Just in Time for Cowl-o-rama

I am pleased to introduce the newest cowl to my Ravelry Design Store, the Mixed Bag Cowl. 

As regular readers of the blog may remember, I originally blogged about this cowl's ILikeCrochet.com publication back in July of 2015. Well, my design rights have reverted back to me, I've created a second sample, snapped some additional lovely photos, et voila! an almost-brand-spanking-new cowl is ready and waiting for purchase.











I am showing a photo of both samples of this cowl together, so you may be able to see the color interplay not only within each sample, but between the two cowls side by side. There is one fiber that is common to both samples, Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in the shire colorway, but then the rest of the fibers are different in each. As you can see (and something I continually talk about), color is all about context - you may be able to pick out the Tosh Merino Light  in each sample, but together with other colors, it acts very differently. Love this, like a lot.

In fact, I love pretty much everything about this design. It's tunisian crochet (one of my favorite techniques), utilizes tri-strand colorwork, and is a study in color. Absolutely my sweet spots. I could make many of these cowls. 

Uh-oh.

Kicking Off July

Hello everyone - welcome to the hazy, lazy days of summer. It's been super warm around here, and there's pretty much no end in sight.

photo credit: www.iLikeCrochet.com

To distract from the heat of the moment, I am pleased to show you my two latest designs published in the August edition of iLikeCrochet.com. I seem to be in cardigan overdrive these days: check out the Cozy Chic Cardi. Worked up in Drops Baby Alpaca Silk, this is a light, airy cardigan that's also a breeze to work up. The sleeves have cuff interest courtesy of some boho shaping (if the model's arm was straight, the sleeve would rest past the wrist). The overall look is relaxed and casual, and since it's lightweight, makes a great travel piece.

Please excuse the sun in the photo,
but you can see how the
cuff dips along the outer edge.

Additionally, I've written a quick article on how to work with multiple colors in tunisian crochet, and designed a cowl to show off the technique. The Mixed Bag Cowl is a great project not only because you'll get to play with color, but also because it does double duty as an excellent stash-busting project. While I used three different fingering weight yarns for the main body of the cowl, the edging is worked up in Berroco Mixer, which is dk weight. There's also a thick and thin quality to it that I found added a ton of interest to the cowl's edges.

This is a good shot of the thick and thin
quality of the edging done in Berroco Mixer.

This is a great project to play around with color and texture and create something unique with one of my all-time favorite techniques - working with multiple colors in tunisian crochet.

I do want to take a minute to also urge you to check out this edition of iLikeCrochet.com. It is really chock-full of great crochet projects (my designs notwithstanding), including this lace topper that, if you like crochet lace as much as I do, you might want to make ... like ... pronto.

It's Indepedence Day weekend here in the U.S., and Canada just celebrated Canada Day. I wish everyone all kinds of freedom - however you define it.

Oh, and let's hope everyone stays cool and enjoys some rockin' food.