Well, that was fun while it lasted. I know it wasn’t a full-on sweater. Obviously. But still! I thought that my Ben-ish Cowl would take me a little longer than it did. (I think I finished it about 3 days after I wrote my last post about it. And I’m being pretty slow about knitting these days…)
Oh well…
At least it turned out super cute!
The colors are slightly off here, but about as close as I could manage. The red is more burgundy (think: cranberry sauce) and the gray is slightly more blue (a slightly overcast autumn sky… if you’re feeling poetic).
It’s super cozy and soft. Maybe too cozy for Seattle…
But, the takeaway for this project is that I want to put this cable/texture pattern on every garment I make for the rest of the winter. Socks? Yes. Hats? Yes. Scarves? Yes.
And sweaters? Definitely.
Why do the most fun projects always go the fastest?
I’ve gone through phases as a knitter. There was a while when I started knitting that I almost exclusively knit mittens. Then it was stuffed animals. Then socks. And lace shawls (for some reason…). Lately (as in the last few years), it’s been sweaters.
I love making sweaters. I’ve probably made a couple dozen over the last few years (more, if you include baby/kid sweaters). I find sweaters to be just the most satisfying project. I love everything about them, from designing them to adding details to picking yarn to thinking about the practicalities of their construction. I love knitting sweaters that are my own designs, and I love knitting sweaters other people have designed.
However, two factors are getting in the way of my sweater-dreams these days.
Covid means I haven’t been to a yarn store in 8 months. I’ve been slowly draining my stash of any sweater-quantitates of yarn. Sure, I could probably cobble together a sweater’s worth of sock yarn or something, but… that sounds difficult. And annoying.
As I write this (in late October), I’m less than a month away from the birth of my second kid. Which, needless to say, will cut into my knitting time.
So that means I’m making a point of knitting non-sweater projects.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t dream, does it?
This is one of my favorite men’s sweaters to make (and wear). It’s a super easy, FREE, cabled, comfy, pieced sweater. I’ve knit it twice- once for my husband and once for my father-in-law. I have since more-or-less adopted my husband’s sweater since apparently it’s “too warm for Seattle” for him. It’s the perfect “I’m having a day and just need to be comfy” sweater.
I kind of want to knit another one.
But instead, I’m going to hold myself back and use up the skein-and-a-half of Knit Picks’ Twill I have in my stash drawer to make a nice, cozy Ben Cowl. (I had hoped the gray-blue would have been enough, but it’s not quite as tall as I wanted. Luckily the burgundy looks nice enough with the blue, so we’re going to pretend it was supposed to be color-blocked.)
What other small projects should I work on? Do you have any favorite one-skein patterns?
On the Needles 