Saturday 20 December 2014:

Have cast on for the black & white braid, this YouTube clip helped me learn how to do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0jBELkLysg

This is great fun. Unfortunatley, my Lion Brand Amazing yarn has not arrived yet from Deramores, normally it comes next day, I expect the Christmas rush has held it up, but now today & Sunday will be lost when I had hoped to get the colourwork underway.

Using 5.5 mm needles CO 224 stitches, row 1 of braid a knit row, clockwise rotation of yarn, row 2 purl, anti-clockwise rotation of yarn & row 3, purl again & clockwise rotation of yarn. What a super rich braid this makes, will be using this again for many projects.

Have watched this 20 minute workshop video of knitting the Inspira cowl through a few times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9IcgLqya-E

Decreased along the same lines I used for Lava shoulder cosy. Cast off in i-cord, using pink sands, which means I have 2 ways of wearing my cowl of many colours, pink to the front, or blue/lilac to the front as this is how the i-cord colours panned out. Not quite a shoulder cosy, but a large cowl which sits over the shoulders & comes up, not too snug, around the neck without gaping.

I love it. Will def make more. I have a number of balls of Lion Amazing in a variety of colours to try colour combos for my next shot at this. As this cowl is big, the next may be smaller & a closer fit. Will get some pics of me wearing it & post up.

16 January 2015 - the pic I have posted up today of me wearing the cowl looks very washed out and does not show the vibrant colours, I will need to get a better one, I don’t think the flash went off!