Reaching for the Needles
I am not going to lie. I am sick to the back teeth of crochet. A few recent through-the-night deadlines, plus a particular tricky pattern for book 2 has left me ever so slightly hook-adverse. With so much else going on, I decided it would be wise to just walk away from it all this week and focus my work energy on other things and my creative energy on knitting.
I finally finished my chevron in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport. I can't lie, this is a near perfect yarn in my honest opinion. Perfect stitch definition, excellent twist, hard wearing, it comes in nearly every colour you can imagine. The pattern for the cowl is essentially this one by Knitterella. It was cast on to be a knit version of my Lessons in Geometry wrap, but, ironically, I couldn't be bothered to do the math to get the stitch patterns right, so I found a similar pattern and went with it. I do love its cheeryness and like all good handmade items, outfits have been planned around it since it came off the needles.
Immediately after finishing, I felt I needed to cast on immediately for another colourwork cowl. This time, it is Dianna Walla's Pine Bough Cowl. I feel slightly wrong putting photos of both of these cowls in the same blog post as the colour schemes couldn't be more different, but I sort of needed a colour break from my usual beloved yellow and I had a couple of balls of this deep pine green Artesano Superwash left over from an upcoming design. This is a great knit so far, the only problem is I have to keep looking at the chart (10 points to whoever spots where I didn't look hard enough). I know from experience that the Artesano will be gorgeous when washed and blocked, but its not behaving itself as well as the Nature Spun did as the grey ball is a bit tacky from the superwash treatment.
In other knitting news, have you seen Katya Frankel's new book? Obviously, I am a huge fan of Katya's work - I just love her unfussy style, but this book is stellar. Tons of go-to patterns for kids' accessories. I think that the kids will all be getting Dabbler mittens as my next project, but then, I do really want to make Anne Kingstone's William sweater as well...oh yeah, and the crochet book I need to write...
