mulberryshoots

I’ve been knitting all my life. Until recently, I used yarns that were made of wool. Simple, right? I got into the habit of knitting free form – that is, making up measurements and stitches that I liked, especially seed stitch and antler cable patterns.

Then, I saw a posting of a knitted cowl that looked like wild animal fur. The pattern turned out to be available on Ravelry for free. And I managed to scrape together enough yarn to make three of them for myself and two daughters: two out of a color called “otter” with a faint hint of brown tone; and one out of “grizzly” an all black-tipped yarn.

Well, it was hard calling it yarn actually, because the actual knitting felt like handling tips of fur even though it was completely synthetic. The only drawback to knitting with this yarn is that if you happened to drop a stitch, you were unable to find that stitch again amidst all that fuzz. I learned that the hard way and had to stitch up some holes afterwards. But the good news is that this yarn knitted up is also very forgiving. You can’t see the holes nor the repaired parts.

These cowls, fashioned after the TV series, “Highlander” which I haven’t watched myself, are extremely lightweight, warm and very flattering. The yarns in “otter” and “grizzly” are almost extinct everywhere. They are “winter colors” I’m told so places, even if they restock, won’t be doing so until the Fall, unfortunately.

These cowls require six skeins of this Louisa Harding yarn called “Luzia.” There is a funny dark styrofoam filler in the middle of each skein. I can’t imagine finding anything equivalent to how these cowls look or feel. It was an interesting and worthwhile endeavor to knit these. They each took about a day and a half of knitting straight through the day on size 10 needles; 55 stitches across.