Churro cowl

It's an odd time of the year in Australia to be posting this - but I'm trying to tidy up the year's work.

After the workshop on New Mexico Colcha Embroidery in August, I decided to knit up the churro wool I had purchased so I and my friends at the South Australian Embroiderers' Guild could see, feel and smell some of the wool that forms the basis of Colcha Embroidery.  I had purchased four skeins from Southwest Wool - three in natural colours and one dyed with natural, local dyes.

Winding wool from skein to ball is challenging when living alone, but my new dining chairs came to the rescue.

I wanted to use up as much of the wool as I could in a significant project that would both serve me well and be available to show people if I needed to do more talking about New Mexico Colcha.

I opted for a cowl that I have had my eye on for a few years, from Cowlgirls.








The feel of the wool was very firm and tough. It twisted as I knitted - and needed to be untwisted like embroidery thread often does.







Nevertheless, it knitted up fairly quickly. I'm a loose knitter, and wondered a few times if I should reduce the size of my needles.



I was also unsure how this was going to feel against my skin.




The pattern, however, was turning out really well once I got the hang of it. It had a nice variation - basically in three sections, a two-row per colour rib band, a centre of bobble bands and a one-row per colour rib band. This not only provides a result interesting to the eye, but is interesting to knit.

It was also interesting to see the way the colours appeared in relation to each other. The natural grey wool appears blue, and in the narrower border, the taupe takes on a grey tinge.


I am surprised at how much I like the result. I love the colours and the overall effect.


The best surprise is how comfortable it is to wear. It is lovely and warm, flexible and feels good. I wore it all evening at home after I tried it on, because I didn't want to take it off.

Shame it's the wrong season here - I love it!

Debbie Bliss jackets

 I got sucked in badly with some Debbie Bliss yarn on special at Loveknitting. I have three drawers of wool and had vowed to buy no more until I am down to one drawer.  But I caved and bought enough to knit each of my daughters a jacket from the pattern book conveniently marketed alongside the yarn.

When it arrived I was determined that this would not end up in the drawers with the rest of my yarn, so set to straight away.  So anxious was I to ensure I knitted it that I did not stop to photograph the first (purple) one at all. I thought I had taken photographs as I ironed the pieces, but no evidence exists, so I must have dreamt that. Progress on knitting projects does not, I think, make for much of a narrative, but I regret failing to photograph anything at all of the purple jacket. 

It knitted up beautifully. I usually go for fully natural fibre yarn for knitting, so this is a bit of a deviation for me. It produced a completely smooth fabric. You have to look closely to discern the stitches. 

My only complaint about the pattern is that the instructions for making the buttonholes is added to the end of the instructions for the fronts - well after you have knitted the rows where the holes should go. Fortunately it was not difficult to separate the knitted yarn and buttonhole-stitch in appropriate places.

I was pleased to make use of some buttons I had collected - paua shell for the purple one and soap stone ones on the green -both from  New Zealand.

The pattern has a neat cuff turn-over designed for a contrasting colour, but I stuck with the same.

The finished product is not so easy to photograph. It has a nice swing shape.

As I had more than a ball of the purple left and two balls of the green, I made cowls, with a simple lace pattern and then fingerless gloves. 

I ran out of purple yarn before I finished the gloves so ended up undoing one and reshaping a little. They will, as my mother would have said, pass with a push (no photograph!).

 The green ones made it without manipulation.

I have enjoyed getting back into knitting I have so much wool in my stash that I could knit for years, but with more embroidery classes giving me ideas there is a bit of competition!

Second Cowl from Corriedale/alpaca

Unable to resist immediately using up the remainder of the beautiful Rose Cottage yarn, I did push on with a second cowl.

This one I knitted in the round, judging the size to fit quite close to the neck and to use as much of the  remaining wool as possible.




I repeated the frill on either side - I really like the way that displays this yarn.

It can be worn with more or less frill showing to get different effects.

I'm very pleased with my set of products from this lovely yarn. It's now too warm to wear this year, but I shall negotiate which cowl I keep and which I give away for next Winter.

Shrug - no, wait,Cowl!

One of my blogging friends recently opened an Etsy shop to sell some of the product of her spinning. I couldn't resist buying 350 metres of her beautiful Corriedale/alpaca mix. I had in mind a shortish shrug in an open weave pattern.

When the yarn arrived it was so soft and warm to touch I decided on a smoother knit - and selected a simple pattern from Ravelry, One Skein Ruffled Capelet.  I really liked the ruffle on this, and the shape.

The first problem was, I needed to convert the pattern from a chunky to a DK weight. The second problem was that the pattern didn't really do justice to variegation in the wool.

I used a circular needle - knitting back and forth, nor around - in order to get the necessary length to make the frill - 413+ stitches.

It was lovely to knit and, once past the frill, worked up fairly quickly.



I had, however, two doubts. The first was that the capelet form wasn't going to work brilliantly with the variegation. It was great on the frill, but seemed like a bit much over the whole cape.

