Ridge and Furrow cowl

This seemed like a good pattern to use up some of my mighty acrylic DK stash and it had been languishing in my Ravelry queue for ages, so I started it in mid February.

Initially, I loved it. I chose navy as the main colour, and another 16 contrast colours: teal, moss, olive, moorland green, sapphire, violet, lavender, lilac, magenta, claret, royal purple, aubergine, royal blue, mid-blue, petrol and pine (a dark bluish green). With 5mm needles and a provisional crochet cast on, I was off and it progressed quite well. I decided to work forwards and backwards through the colours twice and loved the colourful garter stitch ridges standing out against the navy background.

The more I knitted, the more I fretted about getting the ends neatly and securely knitted/woven in. I'd dismissed the idea of somehow carrying the various yarns up one of the edges. I put it down for several weeks while I researched methods of tidily working in the ends and picked it up again just to get it finished. By three quarters of the way through I'd fallen out of love with it, and then became even more fed up when it came to tidying up all the loose ends. At least picking up stitches onto a 5mm circular needle in order to finish the edges was quick and I liked the colourful purl 'blips'.

It's very nice, but the hassle of knitting it has cured me of wanting it for myself. I've decided this one is for the sales basket on my craft sales table at a local midsummer fun day next weekend. This one-off is destined for someone else!