Keeping Cozy. . .

Hope everyone is having a great holiday week.  It's been so cold that I've been happy to cocoon at home on my couch doing lots of reading and knitting. As with quilting, I've always been a straight lines knitter which means nothing too complicated, although I'm now crazy about cables, having realized they really weren't as hard as I'd thought. But my New Year's resolution is to take a chance and actually try something a little more ambitious like a sweater or a hat. We'll see. In the meantime, here are two recent neck cowl projects that I completed and quite like. And they were super easy - just rectangles!

The first one I spotted on the cover of the latest issue of knitsimple magazine and was so intrigued I bought it right away. Although the "one afternoon" boast is a bit misleading.  To make this cowl, you basically knit three long tubes and then braid them together, sewing them at the back.  But it still amounts to a little over 8 feet of knitting in total!  Took me three afternoons, but here's my version.

And then I found this wonderful Irish tweed that had flecks of blue, gray, yellow and brown in it. (Katia Irish Tweed #8905  if you're interested) Just loved the colours and the texture but only had two small skeins -  just enough for another neck cowl.  This one is my design - just one long rectangle, sewed at both ends with alternating stripes of knitted rows, ribbed rows and stockinette stitch. And it was quite quick to make, just a few hours.