A two-type Cowl

 Hey guys! First off, sorry I haven't gotten to posting that book post/recommendation. It's been a far more picky post than I'd hoped it would be.
 But in the meantime–I finished my first knitting project for Fall! (Or Autumn, I call it both, so bear with me on this)
 First off, I had been gifted a lovely skein of alpaca yarn that is simply gorgeous, and super super soft! But it's not been worked so much that it has lost all of it's natural fiber look.
 I hadn't been sure what to make with it, as it was only a couple hundred yards, and it's not a whole lot of yarn if you're wanting to make something to wear.
 Lo and behold, a cowl came across my vision one day, and it seemed a simple enough project.

My cowl


 Now, unlike most knitters, I didn't knit mine in the round. Not only was it a bit of a pain to try and gauge it correctly on circular needles, but mine aren't the right size for working with this particular skein, which is in the 'Fine' category.
 I knitted on size 6 needles, and I ended up doing the whole thing in the seed stitch, which is my latest friend. Although, I "cheated" by not doing it in a multiple of two as most videos and patterns will teach you to do. Now, if you've ever tried seed stitch, or have wanted to learn, I suggest casting on a number of stitches in a multiple of 2, plus 1 more. I knitted my cowl with 35 stitches, so a regular pattern would have been just 34, where you alternated the pattern each row. But, I'm famous for forgetting which kind of a row I'm on, so to save myself the headache, I just cast on an odd number of stitches so that I repeated the pattern the same way on every row.

E.G.

Instead of:
row 1: knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1,
row 2: purl 1, knit 1, purl 1, knit 1,

I did this:
row 1: knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1, knit 1,
row 2: knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1, knit 1,

Which save me a lot of trouble. But if you're following a pattern in the seed stitch, I don't recommend doing this unless they specifically say you can. Otherwise you'll be in for a world of a headache with sizing.


Now, because I didn't do it with circular needles, I had a different kind of a roadblock to overcome rather than simply casting off my stitches. Connecting the two ends after having a nice rectangle.
 I looked around for a short while online at different ways of stitching them together with yarn and a yarn needle, but most required a heavier yarn project, mine was too lacy to handle a lot of the pulling and tightening without it being pulled out of shape.
 So I decided to look up ways to crochet two pieces of knitting together. Two youtube videos later, I found a version that looked like it could work–and it did!

I should note that, the yarn I used to connect my two ends was not alpaca yarn, but 100% cotton yarn, and it is also of a slightly heavier weight. But I didn't have many colors that worked well with my alpaca, so the cotton yarn it was.

 Here's a link to the video I used to connect my yarn project, in case any of you are interested!
*I am not a promoter, and I am in no way affiliated with the following video. Just helping any fellow knitters/crocheters out. If anybody has a problem with me linking the video, please comment below.*

  Crocheting two pieces of knitting together: Youtube video link

My own version of the seam from the video.

 I used roughly 200 yard of yarn to make this in the seed stitch. I can't say how many rows I did, as I simply went until I had no more yarn to make it. But I cast on 35 stitches, and it's roughly 8 1/2 inches wide, and 24 inches long.
 I hope you enjoyed seeing my latest project! Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope you're Fall weather (If you're in the northern hemisphere) is enjoyable, and that your spring weather (for my southern hemisphere friends) is enjoyable as well!

 Thanks for reading!
-Mae

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