Great Prismatic Cowl from Spinnin' Yarns--Done!

It's done!

The blocking took the bumpy texture down a notch or two, perfect to my liking.  It's still on the casual side, but the edges feel a bit neater now. 

It's more decorative than cozy, but with all those colors in play I'm fine with that.

Thanks for a mind- and skill-expanding knitting experience, Spinnin' Yarns!

Next, we travel to Salt Lake City Utah and visit a handful of great shops in ski country!

Great Prismatic Cowl from Spinnin' Yarns--Day 5

The penultimate step...

This was a very long bind off.  

A can’t finish it all in one day my fingers are cramping long bind off. Made even longer by the fact that I chose to use my favorite bind off, Jenny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, so each of the nearly 300 stitches had to be worked through three separate steps.  A total of 834 steps, by my count.

I’m always impatient with bind-offs.  I never like the last step of anything.  I don’t mind putting wash in the washing machine or transferring it to the dryer, but I loathe taking it out of the dryer and folding it.  I don’t mind loading the dishwasher (too much) but find it a much more unpleasant task to unload it.  I love to make plans but find the execution wearisome.  I love Mondays but am often frustrated by the unsatisfying closure of a Friday where I didn’t get everything done.  I’m forever leaving cabinet doors open, things on the table, items out instead of neatly put away.  A friend believes this is a peculiar form of ADHD, but I think this is just the unique character of ALLIE.

On the upside, one of my frustrations with bind-offs is that they frequently don’t quite match the cast-on, either in appearance or tension.  Since the one continuous bind-off means it’s all bind-off, that’s not an issue here—everything matches.  I have to admit, that’s nice.

I find the cowl a bit rustic and bumpy at the moment, but it hasn’t been blocked, so that’s not a fair assessment.  There’s the final step to go.  

This could be one last step I really do enjoy.  Stay tuned.

Great Prismatic Cowl from Spinnin' Yarns--Day 1

The long and winding edge...

I consider myself an accomplished knitter, and the moebius cast-on made me nervous.

It looked complicated.  Even multiple viewings of the go-to tutorial video did little to lower my pulse.  It looked like the kind of thing that could go horribly wrong long before you realize the error.

So I did what any smart person ought to do—find a smarter person.  The best way to keep me calm and correct while attempting this was to do it in the presence of knitters who knew the ropes (or is that the yarns?).

It turned out to be a wise tactic.  While my brain understood the concept—the video is very clear—I had several rounds of holding my knitting up to my friend yelping “is this right?”  “Do I count this stitch or this stitch?”  or “It’s supposed to look like this, isn’t it?”

Like handling dpns for the first time, one’s first attempt at the moebius cast on feels like you are tying your circular needle in knots.  Even our video hostess Cat Bordhi admits it’s a struggle, and exhorts us to hang in there for a few rows until it begins to make sense.

And it does.  After two full rounds (which is actually four times around your needles), it finally settled into something that didn’t make me cringe.  The stitch-filled space between my needles grows with each round, the physical embodiment of the moebius’ mind-bending single-yet-double edge.  

The whole thing is just one giant row.  Mind blown.

Happy New Year, DestiKNITters!