Me in my cowl

I’ve been laid up most of the day with an iontophoresis patch on my back (delivering steroids totally non-invasively!), which makes it a bit difficult to move around because the tape doesn’t let my spine bend all that much. Maybe it was just seeing all of the cowls pop up in my flickr-friends’ photostreams this past weekend, or maybe it was just the desire to have something simple that I could finish in a couple hours without having to move around too much, but I suddenly felt compelled to knit a cowl. I’d started one out of my own handspun, but I haven’t been able to spin any more yarn for it, so I couldn’t just finish that one. Instead, I went stash-diving, and found a couple balls of mystery hand-dyed chunky merino that I’ve had for a really long time. And thus, this was born:

Dolores Park Cowl

Ravelry Project Page
Pattern: Dolores Park Cowl
Yarn: mystery hand-dyed chunky merino yarn, held double.
Needles: size 13 denise circulars
Time to knit: a couple of hours

Perfect for Project Spectrum, too! It’s a little loosey-goosey for my taste (but it is supposed to be a cowl, afterall), but that’s probably my own fault…alone, each strand of the merino was too thin, but together they’re probably thicker than the Malabrigo Chunky called for in the pattern. It’s still shockingly warm (which is actually quite handy, because despite how sunny it looks in those pictures, it was in the forties when I ventured outside to take them). And I’m already plotting my next cowl…I think I’ll be using up some of my variegated 100% merino sock yarns this way, since they’re likely to hold up longer against my neck than on my feet.

As for Syncopated Ribs, I’m still working on the finishing. Part of the problem is that I absolutely hate the way the neckline (knit following the pattern) looks on me, so I’m trying to come up with ways to fix it. We’ll see what it winds up looking like!