Fall Knitting is Well Under Way

I’ve been knitting almost non-stop since the weather has cooled. I ♥ Fall. Cool days and crunchy leaves. Perfection.

After I finished the Ruckle hat, I jumped right into the Shadow Tuque hat from the Fall 2011 issue of Interweave Knits. With the super bulky weight yarn and the large needles, this hat was really one of those quick gratification types of projects. I think it took me about three hours to finish. My only knit nit is that it's not quite as long as I want it to be. It fits, but I think it could fit better. I may knit another version of this hat in a different color, and if I do I’ll add one more cable pattern repeat to give it a little more length.

Right after I finished the hat, I moved on to a very cool cowl that was featured in an advertisement in the 2011 Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts issue. The Entwined Cowl is a simple project that I modified just a bit for myself. It calls for eight strips of stockinette, but I opted to go with six to make it easier to braid evenly, rather than twist inwards as noted in the pattern. I considered making nine pieces so that I could make three braids and then braid those braids into one big braid, but I just didn’t have enough yarn. When it came time to bind off, I did a modified version of the three-needle bind off because … well, because I wasn’t paying attention as I was doing it. What I really ended up doing was knitting the stitch from the first needle together with the stitch from the second needle and keeping that combined stitch on the third needle. I then just did a regular bind off of all the stitches that remained on the third needle. This actually turned out to be a good thing. It made the seam more secure. To finish, I ran a piece of yarn through the back of all of the pieces to kind of roll it in a bit more at the seam (it was lying a little flat), tightened it and tied it off. In the end, I really like how it turned out.   

My next new project is the Honey Cowl by Madelinetosh. I saw a sample of this at Nina during the Chicago Yarn Crawl and fell in love with it. I decided to go with the “Ginger” colorway because it reminds me so much of fall. The golden tones are beautiful. I’ve made some modifications to the cowl, and I’ll write more about this one once it’s done, but here’s a sneak peak photo of the work in progress.

After this cowl I'll start the holiday gift knitting. I think that the women in my family are all getting different color variations of the Peruvian Woven Scarf, or perhaps I’ll mix it up and give another one of these Madelinetosh cowls to someone.