Melange Cowl

I have had bunches of questions about my very colorful (and very simple) cowl, which I called the Melange Cowl, just because I used a "melange" of my left over handspun yarns. Here are the directions.

The yarns I used were a fingering weight.  I used US 5 needles and cast on 60 stitches, which resulted in the cowl being about 9 inches in width.  The stitch pattern is so simple, every row:  Knit 15 st, purl 15 st, knit 15 st, purl 15 st.  To begin, I picked up a small ball of yarn from my handspun yarn stash basket and knit until the ball was gone or until I thought I had knit enough of that colorway.  Every once in a while, I added 3 to 5 rows of a dark brown natural colored handspun yarn. When I reached about 38 to 40 inches, I cast off and then grafted the two edges with the mattress stitch.  

Can't get more simple than that.  Of course, most of the yarns I used were handspuns where I plied two different colorways together.  That's where a lot of the striping happens.  Making the long piece about 40 inches in length allows the cowl to be doubled around the neck for those days when the wind is really cold and you need that warmth up close around the neck.

This is the skein of yarn that I spun over the past couple of days using the "Wild Turkey" batt from Inglenook Fibers plied with one of my rovings, a merino/bombyx silk blend in my "Bedazzled" colorway.  

I am just loving these two plied together.

I've one more "Wild Turkey" batt and this time I think I'm going to ply it with my "Magic Carpet" colorway in a merino/cashmere blend.

Now, I'm off to spin this morning with my peeps down in Encinitas (Northern San Diego County).