Me made Mittwoch – my favourite winter piece

I’m finally back for a Me made Monday and also linking up with the ladys from Ginny’s Yarn Along. So what do I show you today? A multifunctional cowl, shoulder warmer, near Poncho thingy. The Standing Stones Cowl. There was a AndeeKF Fiber arts Giveaway at Ginny’s blog at the end of September. While I didn’t win anything, I still fell in love with the designs and decided to by the Standing Stones Cowl Pattern. A week or so later, I had to order some more yarn for my MIL’s blanket (she knits and I order yarn). This was a good excuse to order some more of that Malabrigo Merino Worsted Goodness in Red Mahagoni that I had test ordered one skein in an earlier order. And so with three skeins I set off to knit myself a Standing Stones Cowl.

With three 100g skeins the thing got quite heavy but I really needed all three skeins and managed to basically knit one section per skein. The pattern is pretty simple to follow and I did only one small modification. I added stitches while working the middle part which was actually suppossed to go without any increases (probably due to the fact that with this pattern it is hard to integrate stitches without it looking weird. But I did so for several reasons: I thought having it go straight down in such a long section might look weird when worn and the cowl which at this part was suppossed to fit easily over my shoulders felt a bit tight. And because of the steady stitch count, the yarn colours kept pooling. With an added stitch here and there (and cutting out some inches of yarn every now and then) this ceased by the end of section 2.

It took me about three weeks to finish this, what when blocking looked like a knitted shirt and as I realised, when playing around with it, could easily double up as a strapless mini dress (not that I would wear it like this). While we were travelling I have fallen even more in love with it. I wore it every single day, as a super thick cowl or as the shoulder warmer it actually is. In the Allgäu it even doubled up as a hood.

It is so warm and nice and cosy. I could basically cuddle up in it right now (which I mostly likely will do in a minute as it is hanging over the back of my chair. And I can heartly recommend the pattern as well as the yarn.

Photo credits (good or bad because there was not proper one with me wearing it as a shoulder warmer which was not a bit blurred) go to Michael who took a few pictures of me yesterday morning before I went to work. You can still see my “it is too early to take pictures but the only time we can do it” face.