Grace's First Birthday!

 Hi all -

Yep, Grace turned a year old today! She's no longer a puppy so I'll be expecting big things from her! 😆 Sorry I don't have any new pictures of her! I need to find my small camera that I used to take on walks with Lance. It's been probably 5 years since I've used it so it's hiding somewhere. I don't carry my phone on walks since we don't have cell coverage up here and I don't want to lose it, so the small camera is great. But, Grace did get her long morning walk with a ball, got more ball throwing in the backyard, got a little brushing and ended fun time with catching meatball treats. Definitely a good day for her! She's napping now....

I've been working away at cowls for Cowltober. I finished the Peeping Cowl designed by Joji Locatelli. This cowl will be a gift for my sister for Christmas:

Peeping Cowl - full length

Peeping Cowl - like it will look when worn

This will be a great gift for my sister who takes her dogs to the dog park every morning at 5:00 in Kansas City. It's going to be getting cold there pretty soon! I ended up having not quite enough of the purple yarn to finish the cowl. I could have used the dark gray for the last section rather than the purple, but I really liked the look of the purple on both ends so I ordered another skein of yarn instead. I ordered several colors of the yarn to get the free shipping, so I'll have more choices available when looking at other projects like this in the future. It's nice to be able to start some new projects on a whim without having to wait for yarn to arrive!

I also made a To infinity and beyond cowl designed by Joji Locatelli:

To infinity and beyond

This is a cute little cowl made with some beautiful yarn. The picture doesn't do the colors justice! The top edge is a little wonky in the photo because of my bad blocking job. I haven't decided what I'll be doing with this cowl so I won't bother reblocking it at this time. If I keep it, I won't care about the top edge.

Finally, I made a Fringed Denim Cowl designed by Joji Locatelli:

Fringed Denim Cowl

I don't think you can see it in the picture, but this is a really pretty sparkly yarn. And it knitted up really soft. I've decided to keep this one for myself! It's a little shorter than the pattern because I only had enough yarn for 4 full repeats rather than the 5 called for in the pattern. I could have put in a shorter fifth repeat, but I liked the length that it was already. I haven't blocked it yet, but blocking will make the cowl a bit longer and will open up the lace pattern. For the knitters out there, I knew that I didn't have enough yarn for 5 repeats without wasting time knitting and then frogging (unknitting - rip it, rip it) by using a scale. I measured the remaining yarn after each repeat so knew how much yarn it took for each section (just over 22 grams). Since I only had 19 grams left after the 4th repeat, I knew I couldn't knit another full repeat. Another tip for knitters is that this cowl started with a provisional cast on so I could graft the beginning edge to the ending edge to get a clean, invisible join. I used a trick I learned from Laura Nelkin to create the provisional cast on and the first row of knitting easily using a length of 2mm silicon tubing available from Amazon. This tubing is great for knitters! Here you can see it on the cast on side of the knitting in progress:

Fringed Denim Cowl - progress photo

This is wonderful stuff for the provisional cast-on because it's quicker since you can provisionally cast-on directly on the cord. The cord has stability so it holds the stitches just like a circular needle cord would hold it and it's really easy to to put the stitches back on the needle because the tubing is hollow so you can just push the tip of your needle into it and the silicon material will hold it in place while you move the stitches over. This stuff is also wonderful for using instead of scrap yarn so you can try on a sweater in the middle of knitting to see if you need to make adjustments as you go along and to see when you have things at the desired length, etc. And it's cheap! Only $12 for almost 55 yards of tubing.

Well, that's all I have for now. I hope everyone is doing well!

Nancy

Cowltober Begins

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well. We're doing great here! Grace is settling into her new home. She has plenty of toys (mostly left over from Lance, but she doesn't care):

And she is getting along fine with the cats:

Of course, she also tries to play with the cats, but they aren't fans of that. But they are working things out. We've started going to a weekly dog class to help us learn how to keep her attention when there are other dogs around. She's doing better at that, but still has a long way to go. She's still a couple of weeks shy of her first birthday, so that's understandable. She's doing great on walks and I think we've made some progress on the car sickness. She doesn't throw up every time we go to town anymore, but still does sometimes. We haven't made much progress on the separation anxiety. I need to work on that more, but I feel like we're working on so much stuff that some of these things will have to wait. She's very sweet and smart. And she's also very fast! It's fun to watch her streak through the forest, jumping over logs as she goes!

As far a knitting goes, October is Cowltober. Every year, one of my favorite designers, Laura Nelkin, celebrates October with a Cowltober knit-along. This year is no different. All of her cowl patterns are on sale all month and you have a chance to win a prize if you post pictures of any cowl (by any designer) that you are currently working on. This fits in well with my Joji Locatelli fall knit-along since October has a special mini-challenge where you two chances for a prize if you are working on a one-skein cowl or shawl project. I'm doing a lot of double-dipping for prizes, while making a lot of progress on my Christmas presents! Laura also has a mystery cowl knit-along starting on Oct 13. I have purchase my yarn and am ready to go when the first part of the pattern drops!

My first cowl for this month is the Paris in Berlin cowl designed by Joji Locatelli. I've already finished this one:

Paris in Berlin

Paris in Berlin side view

I love how this turned out! You can see the texture of the knitting better in person. The construction of this cowl fooled me a little. You start by knitting a triangle, then join two of the points of the triangle and knit the rest in the round. 

Paris in Berlin beginning triangle

So, in. my mind this meant that we were starting the cowl from the bottom point, but the shape of the triangle didn't work for that. It turns out that you are starting at the top of the cowl and the beginning triangle pushes the rows to be at a diagonal as you move down the cowl. It gives the cowl a very nice shape! This cowl will be a gift for one of my nieces.

I also started another one-skein shawl for this Joji mini-challenge. This one is the To Infinity and Beyond cowl designed by Joji Locatelli:

To Infinity and Beyond

I've just started this cowl and have made it through the first of the five repeats of the pattern. It's made with a beautiful yarn from Malabrigo. They have such beautiful colors! I'm not sure who will be getting this cowl.

Finally, I've also made a lot of progress on my Peeping Cowl designed by Joji Locatelli:

Peeping Cowl

This has been a background project for a while, but it's getting close to being done. I have one more striped section and the final border to go. As you can see, this is a really tall cowl that is worn bunched up around the neck to provide a lot of warmth. And it can also be pulled up over your mouth, nose and ears if it's really cold. This will be a gift for one of my sisters who takes her dogs to the dog park every morning at 5am. It can be pretty cold in Kansas City in the winter at that time so cowls like this can be very useful! And the yarn is a superwash merino/nylon mix so it should survive when she puts it in the washer and dryer, which she inevitably will do even if I tell her not to. So this should be perfect for her!

I also started the Stephen West mystery knit-along. I don't have any pictures to show because some people thought that the geometric design reminded them of swastikas so Stephen appropriately redesigned the first part. I had started on the original design, so need to start over with the new design. I'll share that once I get restarted.

That's all I have for now....

Nancy