A Friendly Cowl With Socks On The Side

Another week, another FO. After six months with low finished project numbers, even I'm surprised. This project started when my buddy Alina came by our place, saw a skein prominently displayed (I was going to make a hat out of it), and told me that it reminded her of camping, forests, and the stars swirling overhead. Clearly this skein needed to be knit up for her.

She expressed interest in a large cowl. I knew I didn't have enough of the skein. (It's a mystery skein, by the way. It was given to me by a good friend. I have no idea what it is or who it is by. It had no tag.) So I bought a skein of Malabrigo Rios in the Purple Mystery color way. There is no mystery about how purple the skein is: it's nearly electric. Seed stitch insured that the colorful skein would look like dappled light once knit rather than something an angry preschooler finger painted. I knit 2/3 of the cowl in the mystery skein and 1/3 in the purple. I think it came out beautifully and Alina was surprised to receive it.

I wore this the day I gifted it to make sure I didn't leave it at home. My Mum saw me in it and wanted to know why I was wearing Alina's cowl.

Promptly after finishing the cowl, I cast on my Pucker socks. I'm using a skein of Hedgehog Fiber's Twist Sock in the Budgie color way and a skein of Baah! La Jolla in the La Perla color way. After buying all those white skeins for my Sheep May Safely Graze socks, I feel the need to use them.

The Pucker socks require quite a bit of concentration, as it turns out, so I've also cast on a pair of vanilla socks out of Canon Hand Dyes' Charles base in the We're All Mad In Here color way. I have knit with this color way before, although in a different base. Those socks suffered the fate that many of my early socks did and the color faded terribly. But since I've started re-fixing my socks and have started using a different wool wash, I have high hopes that these will stay nice and bright.