathe bottom up sweaters.  Utterly and completely.  

The idea of spending time knitting with no idea if it's going to fit seems ludicrous to me.  It might work ok for many but I have fit issues.  My upper body, shoulder to bustline is an inch shorter than average.  I have a large difference from my upper bust measurement to my full bust measurement.  My hip to waist ratio is way off average and has always been an issue when I sewed plus it is short.  And last, the distance from underarm to hip is several inches shorter than average.  All these are things are hard to adjust and adapt if you are starting from the bottom.  Starting from the top means I can try it on as I go to get the fit I want and need.  (All the same issues arise in sweaters knitted in pieces).  No matter what the pattern says.  

So I thought about the vest

and then I very quickly ripped it out.  

I left the bottom bit for now.  It was such a twisty mess.  There was a huge difference between pulling back the stuff knitted in the new way I learned versus the older way I did it.  It will be there if I need it to finish whatever I make.

That job done and that weight off my mind, I set out to find a new pattern for the yarn.  I really do want to knit the yarn.  It's Cascade 220 and who doesn't love that.  

Opps, there I go.  I have a sweater plan already and it will soon be underway.  I think I need to finish London Fog first.  And there is also the gorgeous Hiraeth to do.  Plus that new Staffin.  Yum.  So much to knit and so many more to cast on.  It's a great kind of life, this knitting life.