Allie Shawl by Jennifer Wood

 I am still working on my oink cowl, but it always makes me kind of nervous to not have any other project in the works.  What if I finish?  What if I get to a place where there is a mistake and I have to think?  The oink is fairly mindless this stage....but you just never know how long it will take to get something else started.  And indeed this project has been a bit slow to get going.  I have ripped out and restarted all week and still have only about 4 rows done.  I have also changed colors....and changed needles.  The yarn is a bit splitty and I changed to some sharper points. 

The pattern begins with a mosaic section and I decided that the white variegated yarn I had chosen to be color A was not a clear enough contrast to the other color in the mosaic...so I am doing the mosaic in the blue and the purple.  I am not sure how that will affect the rest of the pattern.

The yarn is Hedgehog fibers sock yarn in colors Bali, Deja Vu and Spell

And I am knitting on size 3 needles.  It is moving slow at the beginning.  Hopefully I'll report that it moves better when I finish the mosaic section.

Ok I give up ....I have started over too many times.  I need to start this sometime that is NOT December!  I first used the blue and white for the mosaic.  Then I switched because the white has flecks in it that match the purple and the blue too well.  So the Mosaic was not crisp enough to suit me.  Then I switched to the purple and blue for the mosaic, but I believe that I would prefer something a bit more crisp suchas the below:

  And I am having a terrible time with finding that when I pick the knitting back up, I can't make the next row work.  Perhaps I'll change colors?  Here is another color way that I like:

Scrap projects

 At the November Vogue Knitting live, one of the vendors showed a very pretty scarf/cowl that she made out of small amounts of colors.  I can not remember which vendor nor can I remember if I took a photo.  I'll try to update this blog post later.  But I didn't want to loose the thought.  

The Vendor actually sells bags of yarn that are random and many colored.  And she suggests that one purchase a neutral color of yarn that goes well with the bag of yarns.  Her version used grey as the neutral color.  

One knits with a color and counts the rows....then one knits with the grey the same number of rows.  It was very pretty.  I think perhaps she did a tube?

Halloween Cowl in Oink

I had bought yarn at Rebelle in Lexington on my way back from a genealogy conference in Frankfort....not sure when I bought it.  But it was serendipity that the woman who dyes Oink yarns was having a trunk show when I arrived at the shop.  And I chose this particular yarn and asked her if she had ideas for it.  She not only had ideas, but she had made a cowl from exactly this yarn and I had admired the cowl on my way in.  So it was meant to be....of course, I had to buy the yarn!

The pattern I am using is Citroen by Helena Bristow.  It is a fun knit and I like the way that it is turning out....however, it is not surprising that Halloween has come and gone and I have not yet finished it!  I have filed the pattern in the kitchen file in cowls and scarfs.

I finished the project winter 2021.