For the first time ever (in 28 years!) I will be without my sister Emily at Christmas. She is being whisked away on holiday to a snowy ski vacation with the boyfriend’s family. Sigh. So while a malabrigo rasta cowl might only get light use in her mild Georgia winters to come, I’m hoping she can get a heartier use out of it and feel a little warmer during this holiday when we are away from each other. I have only been wearing my Herringbone Neckwarmer a few weeks here in Cleveland, but already received enough compliments to know this is a stylish winner.

It’s amazing how eye color changes the whole palette of a person. The trick for me was to get the right color scheme for my brown, bauble-eyed glam sister. She doesn’t wear a lot of rosy tones, but looks great in gold and chocolate colors, so I thought the tertiary trifecta of orange - russet - rose purple would suit her well. Plus, I am fairly sure “coronilla” means crown, perfect for my princess-y sister (according to our dear little cousins).

I decided to downgrade my judgement of this pattern from “medium” to “easy” this time. A great little project, with quick results. It only took 2 hardcore sessions of keeping 1 eye on the needles and 1 eye on Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is still not enough views to catch all the beautiful details of that movie. Between the Indian Paintbrush film-wash and the yarn, the orange theme in the room was vibing pretty intensely.

As with the last go-round, I refreshed my technique with Craig Rosenfeld’s Herringbone Stitch Tutorial - helpful to clarify the pattern details.
Dropping the requested stitch number from 20 down to 18 (cast on) made a big difference in width. This one looked better on the neck, especially over a larger jacket or vest as you can see at the top. There wasn’t as much extra bulking up.

To Emily!