Exercise Before Knitting

Last Friday, I took my last exam then promptly drove to the airport to meet up with Ashley, Caro, Christy, Diana, Jennie, Julia, Maritza, Megan, Minty, Nova, Pam and Specs in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, Nova hurt her back and Jennie got sick (and then got a PhD!) so I missed them, providing plenty of reasons to plan another knitting weekend. The rest of us communed over good food and even better yarn for a weekend of knitting-related silliness fun.

(check out Flickr for details and photo credits)

I scored an amazing cowl in a little swap we planned. Diana knit me the most beautiful, silky blue cowl in a traveling rib pattern.

Would it be in bad taste to wear it every day? I cannot stop looking at my lovely cowl; the color is very striking!

Look at the stitch definition! Stunning! The yarn is Tilli Thomas Fil de la Mer and its content is 70% silk and 30% sea cell.

I knit a cowl for Minty out of Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca & Silk held together with Plymouth Royal Llama Silk. Actually, I knit three cowls for this swap (more on the other two later). I could not decide which one she would prefer so I brought all three and let Minty choose.

She picked the first one I made! I admit to liking this one the best, even if it is the simplest of the three. Here’s Beatrix modeling it before I left.

Pattern: modified Gloria Cowl

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Alpaca Silk (in Mandarin) and Plymouth Royal Llama Silk (in #1880)

Needles: US 8

In the interest of brevity, I will save the other cowls and the pair of socks that I started and finished over the weekend (incredible!) for my next post. After Maryland Sheep & Wool this year, Lolly commented the dread she felt about the post-festival blog post: there is so much to say, so many pictures, so many links. I feel the same way about my weekend in Philly. For that reason, I will let Flickr do the rest of the talking. Needless to say, it was great fun and I look forward to a sequel!