Cat’s Out of the Bag

I gave my “Under Wraps” project to its intended recipient today, so I can finally share all the details here. Here goes!

The rundown

Pattern: Honey Cowl by Antonia Shankland

Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend, 30% silk and 70% merino. I used one skein (150 yds) of colorway Autumn and nearly two skeins (280 yds) of colorway Willow.

Size made: longer version

Needles: US6

Modifications: none except making it a little less deep than the pattern called for–ran out of yarn! Post-blocking measurements were about 47″ x 9″.

Ravelled: here

The pretty

Here is a closeup of the “right” side:

And one of the “wrong” side:

As far as I’m concerned, both sides look really nice. Here’s the basic story of how this all came together. I knew I wanted to knit something for my friend, but I wasn’t sure what. Eventually I started thinking cowl but I wasn’t sure what pattern. So I started poking through ravelry, looking at my favorites, trying to figure out what would work. I kept finding a pattern I liked but then not having a suitable yarn in my stash. So then I started picking out yarn that I have but I couldn’t find a pattern to go with it. I went back and forth for a while and put it on the back burner for a bit. Then one evening, while I had the honey cowl pattern up on ravelry, I just happened to glance down at the bag of yarn beside me and picked up a skein of the Manos silk blend and a light bulb went off. I searched all the honey cowl projects and found this one. I hadn’t seen it done in two colors before! It was perfect because I really wanted to use the variegated Autumn but only had one skein of it. So I picked out another color that coordinated and off I went.

The pattern gets its texture from stitches slipped with the working yarn on the right side, which is done on even rows. Odd rows are K. So, using one color for the odd rows and a different color for the even rows leads to the color pattern I ended up with. Since the yarn for the even rows gets slipped every other stitch, it gets used up at about half the rate of the other yarn. So, my one skein of variegated worked perfectly with two skeins of a coordinating solid. I love projects like this–it’s such a simple thing to do, but it looks so complex and pretty.

I would highly recommend both this pattern and the yarn I used. The pattern is very, very simple but the finished product looks polished. If I made it again, I would choose a larger needle size to make a slightly looser fabric. The only reason I used the 6s is because the only good circulars I have in sizes 7 and 8 are 16″, which just wasn’t going to cut it. The pattern is made for madelinetosh yarns and I would think it would look amazing!