Cowl-ahooo, Werewolves of London

Right Side / Wrong Side, Fat Face, Artistic Cowl

This is one of the THREE new projects I started on Saturday . . . and yes, it's finished! I have a couple of ends to weave in, and then I need to wash it before sending it to it's final destination, but for all intents and purposes it's done. This is the Ariosa Cowl (Rav Link) from Twist Collective, and the yarn is (as called for in the pattern) Ariosa. The colors are black (duh) and balsam, which is a green that photographs more as a brown. It's a sort of khaki-ish, pineish, brownish green. Very wintry.

This yarn is really, really, really, really soft and lofty. It reminds me of one strand of Rowan Big Wool, but with 10% cashmere thrown in. Really--it's soft. On the negative side, it's also a little splitty/sticky, which made it difficult to correct errors and even to pull out my first cast on when I realized that I'd made a mistake. The pattern instructions are very good, and include a link to Nancy Marchant's website, which has a lot of useful info about the brioche stitch and is a great reference.

This was my first attempt at a Brioche stitch, and as such I had to pay more attention to the pattern than I expected. The first several inches are knit flat, which was the trickiest part for me--and of course the one or two errors that I made were right up front, on the "right" side. They would have been completely visible, and I didn't think that I could rip back to the mistake to correct it without permanently injuring the yarn. Instead, I made the "wrong" side the right side when I joined the cowl into a tube, because the errors could only been seen on one side of the fabric. This seems to have worked, enough so that I feel good about giving this as a gift.

I have enough yarn for probably two more of these, since I used about 1/2 of the green yarn and about 2/3 of the black yarn--hopefully, I'll have an easier time with the next one!

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"Cowl-ahooo, Werewolves of London": my profuse apologies to Warren Zevon.