FO: Mom’s Cowl

Hey so here’s a thing I finished in DECEMBER and never got around to posting. Go me!

Of course, this is probably going to be a maddening post because… I totally winged this. Backstory!

In October, right before I went to Rhinebeck, my mom put in a request for her Christmas present (good job mom on realizing that knitting gifts can take a while!). So of course I used this as an excuse to break my yarnbargo and buy yarn at Rhinebeck. What else was I supposed to do?

I picked up two skeins of Into the Whirled Manchester Sock I feel bad linking to their store because they have very limited stock online but it will at least give you an idea of their stuff? It’s awesome. Basic bases but incredible dye combinations. Anyway.

Two skeins of Manchester Sock, one in the Ramble colorway and one in Excursion. They had similar base colors, a pinky/purpley red, and then one got darker with a shot of navy, while the other brightened up with a pop of gold. And I had zero idea what I was going to do with it. My mom had sent me a photo of a cowl she’d seen in a magazine as inspiration—it looked like it was crocheted more than knit, so I was struggling to figure out how I could knit a cowl lengthwise that would have stitches running horizontally…

And then, thanks to Pinterest or something (99% sure it was Pinterest), I found this blog post. And I thought it might work for this cowl and these yarns. And I like to think that it did, in fact, work quite well.

Friends… this stitch is f*cking tedious. I don’t remember how long it took to knit each round but it was ridiculous. Or it felt ridiculous. Sometimes they’re the same thing. But I really liked how it broke up the coloring while sort of patterning itself.

I can’t remember how many stitches I cast on, or how long it ended up being—it was about 6″ high and I blocked it on a sweater blocking rack in my childhood bathroom and forbade my mother from entering until it was dry and I could wrap it for Christmas.

She seems to like it! I don’t know how much wear she’ll get out of it, but it’s just important that she likes it, right?

If you want to see the Ravelry page, here’s a link to theproject page but it has even less helpful notes than this totally vague blog post.

And this is why we should blog about things in a timely manner, kids.