Knitting now - colour work

I don’t know who is who is responsible for reminding me that I don’t like knitting colours, whoever they are they forgot.  I had been looking at the Rowan Bessie cowl kit for some time and eventually caved in, it’s definitely beautiful and seemed straight forward, no shaping, not a big project, what could go wrong.

Photo from Knit Rowan

Firstly the actual pattern.  To buy it separately costs £5 for download but I took the option of pattern and yarn as a bundle.  The yarn arrived without the pattern, I had to contact Rowan who then sent me a link to the download.  I asked MrFF to print this for me next time he had the printer on but unfortunately he produced a black and white copy, I said I’d try to work with that.

We didn’t have any way to enlarge the download so rather than go blind I ended up writing out my own interpretation of each row, a better person would have produced a spread sheet.  I did mention this do Rowan in my feedback, a colour print out of a decent scale on card would have been nice especially if you paid £5 for only the pattern, they didn’t respond.

So I’ve soldiered on.  It’s the kind of work that requires much concentration, impossible to watch tv or even speak while I am knitting. I am even getting cross writing about it.  There are 192 stitches to a row and some rows can take almost 30 minutes especially if I lose the plot as I often do.  I can be heard chanting to myself 3 orange, 2 green, 1 orange and so on not in a calming way.

On the bright side the yarn, Felted Tweed, is beautiful, the colours are gorgeous and I shall have enough yarn left over to knit an additional item that will be much less complicated.

The pressure is on to finish this project not just for my well being but we leave for Italy soon.  It’s not coming with us, I cannot face picking it up again a couple months later and I might like to wear it on the continent.