A Cross- Continental Cowl

This is Katie

I hope she doesn’t mind me using a rav photo!!

She is my knitting bestie and one of the most awesome housemates I’ve ever had. We had a lot of fun together and I know that whenever we are together we will still have a lot of fun together.

So when Ysolda Teague and Stephanie Dosen (of Tiny Owl Knits) released a BFF friendship cowl pattern on Knitty last year Katie immediately nudged me (remotely) and said, hey now that you are oh so far away, we should totally do this!

So we did!

I have access to all the fun English yarns at the moment, and we had a convenient makeshift-postie in the form of the travelling Ursula who was visiting her family, so I sent Katie two skeins of Old Maiden Aunt in Midnight and kept 2 for myself in Dreicht (a horrible sounding but truly BEAUTIFUL colour)

we worked away making the sport/DK weight yarn look good in what is technically a worsted weight pattern and sent photos of our efforts to each other

experimentation with extra stitches and pattern repeats!

When at last we had completed our ‘seed pod’ links, we posted them to the other side of the world, complete with little goodies and helloes (I send Katie the most horrendously bad postcard of all time and some british noms)

Then came the task of grafting the links

grafting the first…

…grafting the second!

Final step? WEAR! though of course it’s too hot now! but it will get cold again soon and for oh so long. meanwhile, Katie’s link is protecting her from the dreary Melbourne winter!

I did use the inconvenient sunshine to take some awesome pics though!

How gorgeous is that yarn! such a dream to knit with too. I can’t wait to wear this… well, I can, because i love London in the summer, but it will be a little bit of bliss come the Autumn rains!

Summer is here!

At last, at last, the gloomy spring became a freaking awesome summer, which makes the fact that I’m coming up to 18 months here (thus 6 months to go) that much harder! I LOVE London in the summer. It just becomes a magical place!

The warm weather doesn’t carry the blazing heat of home (although it is humid at times, yuck) but in honour of the season I finished a little cotton project I started last year.

And it was my first crocheted garment for me! I was super worried about it, because despite doing a tension square, the tension was smaller than I expected and I had to do a WHOLE lot of extra pattern repeats to get it to a decent length (the fact I started it *last* summer might have contributed. oops). On the plus side, looks like my crochet  chains are finally getting away from the loosey goosey end of the spectrum!

A sweet summer top!

The pattern is Petal* from Interweaves crotchet Spring 2011 and the yarn was Rowan cotton glace which i managed to get on sale at Liberty when Sharon visited me last year!

I’m really pleased with how it turned out, since the thing about crochet, is that I don’t have the experience to know how to alter shaping or anything like that. So the fact that the sleeves matched the armholes is a bit of a miracle! It’s a little tight under the arms and the neckline is a bit wonky, but i still love it!

This colour isn’t quite right, it’s a very soft blue

The lovely shell stitch pattern 😀

I’m so super pleased with this, i feel like it’s an amazing accomplishment!

Looking through the remainder of things to work on, it looks like the rest of my time might be spent on heavier garments – jumpers and cardigans and shawls. I’m thinking i have to do another self-imposed sock club next year though! not a pair since i moved!!

Luckily winter is ALWAYS just around the corner here in the UK ,so I’m sure I’ll be luxuriating under piles of wool and mohair and alpaca soon!