The Curse of the Bandana Cowl

The Purl Bee's Bandana Cowl in a Malabrigo Worsted. Oooh. Pretty Colours.

I'd been admiring Purl Bee's Bandana Cowl for a good long while.

I thought this would be a decent project to try my yarn acquisitions from the Knitting and Stitching Show; the Malabrigo Worsted and the Garnstudio DROPS Big Delight. 

Garnstudio's DROPS Big Delight sitting and minding its own business before undergoing some traumatic knitting attempts.

The Bandana Cowl is one of those patterns that's the basis of 5,600 projects on Ravelry and is sitting, waiting to be made flesh in 7,500 queues. Comments abound that suggest this is a pretty whizzy project, a decent one for a middle-ranking knitter. Stuff like "I whipped this up in an evening whilst also cooking a 10-course meal that included an assortment of amuse-bouches". Thus a mere mortal such as my goodself should probably manage the cowl within a week. Surely?

Malabrigo Worsted. So bouncy and a delight to work with.

I had plans to give a varigated lilac number as birthday present for the end of October. Thus I launched in mid October. Ballsed it up. Launched again a week later. Crashed and Burned. Frogged. Launched again. Argh! 

Ta daaaa! Lilacky, DROPS cowl. Looking pretty good considering the 10 attempts.

10 times, people. 10 TIMES before I got this right. DPNs, magic loop, circular needles then I cast on correctly before was thwarted, thwarted by the short rows. There may have been dark utterances of an earthy vernacular that turned the air blue. This was supposed to be a simple thing, which I was not managing, but by golly, I would not be beaten.

If there is one thing that knitting is teaching me it's patience and a need for precision. If it's not right, pull it apart and start again. Don't try and wing it. This isn't a PhD thesis for crying out loud. Someone will immediately notice the mistake in a knitted project. They'll probably miss the incorrect footnote in Medieval Croatian.

See? It's even a lovely bit of knittery from behind. Ooooh.

And so I tried again. The 10th time proved the charm and I finished off the cowl in 4 nights. So the birthday gift became a Christmas present instead. Since December 23rd I've finished another 3, two more in the DROPS Big Delight and one in the Malabrigo. I've half a ball left of the Big Delight so might make a spare one for future gifting purposes... and may even attempt to cook a 10-course meal with amuse-bouches at the same time.

Maybe.

(Images: Zoë F. Willis)