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