Using what I have in stash, so it’s acrylic and thicker than recommended by the pattern. We’ll see how it goes…

I wanted to try out my new knitting needles on something larger than the Tribble dish-scrubbie pattern. I bought a nickel-plated Boye Artisan interchangeable set on sale at Tuesday Morning, and I really want to learn whether I’ll have an allergic reaction to the needles.

I’m using yayalovestoknit’s suggestion of casting on 219 to make the seed stitch sections less fussy.

Hm. It’s probably because I’m not that experienced with knitting patterns, but the way this one is written kind of confuses me.

First, I had to look up seed stitch to know what it was. (K1, P1-- Yeah, that sounds familiar, now, but it would be so easy to just include that bit of info…)

Next, I didn’t immediately pick up on the asterisks-- or at least I wasn’t sure what they meant. I think it means that you should repeat the instructions inside the asterisks, but I’m used to having that spelled out.

(I know-- but I’m still learning and doing my best to to avoid mistakes in knitting, because they can be a real pain to fix. It’s one of the reasons crochet will always be my true love. One live stitch = limited heartbreak.)

Twice on repeats of Round 10, I found I was short one stitch, so I had to make a stitch both times. After the second time, I realized what I’d been doing wrong. I’d been forgetting that final yo before knitting the last stitch in repeats of Round 12! Oops… It won’t be perfect, but I doubt it’ll be glaringly obvious, either-- particularly when it’s being worn.

I decided the cowl was getting wide enough, so instead of making the 2nd section of Irish mesh narrower (four rounds of the yo/sl1/k2/psso instead of five), I went ahead and made it with five rounds, to match the first section. I then skipped ahead to the five rounds of seed stitch.

I think this makes a decent-sized (but not huge) cowl, and it uses only one skein of this yarn.

I went up to 10.5 needles for the bind off. I read a little online, but kept finding conflicting opinions as to what “binding off in pattern” means when the pattern is seed stitch. Namely, should I knit the knit stitches and purl the purl stitches-- or knit the purls and purl the knits? Eh, I just decided to knit the knits and purl the purls. Looking at it, I suspect I should’ve chosen the other option-- but it’ll be fine. I doubt it will stand out one way or the other, when it’s in use.

It had a tendency to curl inward along the cast-on and bound-off edges, and because it’s acrylic, it doesn’t really block flat like wool (though washing and drying may help…). I’ve gone back and crocheted around both edges. One round of plain sc, then a round of sc in back loop only, which creates another (subtle) element of texture.

(I opened a second skein of yarn to work on the crochet addition.)