Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Mystical, Magical Exploding Cowl!!!

More green, plenty more green. Once again it seems I can only work in greens.


One morning I woke and thought, "I need a cowl". This thought stuck with me for quite awhile before I finally broke down and set about knitting my cowl. But any old cowl would not do. I wanted a cowl with a very soft hand, serious texture, and the ability to cover most of my face. It seems that the harder it is to see face of the wearer, then the more desirable the cowl. I wanted a neck covering so hip that it would impede my ability drive. So I began by spinning 8oz of single ply bulky thick and thin merino yarn. Being that the yarn was mostly thick, this did not take very long on my spinning wheel. Then I kettle dyed the newly spun yarn in a bright mossy green sort of color. After processing the wool in the dye-bath at 170 degrees, I brought it out to cool. I had decided I wanted some color varieation in the yarn, so I took the mostly cooled, still wet yarn and streaked it with a dark grey dye, and then squeezed it around a bunch to create the variation I was looking for. Then I wrapped it in plastic wrap and processed it in the oven for 45 min.
Tada!!!!! I knitted this up on size 10 1/2 needles in the round in simple seed stitch till I ran out of yarn.








I must say, I screwed my math up on this project. I did a gauge sample so that I could count how many stitches I would have to the inch, and then cast on and started knitting. Then I ripped it back out, us knitters call this frogging, and started over on a smaller size needle, but instead of doing a new sample I worked out some crazy proportion which made the cowl much to big. Oh well. I like it anyway. Photos of me in my cowl were taken by my cubicule wall mate on our one brake a week that is at the same it. Thanks Blair!

2 comments:

Melanie Ellsweig said...

I think it's time I learn to knit, please teach me o wise one

Anonymous said...

photos came out soooo pretty.... i love the green cowl!!

-wallmate Blair :)