Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

This week’s project is a cowl/swatch I’m making for Adia. I plan to make a sweater with this stitch pattern, but making the swatch was just miserable, so I grabbed a hank of the same yarn I am using for the sweater (Malabrigo sock) from the stash and started a cowl with the hook size I want to use for the sweater. And there we have it! The cowl swatch!

It’s big enough to be a good sized swatch, so I don’t have to worry about extrapolating out from a 4 inch by 4 inch swatch. This should make for better planning days when it comes to mapping out the sweater. Possibly better yet, the swatch will not end up being a piece of crocheted fabric I have to wonder what to do with for years to come or at least until the damn moths find it. Fortunately I had a hank of Malabrigo sock in my stash. I think I would have shelved the sweater for a bit if I had to go buy a hank of yarn to make the swatch. 

Joyously, this project has two ends, and I already wove the first one. That’s right! I responsibly wove the first end once I felt good about where everything was going. This is abnormal for me. I think it comes from working on so many motif projects right now. If I can see one less end, then my day is a happy one. But mixed in there has to be a little thought that I need to wrap things up. The world feels very fraught. The days of leaving ends until I get to them seem to be gone. No one can be that cavalier anymore. Who knows what tomorrow brings? There’s no way to plan for it enough, but I can have less ends and that feels like something in a timeline where rights and people are disappearing.

So what am I doing here? I started with two repeats of Marguerite stitch, so four rows, and then moved on to moss or linen stitch. I’m going to run with that until I have about 10 grams of yarn left and then finish the top of the cowl off with another two repeats of Marguerite stitch. I’m using a 3.5 mm crochet hook, which is my go to hook size for more solid stitch patterns with a fingering weight yarn. I’m happy with it. It has a bit of drape, the stitch pattern looks pretty sharp, the blue color is very alluring. This is a good project. May it foretell a happy sweater making process to come.