Promises of things to come

[janestarz]

Sigunne gifted me with a ball of (self-striping) sock yarn. Her enthusiasm was infectious: "I saw this, and it was perfect for you, and the colour will suit you well. So I thought you should make a cowl with this, because those kind of colours you should wear near your face!"

So infectious in fact, that I'm already a quarter through that ball of yarn, having cast on on Tuesday. Here's the project page with a picture!
I love Ravelry's search engine. I just typed in "cowl" and filtered to my yarn weight (fingering), yardage (up to 400 yards), and project type (clothing - neck). The search engine munched up some 25 pages of patterns (I don't even filter for free patterns anymore, because if a pattern is really awesome, I'd rather buy it for a few euro than not see it at all!) . I chose Copilot, a free pattern that states: "I love pretty sock yarn so I buy lots of lovelies and then of course, don’t knit socks with them. So when a shawl is too much, I knit Copilot which is the sister pattern to Autopilot."

And then you set up the number of stitches, try your hand at a few, frog them and cast on anew. But when you finally set up your desired number of stitches there is the promise of something deliciously textured and smoochy and soft!

I'm knitting it exactly as the pattern suggests, weighing my yarn as I go along. There's a garter stitch edge, then a lace part, and then as many lace- and garter parts as you want to use up your yarn. It will be a lovely texture!
It says it will create a seamless cowl of 180cm long. I have no idea how easily that wears, but since I have oodles of lovely sock yarns lying around, I figured I can always cast on another one (or the sister pattern Autopilot) if this one turns out to be too long or too bulky. A shorter cowl will also be wider, if you use up all your yarn.

I do try to time my work: during a 45 minute episode of TV series I knit 3 rows, but I'm doing a lace portion so the lace (YO, K2TOG) probably takes more time than the knit rows. And the only thing I've notice is a downside is that my needles hurt the middle finger of my left hand from the knit-2-together stitches if I do multiple rows.
All in all, quite awesomesauce! (Yay! Enthusiasm as a birthday gift!)

Comments

[steelweaver.livejournal.com]

I love things that are not socks made of sock yarn, it looks like it will be really pretty.

I'm always in awe of people who can follow counted patterns. As soon as things are not all knit or all purl, I muck up. I don't even have any sort of focus to do rib knits right.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Sock yarn is one of the better yarns around, quality-wise; looking at how much wear & tear it has to withstand. This is also the reason it is quite often used in other projects than socks. I'm still waiting for a chance to knit Ishneich (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ishneich) -- some day I'll have the money and the right yarn just calling out for me!

I am so happy I found out that most wool I can actually wear on my skin. There's not much that is softer than merino wool, except that one silk blend Zeven Katten carries.... prrr.

[anemoona.livejournal.com]

Dat is een mooi patroon! En lace! Mijn vingers jeuken om dat een keer uit te proberen, het is zo mooi. Als de deken of mijn spencer klaar is mag ik aan een lace patroon beginnen.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Hij breit ook heel lekker weg! De Autopilot is niets anders dan een paar toeren ribbelsteek en in het midden alleen maar lace. De Copilot voegt nog een ribbelsteek tussen de stukken lace toe, zodat je nog meer textuur krijgt.
Door de grotere pennen krijg je een heerlijk smooshy effect en de gaatjes benadrukt dat alleen nog maar.

Woensdag moet je maar eventjes voelen....

[margrietje.livejournal.com]

Wat een mooie kleur. Ik denk inderdaad dat het je goed zal staan.