Surprise Cowl

This one's a follow-up to the Surprise Hat, the test knit from last month.

Again, the yarn is Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, and the pattern is the The Surprise Hat and Cowl by Cinzia.  Everything I'd say about the yarn and the pattern is really already discussed in the previous post.  As I mentioned, it's a very easy pattern to work with and to remember.  Obviously, I like it enough to make the cowl after test-knitting the hat!

 

I made only a few minor changes in the cowl, compared to the written directions:

• I went down a needle size (US9) and then knit the Large size.  As I tend to snag on things, I wanted the cowl lacy, but not too snaggy.  The smaller needle size gave me a slightly denser knit, not quite so open.  My aggressive blocking plus the cotton content in the yarn means that the cowl will stretch and drape plenty, even after finishing the blocking in the dryer (as I did for the hat). 
• I did 7 rounds of seed stitch for the borders, making wider borders than the pattern called for.  I wanted it to match the hat  :)
• With the wider borders, I didn't do all the pattern repeats.  I just worked it until it was about a width I liked, finished that pattern repeat and then did my border.

 

It's raveled here.

And those are really all my notes for that pattern!  I guess really, I just wanted to show off new pictures ;)

A pair of finished knitting projects

Two scarves to chatter about here.  Both finished last year, one all the way back in January, and I'm only now getting around to posting on it.  The other was knocked out later in the year while I was sick and spending a lot of time on the couch.  Both are finally getting noted now.

The first one was begun as we were travelling at the holidays and I needed a mindless project during all those hours of driving.  This suited the need perfectly.  The pattern is But I'm Biased by Kate D'Ettore, available as a free Ravelry download or on her blog.  It's one of those lovely, uncomplicated patterns where you just keep knitting until you run out of yarn, and then Ta-Da: lovely scarf!  And with only two rows to memorize, it made for wonderful in-the-car knitting.

The yarn is Malabrigo Rios, color Candombe.  The color reminds me of woods and dusk and other lovely things, all blues and greens and purples with touches of brown and light blues.  As we all know, "mmmmm, Malabrigo!"  Yes, it is as wonderful to work with as it's reputed to be.  The resulting scarf is delightfully soft and squishy and warm.  I only bought one skein at the Yarn Crawl in Oct, planning a simple one-skein scarf for myself as a treat.  This worked perfectly.

It's raveled here.

A required Kitty Helping shot.  Anytime I'm blocking something, Scruffy will choose the moment I'm taking pictures to sit right on top!

The second project for today is the one knocked very quickly.  Being sick enough to not want to be active, but not so sick that I could just laze about and not move at all, I settled in on the couch with White Collar (seasons 1 and 2 are both on Netflix Instant Watch!) and this scarf.

The yarn is Hometown USA again, this time in the Lake Tahoe colorway.  We took a vacation up there a couple years ago, so I do have some connection to the name.  Between weather and stress and timing, though, it wasn't really my favorite trip, so nothing really sentimental.  Honestly, I just really loved the color :)  It's rich blue with tweedy hints of green and purple. 

The pattern is the Icon Scarf by Elizabeth Nields, published in the Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2010.  The Icon Scarf.  Dorky little me, however, kept reading it in my head as the Ionic scarf.  I don't know if it's too many years of Latin or too many years in science labs, but Ionic just stuck in my head for this one.  As a result, I refer to this as the Column Scarf.  It's leaning toward the Latin 'Ionic' reference, and the long, thin scarf just seems to fit a column, so I think it works :)  The pattern is pretty easy to memorize, but the cable twist row does get a little fiddly.  Not that it's an impossible, physics-defying sort of knitting move, but it does take a little to get the hang of two cable needles going in opposite directions.  At least it did for me.  

The two pictures below each have their purpose:  show the colors (left) and the pattern (right).

 

Other than that, I wouldn't make this in acrylic again.  It did open up a little with blocking, but a natural fiber would have opened up more, to show off the laciness inside the cable. Yes, I do know that.  Yes, I used the acrylic yarn anyway.  Still, I am pretty satisfied with the final project, and I knocked it out in a weekend, so who can complain?  :)

It's raveled here.

And in case you were wondering, yes, I'm writing about scarves in Texas in May, where it is in the low 90s this week.  

Oh So Pinteresting Wednesday: Not quite sewn vest!

So, it's not sewing (not a single stitch) but I made a vest!  Just playing with fabric, really.  :)

 

Another idea I found on Pinterest.  There are several versions of the vest available on the web, so I'm not going to reprint all the instructions here.  The ones that I used the most were at Dried Figs and Wooden Spools, Behind the Seams and at S3w G33ky.  The method for all is summarized as:

• Buy jersey knit material.  I found mine on sale at Hobby Lobby, so in addition to being an easy craft, it was one on sale too!  I used a yard - made it a 45x36 in rectangle I was working with.
• Fold in half.
• Cut armholes at the location you want.  It helps to pin the pieces together to line the armholes up properly.  Dried Figs has some good pictures of the process, if you want a full visual tutorial.  I have broader shoulders than the examples I was working from, so my armholes were cut a little wider.  My armholes were approximately 10 inches long, located 6 inches down from the top of the material, and about 7 inches in from the fold (they are 15 inches apart in the final project)
• Wear!

Hmmmm....  So, apparently, I lied.  I did write up everything here.  It really is that easy!  

