1.03.2010

Painfully easy reversible cowl.

Yeah. By "posting patterns soon" i actually meant right now.

I'm going to call this one the Mom Neckwarmer #3. The first two are boring and needn't be blogged, this one came out much more interestingly.
Last Mother's day, i made my mom a nice little neckwarmer, on size 19 needles out of a thick, fuzzy yarn that called itself, simply, "Beautiful." (possibly this yarn? It was a gift so i can't be sure.) On New Years eve she had her friends try it on, and they were all very impressed, and requested that i make them all one. Since i can't fit another scarf like thing in my room without a major explosion occurring, yet also can't stop making them, i gladly obliged. One of these women, though, had a startl
ing request--make the neckwarmer not fuzzy.
You must understand that the entire point of the neckwarmer i made my mother is that it is so soft. the pattern is only garter stitch, theres absolutely nothing special or even wearable about it except its almost otherworldly fuzziness.
But who am i to turn down a challenge. I picked up some of my new favorite cheap yarn and whipped up this:













I loved both sides of it so much, the smooth, professional "right side" and the sort of chunky, glamorous "wrong side." I have a feeling the wearer will prefer the right, but the wrong is so interesting i wanted to make it reversible.

So here we go! First time writing a real pattern!

Gauge-About 2 stitches per inch in st. stitch.
Needles-size 19.
Yarn-Caron Simply Soft, but you should use Caron Simply Soft Eco if you're gonna use the same yarn. It at least claims to be quite environmentally friendly, and thats wicked cool. I don't know the exact names of the colors, but i used something like heather grey, navy blue, and...off white. Two strands of blue, one strand of each of the others. Four strands of any worsted weight yarn will do fine.

Pattern-
CO 10 stitches. I used a knitted cast on, but it matters very little.
Row one-knit.
Row 2-purl
Row 3-Knit
Row 4-Knit.
Basically what you're doing is three rows normal stockinette, then knitting a row that should be purled, so you have some nice purl bumps on the right side.
repeat this pattern 7 times, ending with Row 3 then using a knitted bind off.
Sew together ends by bringing the yarn from the cast-on tail under a bump on the bind off side, then around a stitch on the cast on side. Try to hide the yarn as much as possible
if you want it to be reversible.
Et voila! a fun, functional, super easy and fast cowl-thing.

Also, while trying to do my homework today, i discovered that i desperately needed a coaster, so i ravelried it (do you think that could be like googled?) and came up with a fantastic pattern called "Springtime Coasters." Unfortunately, it's only available as a ravelry download, but its positively wonderful. Here's mine...



Blog.

Hello!
This is a real blog. I say this because i have had many fake blogs before i really knew what it was about, but i do know now, so i decided to create a new blog, a real one, where i can share my addiction to knitting. (do not be fooled by the lowercase "I"s. I don't like that they're capitalized everywhere, i think it's a grammar flaw.)
I often get frowned upon, called strange, and cowered from because of my adoration for knitting. I fall in love with whatever yarn and stitch and needle size that i work with, i can spend hours in yarn stores touching each skein of alpaca and cashmere-silk blends as if they were made of glass, and i am never without my current project. I know there are others of you out there; maybe you will find this blog too.
Oh yeah. I also love slasher movies. Which is why it's called fear of knitting; this is-possibly the first?-horror-meets-knitting blog. (though there is a fantastic online magazine that comes pretty close.)
So there we are! Hopefully i'll start sharing some patterns soon and get some viewers via Ravelry. Who knows about the horror stuff.