Knitting Adventures: Let's start with a cowl

When I made my stashbusting pledge, I made a throwaway comment at the end regarding knitting. The more I keep reading about other bloggers latest knits, the more I think, "I could do that." Yes, I know how to knit, but No, I haven't knit anything since I was in high school (more than 20 years ago in case you were wondering.) The only things I can remember having completed in the past, was a vest, and a jumper. The most adventurous thing about either was a different colour for the ribbing in the vest, and decreases in the jumper (at least I think there were - I have since disposed of this jumper.) My knitting repertoire didn't really extend past knit and purl. Oh, and a book that I bought, and have pulled out of hiding to see if it will help me at all.

My inspiration to start knitting again has really been Tasia's Gilded Lauriel cardigan. I am totally in love with this! I love the style, I love the colour she used. Love, Love, Love. But she herself admitted that it was the most difficult thing she had ever knit, so what hope do I have?

We all have to start somewhere, so I thought I should do something easier to start, and just get used to knitting again. I came across the Honey Cowl via Sewaholic and decided that this would make a great first project. I was going to try a moebius scarf as my first project, but can't really get my head around it at this stage. I started pinning some inspiration, and also joined Ravelry and have queued up quite an unrealistic list of projects, none of which I even have patterns for!

For this cowl I used Australian Merino wool which I bought from The Granny Square. It's gorgeously soft and I love the different colours happening in it! I also needed my own circular needles, so picked some of them up too. I got those really cool ones that you can screw different sized needles onto.

Merino wool

New needles!

Three days into making this cowl, I realised that knitting seems to be a headache enabler for me. Probably because I tend to watch the needles ALL the time, when what I really want to be doing is watch TV. I had my eyes checked out, but apparently I have excellent eyes! The glasses that I got for doing computer work more than 10 years ago (and have been pretty much unused for the past 8 years or so) are still fine should I feel the need to use them.

It took me 12 days of knitting to do this cowl, spread out over a period of 4 weeks.

After using up one ball of yarn: Half way there

I love the feeling of accomplishment from making this, but am still a little wary of doing anything harder or bigger. I really want to make some cardigans, but am scared off by fitting issues. I don't really want to do anything super tight with a lot of negative ease built in, but I don't want it loose and shapeless either, do you know what I mean? If you think you know of something that fits the bill, let me know! Any and all help appreciated.