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