Last Christmas I received two skeins of lovely charcoal-grey alpaca yarn from my sister-in-law -- a very thoughtful gift. She made me promise to knit something for myself from the yarn, and it took a while for me to find the perfect thing.
First I made it into a Birthday Cowl, trimmed in a baby-pink silk-blend yarn I've also been holding on to. But once it was finished, although I loved the pattern, I didn't like the way the pink edges curled up so much, so I ripped it all out.
I finally settled on the State Street Cowl, a pattern I actually paid money for (a rare occurrence). I resisted for two reasons:
- I hate being a follower, and two bloggers I read regularly-- Karen Templer of the Fringe Association and Kay Daly of Mason-Dixon were both knitting this cowl
- I was a little concerned about the alpaca's fuzziness obscuring the pattern
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But I decided to go for it anyway. It was pretty fast and fun to knit. Once it was done, the question was, to block or not? Kay's post about the cowl cautioned against blocking it, although most of her readers liked the blocked version. Karen lobbied to do it.
I did block it, and the end result was that it got quite a bit wider from blocking and wearing it.
It's still attractive, but in a different way. I'll wear it with a decorative shawl pin.
