Tag Archives: cowl

Holy Cowl, check out the lights!

31 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in My crochet

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Sunday afternoon Hubby and I went to London Town to look at the Christmas lights in Oxford Street.  We are over 35’s but Christmas lights, especially in London, still do it for us. Every time.

The trick is to watch the lights from a bus, thus avoiding the crowds and cold, preferably from the top deck and in the front seats.  Imagine our surprise when one of the brand new Routemaster busses passed us in Oxford Street! It was on diversion so not even meant to be there. We deftly jumped aboard on the back platform and made our way to the top deck. And behold a seat at the very front of the bus. Excellent.

Oxford Street, Christmas 2012
Oxford Street lights, Christmas 2012
Starbucks red cups are a must!
The new Routemaster London bus
Oxford Street lights, Christmas 2012

We celebrated the pretty lights and our good luck with a mandatory Starbucks Christmas Coffee in a red cup…. and later with a visit to Burger King. Whaaaat? It’s our tradition!

If you clicked on the photos in the fancy shmansy WordPress gallery above, you would have seen my crochet cowl…. Yup, it’s the one that I blogged about on Saturday. I started, and promptly finished, the Saffron Cowl in a day!

crochet cowl at waterloo.jpg

It was super easy and quick. So quick that I think I could have had a better result if I took my time a bit more with the assembly. Let me explain.

The pattern consists of three strips that you plait and form into a cowl. Easy right? And a genius way of doing something a bit different. I did exactly as the pattern stated, apart from the fact that I used two strips in one colour (grey) and the third strip in a mix of green and green-grey. So far so good.

The thing I would do differently, and recommend you do too, is to block the strips before plaiting & assembly. I didn’t block, and my strips all curled around the edges making the cowl less structured and the plait not as obvious.

I think I can still save it if I wet block it now, despite it being a tube. I think I can… Alternatively, I will have to sew the strips together in a few more places where they overlap.

The designer of the cowl, Sara Sinaguglia calls it an “oversized plaited cowl” in her blog. Mine is more of a undersized ropey cowl. (I did do a gauge swatch, so I know the size of my (uncurled) strips are correct.) I’m not unhappy with the cowl, I just think I could make it look better if I sort out the curling edges.

crochet cowl.jpg

The nitty gritty of the cowl:

Yarn: Sirdar Big Softie Super Chunky in gray – shade 319 (Graffiti), green – shade 321 (Beanie) and Sirdar Indie Super Chunky in a self striping greenish grey – shade 154 (Montana).

Hook: 10 mm

Pattern: Saffron Cowl, designed by Sara Sinaguglia in the January 2013 issue of Inside Crochet magazine.

I’ll let you know how if I get on with the Uncurling Of The Cowl.

A change of plan and a Ta-daaaah

24 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in My crochet, My ramblings, Pattern, Ta-daah!

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If you are a fan of crocheTime on Facebook, you would have seen my public declaration of yesterday, saying that I will not finish the Winter Scarf, but rather finish the Identity Crisis blanket before 2012 (it’s been coming dragging along since 20 November 2009 so it really should not have to see 2012 without a border and ends to woven in). I really really really planned to do it this way but things change…

The problem lies therein that the blanket is already big enough for two people to comfortably sit under, or one person to snuggle under from head to toe… more often than not that one person is Hubby. Case and point last night. I had packed away the scarf,  eager and ready to work exclusively on the Identity Crisis blanket but he refused to give it to me! “You can find something else to crochet, I’m sitting under my blanky”. I had to laugh. “My blanky”?! At least I know that when I do (one day) finish it, it will be loved and used.

Back to the scarf then.

I don’t think I’ve given the details on the blog, so here it is. I used Garnstudio Drops Delight in shade no. 10 and myPicot Openwork and Lace pattern no. 2015 with a 3.5mm hook. I can’t remember how many stitches I cast on, but it was quite a lot as the scarf is very wide. It was the width that actually lead me to think that it will work better as a cowl as I’d be able to twist it better around my neck and over my chest, than I would with a scarf. It seemed a waste to have two wide, very warm scarf ends just hanging down the front!

So this is the result.


Strangely enough it reminds me a lot of the Annie’s Attic cowl wrap I wanted to recreate. Looks like I kinda did, without even trying!

This is such a lovely warm cowl! I doesn’t feel heavy or restrictive, just warm and snuggly.

As you can see from my earlier post, it made its debut earlier today in Surbiton and I loved wearing it!

I would say that it’s off to work on the Identity Crisis blanket now but I’m not. Hubby asked for a “draft stopper” for the livingroom.  Let’s hope I can wizz through the Lion Brand’s Striped Draft Stopper pattern quickly enough to finish the blanket before 2012 but past experience has taught me that I shouldn’t hold my breath.