Over winter break, I needed a project to work on while watching The Wire, but I didn’t have enough time to embark on something seriously ambitious. I stumbled across rgoriginal’s beautiful adaptation of this pattern into a cowl and decided to make it for myself using Knit Picks yarn. I couldn’t decide what colors to use, but when I saw hnordquist’s breathtaking color scheme, I settled on gold and black. Unfortunately couldn’t find golden yarn as bright as hnordquist’s on Knit Picks, but overall I am quite happy with the result. This took me one week to make, and I can’t remember how many yards I used (did not need more than two skeins of each color, however).

It turned out a bit long for my neck and wide at the top at the end. If I did it again I might figure out how to cast on fewer stitches and somehow decrease the width of the cowl. Still, I love it so much. I wear it everywhere and people stop me on the street to tell me how much they like my “scarf.” This was my first experience with steaming fair isle, and I will be doing it for all future fair isle projects, provided the yarn will allow for steam blocking--it makes an incredible difference for the evenness of the stitching.

Pictures aren’t the best quality. I’m not very good at photographing my knitting! As you can see from the middle pic (taken tonight), the cowl has stretched from use.