Foxy Duo Cowl from Criativity - Day 4

From Stuff to Fluff...

Stuff is interesting to knit with—the always-changing nature of the yarn means that sometimes you are knitting with one nubby strand, then stitching four shimmery ones the next segment.  While this is straight-up stockinette, a place where I usually default to Continental style stitching for speed, I found I couldn't do it here.  There is one shift in needle sizes—effortless with interchangeable needles but not much of a big deal on traditional circs, either—but that’s about it.  The work may be repetitive, but not boring.  It’s not as if I was facing endless inches of stockinette; there’s less than a foot of it for this cowl.

Once you’ve used up your Stuff (the pattern calls for a specific inch width but I chose to just keep going a few extra rows until I used up all the yarn), it’s time to return to the funny, furry Plume.  And that was certainly entertaining.  The smaller the ball got, the more unruly it became.  The sandwich bag containment tactic worked, but by the end I kept laughing as it twitched and unwound itself as if alive.  With only a handful of garter stitch rows to go, I found my tolerance for Plume’s antics had risen.  It ended up more amusing than frustrating, a curtain bow from a drama queen if you will.

What will all this look like finished and on my shoulders?  Next post you’ll get to see…

Foxy Duo Cowl from Criativity - Day 1

Getting Foxy...

I’ll admit, the whole project smacked of “novelty yarn” to me at first.  The whole “eyelash yarn fun fur” thing was never anything that came even close to catching my attention.  And it has shiny stuff in it—I don’t do sparkle, not even in nail polish.  Honestly, I was trepidatious when I started the Foxy Duo Cowl.

But adventure is the whole point of DestiKNITions, and I have been pleasantly surprised by projects far more than I have been disappointed, so I mustered my optimism and opened my cowl kit kindly supplied by Prism Yarns.

Now, everyone agrees Prism makes a gorgeous product.  Art yarn.  Eye catching fibers. And these two are no exceptions.  The Plume is mysteriously, obsessively lovely to touch—really, you can’t stop stroking it.  How does it feel so cool to the touch and so soft at the same time?  You have to fight the urge to hold it up to your cheek and sigh.

And Stuff?  It’s a collection of all different kinds of yarns—some fuzzy, some shiny, some thin, some thick.  It reminds me of the yarn I used to make the Feza vest.  I’m sure I’ll find the constant change of texture amusing in the endless rounds of stockinette this cowl requires.

But first, I have to get it out of hanks—and in this case, that takes some doing.  I brought it to my knitting group, because I figured it would either be a lot of fun or a load of hassle.  The Stuff label should have been my first clue:  it says “Stuff must be wound while under tension.  Place skein onto a swift or a friend’s outstretched arms.”

That’s exactly they way it went.  I managed about three feet on my own, then had to enlist the help of a friend to hold it while I patiently, carefully wound.  Hey, Allie, why don’t you try actually reading the directions next time?  Then again, who knew yarn came with directions?  Yarn often comes with patterns, but that’s not the same thing.

Once I brought in backup—in the form of my friend Nancy’s helpfully outstretched arms—the hank of Stuff wound itself up very nicely, and has behaved cooperatively so far.  The Plume is another story—I kid you not, the thing reminds me of a Star Trek Tribble.   And it does not want to stay wound. Every once in a while I think I catch it moving out of the corner of my eye.

Stay tuned…this could get really interesting.