My first blog anniversary was earlier this month! A whole year of The Crafty Yarnster.
I celebrated by completely abandoning the blog for weeks while I battled a gross illness that’s been doing the rounds. And when I say I was battling, I mean I was feeling sorry for myself. Anyway, it didn’t stop me knitting and here is a lovely thing I have made.
You may recall that I’ve been looking for quick patterns I can make for donations. Well, while I was browsing, I found the U-KNIT-Y pattern bundle (Ravelry link) by Handmade by Smine (Etsy link), and was immediately entranced.
You know when you go shopping for groceries and you come home with a stash of new books/yarn/candles/homewares instead? It was like that. I *meant* to pick up quick scarf patterns, I swear, but it was fate. FATE I tell you!
The U-KNIT-Y patterns are written for fingering weight yarn. Naturally, I ignored this and chose some (mostly) lighter DK from stash. I used the needle sizes recommended, and started with a rainbow i-cord, which you then pick up stitches from instead of casting on. I made the number of stitches that the hat pattern called for, suspecting that the thicker yarn would make it big enough for a cowl. That was very much correct. Even using the same needle size, it was 25% bigger than if I’d used the recommended weight of yarn. I also now know that if I want a matching hat, it’ll need to be just six heart motifs wide. So my cowl also functions as a massive swatch.
I enjoy double sided knitting, which is odd because I don’t enjoy 1×1 ribbing and in some ways it’s the same thing? I think it’s the magic of seeing the pattern come together that makes it much more worthwhile. I appreciate a tidy rib, sure, but it’s no match for reversible rainbow lovehearts.
Having bought the hat pattern (not cowl) I didn’t have instructions for casting off. I’ve done applied i-cord before but not with double-sided knitting. There were a few false starts, and even two false finishes, but in the end I got it to my satisfaction. I worked the edging as for my volt shawl; when it came to the k2tog (through back loop), I knitted through both the front and back colour live stitches as though they were one stitch.
The cowl is big enough to cover the entire bottom half of my face, or I can fold double for an extra warm neck. It’s not the size intended, but doesn’t it look awesome?
The patterns in this bundle have a meaningful back story, and for each purchase a donation is made to charities which support people living with HIV in New Zealand. They are also extremely cool. So go ahead and bookmark them for next autumn (or make a head start now!)
This cowl took me about a week; some whole days of stopping and starting, others which were a couple of hours here and there. It used 3 – 5g of each rainbow colour, and about 50g each of black and white.
The Crafty Yarnster 