Inamorata

Inamorata Street ends in silver sand and a great craggy finger of stone, stretching out into the sea. The glittering water flows out to the horizon and over it, a great dark expanse, whitecaps glistening in the moonlight. Foam shatters into seaglass on the beach, and couples walk arm in arm along a strand of shards, glittering and wet. Striped tents dot the beach head: red and yellow, green and white, rose and powdery blue. Women change into bathing uniforms with flared waists and broad hats to keep out the moonlight; tuba players march back and forth, blaring out nocturnes.
The infirm of Palimpsest come here to recover, to collect seaglass on their bedside tables and write novels on the nature of the solitary soul. Mustached men sell bottles of seawater in the inland markets for the price of kingdoms, and false phials abound. The air blows fresh and sweet; it smells of tangerines and salt and white sage, and charlatans bottle this too and sell the empty glasses to immigrants for the price of a parliament seat.
Each evening the hopelessly ill are brought in gauzy palanquins to view the moonrise, and all applaud the appearance of its white disc over the water. The wind is considered to have such restorative power that surgery is performed on the beach, anesthesia administered by waifish women with hair like spun sugar, who close their mouths over the ailing and breathe the vapors of their crystalline hearts into weakened legs.

• Inamorata from Palimpsest, by Catherynne M. Valente; pg 197-198

I was unhappy with my previous incarnation of this project using the designs of someone else. I went looking for a stitch that I thought would be pleasing, and decided to use the stitch from the Pineapple Hat, because I feel that each cluster looks somewhat like a star, and I like that :)
I started and frogged the initial cowl several times, and spent a long time casting on for this version. Despite using a row counter to help with keeping track of my cast-on stitches, I was still losing count pretty often, which resulted in me having to re-start this project several times.

starting off with 160 stitches, cast on using Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy cast-on method.
going with 10 rows of k2, p2 ribbing to start.

• I’ve noticed that I’m either doing this wrong, or that it’s the wrong-side that puffs out more than the right-side. When I’ve completed the cowl, I plan on flipping it inside out so that the star-shape of the puffed stitches is more prominent. The pattern is easy enough to remember, though, which is good, and I also haven’t messed up at all like I did with the last attempt.