Saturday, September 24, 2011

Brookfield Cowl

I had the pleasure of testing knitting another of knittinggolfer's patterns, the new Brookfield Cowl.


Since I didn't have the heavy worsted yarn she used (Miss Babs Northumbria Aran), I used the lusciously dense Malabrigo Twist in Liquid Ambar which was the closest I could get in my stash. This'll be great for fall & winter. 


And I did fix Monkey2's Quinny hat using the decreases in the other free Quinn hat pattern.  It doesn't have the nifty offset of the original crown decrease, but at least it'll look more pixie-like once I re-block the crown.


The hat grew when I had initially washed it, so I also had to frog back the extra inch.  It's still big enough to grow with Monkey2 though.

Next up, I'm going to go back to the cosmetics world and discuss the newish alternative to tinted moisturizers, called BB creams (aka Blemish Balm creams) from Asia.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Cotuit Sands Cowl

Sometimes life happens and the knitting slows down.  I actually finished a few things but it also took me a little longer to wash/block them.


Pattern: Cotuit Sands Cowl - infinity version
Yarn: Kollage Riveting Sport in Sand Denim
Needles: Kollage Square circulars in size 8 - true to anecdotal evidence, I'm definitely tighter on square needles than round ones
no mods

Not blocked but done are my sleeves for my Cosima cardigan.  Made much easier knitting these 2-at-a-time.  I didn't have to worry about my gauge changing between the 2 sleeves.  I'm contemplating doing the 2 fronts at the same time as well.


As much as I adore free patterns, there can be drawbacks, especially when there's no gauge specified, just yarn type and needle size. As much as I would wish it, this hat is not close to done as I need to add a button to the tab and frog back and re-knit the crown decreases which did not turn out at all pixie-like as the Quinny hat should. I'm sure my row gauge is much bigger than the designer's. Washing & blocking it totally didn't help either 'cept to even out the stitches.

I'm taking a look at another free pattern inspired by the hat worn by Quinn in an episode of Glee and the Meathead hat pattern that I bought at Stitches West.  Hopefully one of them will give me a more pixie-ish point.