My second concern was that I hadn't compensated enough for the finer wool and the cape might be a bit short around the bottom. I experimented with inserting gussets on either side.

Then, while knitting with a friend, who commented how good the yarn looked against my plain beige sweater, it occurred to me that I needed to turn it into a cowl, by putting a frill along the other edge.

So off I went - knitting as hard as I could to get to the point where I could see if it worked.

And work it did! I am really delighted with the result. It is so soft and shows off the yarn to advantage. I joined the ends by stitching. Next one I'll do in the round.

But that's for next time.I am away from home at the moment, blogging from my iPad which can't upload photos, so the finish will have to wait!

Last Cowl of the Season!

There was one more cowl from Cowlgirls that I really wanted to make this Winter. It is hugely long, in four brown/black colours and patterned, rather like an amazing necklace.

I had enough dark blue and black fleck from two cowls I knitted earlier this year and wanted a  rich brown to put with these. I was really out of luck. Nowhere could I find a chocolatey brown wool. What I ordered in the end, thinking it would be dark brown turned out to be quite pale. In the end I used this and used a little bit of cream acrylic, left over from the Failyn Fox cowls, as the fourth colour.


Once the colours were settled, it was fun to knit, although I quickly gave up keeping all four balls in play at the same time, thinking I could weave the colour changes up the edge as I went along.











The colours have, I think, worked quite well.





It is a bit late for wearing this year, but get good wear next season.

Last whole ball of Murano wool - cowl.

I had one more full ball of the Murano wool I bought at the beginning of this winter left and thought I would use it up on a cowl. I am disappointed in the distinctiveness of the stripe that results from the variegation in this wool, so thought I'd choose a pattern that uses the stripe.

In Cowlgirls, I found a pattern for a balaklava, that converts to a cowl - quite a clever design. Instead of using four different colours to achieve the stripe, I used a 200 gm ball of Murano in colour CK27 . 

This has proved to be a softer mix of colours, which blends rather than contrasts the stripes - the most attractive of the three colours I purchased.

I knitted this into the back of the stitch to prevent the skew that has developed with the other balls of this wool.

It is knitted from the top down - hat first, then a split for the face, with a cast-on section joining up the two sides to form the cowl component.

The cowl gets broader around the shoulder.

I'm pleased with the colours in this one - by far the best of the Murano colours I have tried, perhaps because the colours are so well matched in duskiness.

 I used the last of these ceramic buttons from my stash.






This works well as a cowl and converts to a hood if ever needed. It's soft and cosy and looks great.




 

Lakota Hood

Another online pattern I bought earlier this year, also by Heidi Tompkins, who designed the Failynn Fox Cowl, was the Lakota Hood. I really liked the style and chunky look of this and thought it might be just the thing for my daughter who lives in Canberra, where the winters are, by Australian standards, cold.

Like the fox cowl, the Lakota Hood is knitted in super-chunky wool, not something I have on hand, so when Morris and Sons had their  sale recently, I ordered 4 balls of their 20 ply Fuel - the thickest wool I could find. I went for Nightfall - although I was tempted by Cargo, because it was closer to the illustration in the pattern (easier to imagine).

I worried a bit as I knitted it, that it knitted loosely - I could see between the stitches it if I held it to the light, although the tension was OK. I thought I could go down a couple of needle sizes to get a more dense coverage - but would then need to add stitches and may not have enough wool.

The design is very simple - two scarf-like pieces that join together, knitted in seed stitch. The wool was easy to handle and knitted into interesting patterns. Although the pattern is simple enough for a beginner, it assumes some knowledge of things like joining pieces and creating buttonholes.

The  hood piece is slightly wider and longer than the neck piece and is folded and attached to it. After all my concern, I had wool left over - so could probably have gone down a needle size.







My daughter had given me some fabulous buttons for my birthday - handmade in Tasmania (will blog about those soon) - and I thought that a couple of them would work really well on this hood. I selected a gum-nut conversion.

The placement of the buttons suddenly transformed the hood into something warm and elegant. My fears about the texture disappeared. The hood pulls in firmly around the neck and drapes over the shoulders and feels really warm.

Relief - it looks good. I sent it off as soon as it was finished and it has been worn already in Canberra.

Neck warmers

I've been experimenting with thick wool - this time 12 ply Rustic from the Bendigo Woollen Mills - to make a couple of neck warmers for the men in my life - using a pattern from Cowlgirls. 

Several of the patterns in this book, especially those for neckwarmers, are easily adapted for men.

The first I made is in Midnight Tweed, and knitted up nicely. There is a bluey tinge to the wool that isn't obvious in the photo.


These are knitted in a straight piece, in rib, then joined at the ends. The pattern has a contrasting border, which I omitted. The only disadvantage is that you can't decide the length as you go, as the number of stitches on the needle determine the length.



I think it is quite smart and understated.

My second one is in a new Rustic colour - cinder fleck.

Rustic is a really attractive wool, lovely to work with, and I like the fleck.




I made this one a couple of inches longer and then decided to block it to get even more length in the front.


These are just the thing for our current weather!