A Churchmouse Cowl and how can it be December already??

I must be living in some kind of time/space warp, I can't believe it is December 5 already!! I am really  enjoying reading all my fellow blogger's Christmas gift making and decorating. What an awesome bunch! Sadly I haven't quite got my groove on with my own Christmas preparations but I am sure soon I will launch into high gear. Okay maybe not so high but at least get the ball rolling!  When our kids were younger and we had a lot more family around I was pretty organized and super busy. Now I am more of a multi-slacker. Times change and that's perfectly okay.

 

 I knit this cowl recently. Love it ! I thought this would be a great quick (ish) knit for some of you who want to knock off another gift, or better yet, make one for yourself!!

This is The Inside Outside Churchmouse Cowl. It is a great straightforward knit. I started with a provisional cast on-I use a crochet cast on with waste yarn. Then I knit approximately 8 inches with Shibui Stocatto-a fingering weight yarn in Tar. I then started knitting my stripe sequence with two strands of Kidsilk Haze Eclipse in  Aquarius alternately with Shibui Silk Cloud in Raspberry. When the stripey part was the same length as the plain part I grafted the two edges together. Grafting with the mohair was okay, you just need a lot of good light and a big dose of patience. If you are not a fan of the graft., a three needle bind off would work just dandy. It is amazing to me that this cowl just folds nicely on the rounds where I changed yarns.
 My cowl is so nice to wear with a coat or atop a sweater. It is super soft and just drapes nicely. This is a great stash buster project and a great way to use up left over sock yarn. You could have a lot of fun with this pattern!

My squashapalazoo continues. Today I made a butternut squash apple soup. This time instead of making a curried soup I made a warm spicy one. I used ginger and pumpkin pie spice to flavour it . It tastes great but it tastes even better if you add a couple of glugs of maple syrup. Yum! The house smells awesome!!

I was recently nominated by two awesome bloggers for the Leibster  Blog Award  by the lovely
Gillian of Hookinayarn   and the equally lovely Geraldine of Wool and Cats. I was super surprised and a little bit gobsmacked on this one. Thank you both ever so much!! I will respond to this soon. I am an incredibly slow blogger, I can graft  or turn a heel a lot easier and faster than formulating a blog post!

Welcome to my new follower Karen.Thank you for joining me . Karen is a friend of Isobel's too. Both are such lovely fun women! Thank you all for your kind comments, it is always nice to hear from you!

This weekend I am on wisdom teeth nursing duty. About 10 days ago our daughter developed an abcessed wisdom tooth. The plan was to have them all removed on Dec 22. Excellent timing!!. After a visit to the dentist yesterday she was told they have to come out asap and were taken out this morning. Ouchie wow wow!!! I remembered when I had mine out a long long time ago. Just plain nasty.

Winter is upon us!

Keep warm friends!

Keep smiling!

Chris