A Fat One and a Skinny One

And I am not talking about Ryan and me.

I have been busy feeding my cowl addiction and giving myself carpal tunnel in the process.

Beauty knows no pain.

{Calm Cowl via Ravelry}

My mom crocheted this for me and she already had carpal tunnel from years of braiding long hair.  See?  Again, with the beauty.

This pattern called for sport weight yarn and we had a dreadful time finding a sport weight yarn that wasn't a gross baby pastel.  Gross babies.  In the end, I found a yarn suggestion on Ravelry for this sport weight 100% alpaca and clicked on the first shopping link which was a store in St. Paul (!) and they shipped some to my mom.  I think it came out with a cool kind of tweedy texture and of course the alpaca has a lovely sheen and drape.  I need to buy an alpaca farm.

I made this fuzzy wuzzy chunker for myself after being inspired by the lovely Jane Richmond, on whom I have a semi-serious girl crush.

{Marian Cowl via Jane Richmond}

Don't ask me why I have to be such a smarty pants but I bought a different yarn than the pattern called for (Blue Sky Alpaca Bulky instead ofTwinkle Handknits Soft Chunky), hoping to sneak in an extra 6 yards.  Weeeelll...things turned out very differently than I had hoped.  This little cowl only survived because of the Ryan stamp of approval.  If I had my druthers, it would have been stamped to death in frustration.
For one, I included a twist to the cowl and in the process of admiring my twist, accidently knit a hole into the fabric and subtly changed the direction of the stitches?  I'm not sure what happened but it was something bad.
Adding to my misery, when I first realized that I had dreadfully miscalcuated my dream product, I started and destroyed at least 3 projects with this yarn in one night.  Oh, the shedding!  And the pilling!  Ugh.  Other than that, it is a lovely color and pretty soft since it's a 50/50 wool/alpaca blend.

I think I might be done experimenting for a while and try to follow patterns for once.

Yeah, right.