No surprises here, another week, another cowl. They make themselves in some magical way probably involving a saucer of milk and some biscuit crumbs. I’ve not yet found the secret formula that makes the making up fairy as obliging as the weaving fairy, that never seems to get done with no effort on my part. This one was designed around the boucle yarn that I showed in the last post so it used some of the blue bits out of the scrap box. It was a trip down memory lane, I came across some very lovely yarn I made for a pair of mittens in November 2008 and the leftovers from the Leaf Lace shawl I made back in 2007. I feel as if these cowls are really eating into the scrap bag but the reality is that I saw the end of exactly one ball of yarn with this one. All the other balls just got a bit smaller and I’ve enough to make another similar cowl before I start hunting for more blue yarn.

The boucle behaved itself as warp but it looked better as weft. I thought I’d given it enough room in the warp to pop out by putting it alongside thin yarns but I’d played on the safe side by only having one strand here and there. It does pop but there isn’t enough of it for it to be noticeable. Where I used it in the weft for inches at a time it’s made more of a distinct feature. I like it and I think it was worth the effort of making it so I’ll spin the other half of the Wensleydale and make another skein the same or the same as anything ever gets when I’m making it

I whipped through my to do list last week (yes, including washing the bathroom floor) and I even got as far as the line that said “weave four feet”. It’s about time that this unfortunately coloured and boring length of cloth came off the big loom to make way for something more entertaining. In the summer the Warped Weavers group on Ravelry were concentrating on shadow weave and I warped this piece because I thought it would be teach me something. The brown yarn was a small cone that I bought on Ebay and I rightly thought that I could use it up, throw the cone and immediately look as if I had less yarn. The only suitable yarn I had that would make a contrast with it was the gold. I like them both individually but I came to dislike the combination after the first few feet. I have learned how shadowweave works, I’ve learned that I can manage to follow a ninety pick repeat and I’ve learned that ten yards is a long time to be looking at unfortunate colour choices. I’m not sure how much I have left to weave on this warp, I could work it out because I have it written down but I’m afraid to look just in case it’s much longer than I think. This week’s to do list includes “weave six feet”, I’m hoping that by then I might have an idea of how much warp is left.

As well as weaving and cleaning I’ve been knitting and ripping. I ripped the thick black socks that were meant as slippers, I grafted the toe on the first and thought hard about whether I’d actually wear it before turning it back into yarn. I started and ripped a hat because three stitches to the inch is not and never will be the same as three and a half stitches to the inch. The knitting that survived is a green bfl “La Cumparsita”. This is my last piece of foster knitting for this year, it’s getting cool enough for me to start thinking about things I want to knit rather than having to have them handed to me on a plate. It’s not far from being done, I have enough yarn to make it a little larger than the pattern so I’m continuing until I have roughly 400 stitches on the needle. There will still be a lot of yarn left but it will be going into someone else’s leftover box and not mine which is one of the other advantages of foster knitting.

It’s nearly October – sweater knitting weather is just around the corner. I’ve been wearing last year’s sweater already, it’s changed my mind on whether I want sweaters or cardigans in my wardrobe. My previous analysis was that I don’t want anything that goes over my head and I want something that I can open to control how warm I get. The reality was that I put a sweater on and it stays on all day, I don’t need to be opening buttons that aren’t there and I’m not pulling it on and off every five minutes. I think that this year’s cardigan may well be a sweater.