The Rainbow Connection

When the weather is gross and all the news is bad, sometimes the best thing you can do to lift your mood is knit yourself a bright rainbow-striped cowl.

Pattern: Sockhead Cowl by Kelly McClure
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Bounce (80% superwash merino/20% nylon) in Once Upon a Stained Glass Window, one skein
Needles: 16 in. US 2.5/3.0 mm Hiya Hiya circs
Started/Completed: April 1/April 14
Mods: shortened the ribbing

I cast on this project to be my lunchtime knitting at the beginning of the month, right at my most stressful time of year at work, because I knew that it would be the perfect mindless project to work on when my brain needed a break. It was a brilliant move on my part, if I do say so myself, because I just did not have the mental bandwidth at the beginning of April to do anything that required counting or following a chart or keeping track of increases or decreases.

This pattern is dead easy, so much so that I didn't really need to look at the pattern after reading the number of stitches to cast on. I made a minor modification in shortening the length of the ribbing at either end of the tube, but that was mainly because when I first started, I got tired of knitting ribbing after about three inches and decided it was good enough (and then did the ribbing at the other end to match). I used up all but a tiny amount of my skein of yarn by weighing the skein before casting on and then again after I was done with the initial ribbing to calculate how much I had used at the point (22 g, for the record). I weighed my remaining yarn periodically as I was knitting the stockinette portion, and when I had about 23 g left, I started the ribbing at the end (I allowed a bit extra for a stretchy bind off that I knew would take more yarn than the cast on). The finished project is exactly what I wanted. It's cozy -- big enough to pull it up over my face and even wear it like a hat and cowl in one if I want to -- and crazy colorful, so it will be a bright spot in the middle of winter when everything else is dark and dull. I have a feeling there will be more of these in my future.

I had just started the finally ribbing for this on Saturday, so I decided to cast on something new to take with me to a performance of Come from Away (I always manage to screw up knitting when trying to knit in the dark, so I needed something in stockinette). So I cast on a new pair of socks.

This is the newest Fibernymph Dye Works base, Ridgetop fingering, a nonsuperwash Falkland/Romney blend, in one of Lisa's eighth anniversary colorways, Inspiration. Because it's such a long stripe repeat -- I've got two more stripes to knit to go through the whole repeat here -- I decided to do afterthought heels on this pair, meaning I can basically just keep knitting and knitting until I'm ready for the toe. This tube is already nearly 8 inches long, so assuming my usual 7 inch leg, that puts me into the foot already. I'm going to do a true afterthought heel so that I can place it either right in the middle of a stripe or right between two stripes.

I have to say that after knitting a big tube out of superwash merino/nylon yarn, this base did feel a bit scratchy to me at first, but it's really growing on me, and I already get a sense that it's going to make a durable fabric. I think this base (which also comes in a DK) would be fabulous for stranded colorwork, so perhaps one day I'll have a sweater in it. For the time being, though, I'm focusing on knitting and then wearing the socks to get to know it better.