Great White Bale Lot 2 – another cowl

It seems that my Great White Bale knitting has been all about cowls. Lot 1 became this supremely soft and squishy thing:

Lot 3 became this exceptionally smooth and lovely thing:So Lot 2 will also be a cowl. You may recall that we got 2 skeins of Lot 2 yarn: one undyed and one naturally dyed with madder:I wanted to make a pattern that uses 3 colors, so I split my undyed skein in half. My friend Annette dyed one half of it a deep, rich, chocolate brown. (Among other artsy, fibery pursuits, she hand-dyes for Quarry Critters Alpacas in nearby Littlestown, PA.) Thanks, Annette!You can see the provisional cast-on in the photo above (the purple yarn). The pattern I chose is called Hawthorne, and it is completely reversible. One half of the long loop is made from a single color (I’m using the madder here) in a knit-and-purl pattern that looks the same on both sides. (Once I started knitting it, I realized that it is in fact the same stitch pattern I’ve used before on a scarf for S1 and a scarf for Dave – it was like running into an old friend.)

The second half of the loop uses all 3 colors in garter stitch. You change yarns every row. I didn’t like how tweedy and muddy this made the colors look, so I ripped it back and am working two rows in each color. This results in a very clean stripe on one side and a muddier effect on the reverse. So I’ve lost the “completely reversible” aspect of the pattern, but I think I’ll like it better. You can see that I’m going to have to block this so that there’s not a weird difference in width between the two sections of the cowl.

In other “omg it’s getting cold” news, I fussed with a couple of hats to make them fit better. One is the “cantaloupe hat” I made this summer. The brim was a little loose, so I ran some yarn through the ribbing, cinched it up tight, and got it wet. Then I let it dry before removing the waste yarn. It worked so well that I also did this with one of S1’s hats that has stretched out a bit after being worn for a couple of winters. I haven’t tried this trick before, but I’ll be using it again!