One of the other perks of this vest is that, being just a big rectangle (or square, if that's how you cut your material), is that it also acts as a lovely lightweight scarf.  We went up to Irving soon after we moved to TX for the Genghis Khan exhibit, and I wore the piece as a vest while we were out and about, but threw on a windbreaker and wore the piece as a scarf while we were inside the exhibit.  There was a Mongolian mummy among all the artifacts on display, so the exhibit had to be VERY well air conditioned (about 65 degrees!).  I really liked having the versatility in what I was wearing that day, because Texas in September is nowhere near 65! 

I'm sharing the crazy!

I got Zach to run a marathon!!  A full one!  This was a couple weeks ago, April 21st, but we just got the email over the weekend that the race photos were up and online, so it reminded me that I hadn't shared yet.

The Army Marathon was a point-to-point race between Temple and Killeen.  Pretty interesting race in itself.  Kinda crazy planning your long runs thinking about running to the next town over...

Good luck!  I posted both pictures, since you can't really read the sign in the picture with Zach in it :)

 

The grins are still nice and big at the starting line!  We ran into a coworker of Zach's whom we see at a lot of the races in the area and got him to take our picture.  A nice "before" shot, y'know?

 

The race planners had done a great job for timing.  The race start was 0630, so it was still dark when we all set out.  It was a little cool at the start, since we'd had a cold front move in.  But had it been normal spring weather, that early start would mean that even the pokey runners like myself would be done before the sun started being miserable.  The extra bonus to the early morning start is that we were on the course as the sun came up.  Made for some pretty skies!

But really, we couldn't have asked for better weather!  It's Texas in the spring, so goodness knows what sort of weather you're going to get.  We lucked out ROYALLY!!  65 and overcast the entire race!  It had been in the 90s the week before, and climbed back up after Sunday, but the race day itself?  Not too sunny, not too windy, not too hot or cold.  Very Goldilocks - juuuuust right!

How'd we do?  We actually finished about 6 minutes apart.  Zach took it out a little fast and his knees started objecting about halfway, so he did a lot more walking than planned.  I dropped about 20 minutes from my Long Beach time - new PR!  I seem to have come up with a training plan that works:  get sick the week before the race.  This isn't the first race that I've been sick right before, and then run a strong race.  As best I can figure, it forces you to rest (mandatory taper!) and it knocks off the nerves and pressure.  After battling a bad cold all week, I was debating up until Saturday morning if I was going to run on Sunday or not!  So, at the starting line on Sunday morning, my whole goal was "FINISH!"  With less pressure on myself, I relaxed and just ran as was comfortable.  Kept my goal pace up until about mile 14, then had to slow down a little.  By mile 17-18ish (my usual wall) I had pretty much reversed my walk and run intervals, doing a lot more walking than running.  That was the point I could tell I had been pretty sick the week before.  But I finished! And with a very strong first half, I dropped time!

And how was the race itself, being its first year and all?  Very well done!  I'd definitely recommend it to anyone in the central Texas area, or anyone who wants to come in and visit (kinda an odd destination race, but you meet all types).  Minor changes and suggestions to make, but really, the important stuff was covered.  Packet registration went pretty smoothly. Plenty of water and sports drink stations through the race, and port-o-potties on the course regularly.  Intersections were always staffed to direct runners and any cars passing through.  The shuttle back to Killeen from the finish line didn't have too much of a wait (veeeery much appreciated on tired legs).  Good shirts and a pretty decent finisher's medal, too.  And a side note - being held the weekend after the tragedies in Boston and West, TX (only an hour and a half or so from us), it was handled very well, considering the enormous impact those events had on the community represented at the race (both runners and central TX residents).  You could tell the security had been upped a bit - a lot more patrol cars on the route than a race this size might expect, and K9 units noticeably at the start and finish.  But the event still ran very smoothly.  For being a first year race, that's pretty impressive.  So yup, definitely a recommended race if you're in the area.

I know when I ran my first one, I wasn't sure I'd ever run another.  But hey, I'd finished at least one, which is a heckuva lot more than many people do.  I thought I'd pretty much stick with half marathons and shorter, now that the big box was checked off.  Unless of course, there were special circumstances...

Which lead to Long Beach.  A few days before a friend's 40th birthday, and with a handful of folk from post also running.  So, yes, plenty of reason to make an exception for another one, right?  The power of peer pressure!

And then the standard was set - if there is a good reason, I'll consider that crazy distance again.  Ta-da: Killeen decides to co-host a marathon with neighboring Temple.  And since I needed motivation for spring runs, I was signed up again (and managing to talk Zach into it too!)

Killeen is a kinda nondescript town.  It's not miserable (i.e. not like our last post!!) and civilization is available and not horribly inconvenient. But it's not a place that really has any character of it's own.  Just kinda a large bedroom community for the post here.  And with Austin and Waco being so close with so much going on, it's very easy to write things off, "oh, I'll just go to Austin for that."  With races though, that's kinda hard, even though both Waco and Austin have a lot each year.  For a big race like a half or a full, traveling an hour and a half or so away means hotel stay, meals to consider, lots of travel after a very long race... makes an already expensive and time consuming race a lot more work.  Having a race right here in our own back yard is a chance you can't pass up!

So, yes, supporting a marathon that is actually close to home was important.  And it supports some close-to-home causes, too, to ice the cake.  It was the inaugural race this year - if there's a good turn-out and positive reviews, they'll keep having the race.  Which means something positive for the community.  Definitely one to run.

The funny thing is, Zach had that "first-and-last" marathon attitude when we finished too.  And then yesterday, he said he might run another, just to earn a time he'd be happier with.  Who knows?  We'll see what we think next year!

(PS - sorry I didn't get any finish line shots - we were both exhausted and just wanted to get home to a nice long bath!)