Scarves and Cowls

I cannot believe how cold it is this week. Out doing errands on Sunday I saw kids wearing shorts and t-shirts (not mine because I'm a mean mom with an aversion to sick children) and Monday I broke out my warm winter coat. It was windy and rainy and cold. Perfect weather for wool.

Fortunately, I finished my handspun cowl on sunday night. How's that for timing? It's about 9 inches tall and it fits around my neck loosely but not too loosely. It slides on really easily, doesn't feel constricting, and it won't mess up my hair - all good things.

I wear it kind of slouchy so that it provides a nice barrier between my neck and the wind. There's a lazy, rustic feel to the piece that is complemented well by the yarn which is also lazy and rustic with it's thick and thin texture. There's still a bit of yarn left too so I may be able to make some mittens to match.

Happily I won't be the only one sporting warm, new neckwear from my needles this year. The Noro Entrelac scarf that my husband covets is nearing the finish line and I've found a pattern to make a scarf for another man on my list. This is Backyard Leaves by Annie Modesitt in KP Andean Silk. Admitting that the first pattern I tried, Forbes Forest, wasn't going to work was hard and frogging all that work... double ugh. Talk about painful. However, now that I'm 4 repeats into this pattern I feel pretty confident that this will be a winner.


Looking at the chart for this pattern scared me a bit at first. It's not the kind of pattern that you can commit to memory and just cruise along with but, after a few repeats it gets a little more intuitive and moves surprisingly fast. There is enough going on here to keep a knitter interested but not so much that you can't work on it while watching your shows.