GAPtastic Cowl for Kids

A GAPtastic Cowl for kids.  You knew it had to come to this because I've got the knitting bug.   After making several GAPtastics for adults, I wanted to make one that was kid-sized.  When my son was invited to his friend's 8th birthday party, I decided to add a cowl to her package of presents.

I cast on 95 sts and did a seed stitch.

Last time, I said I wanted to do a stretchy bind on and bind off.  So I did!  If you don't know how to do this, here is a YouTube video that shows you how to do a stretchy bind on and here is one for the stretchy bind off.   As you can see the pink Gaptastic has a straighter edge as a result of doing the stretchy bind on/off.

When it came to weaving in the ends, I decided to split the yard so it wasn't as noticeable.

I ended up tying a knot at the base before I weaved in the yarn tail.

I used one skein for this project and only had a small handful of yarn left.

The day we gave her the cowl, it was -25C.  Although it was beautiful outside, it was very very cold! 

Birthday girl loved her cowl and wore it to school the next day.  She was so cute in it!

Unfortunately, no one was around to model the cowl when I made it, so I decided to put it on.  Seems like the kid size can fit an adult too!



On another note, I am learning how to design my own personalized sloper set through BurdaStyle Academy.   When I finish the class, hopefully I'll have something to share!  In the meantime, more knitted cowls to follow.

Until next time,

Cozy Winter Cowl

It's been a long time since I picked up knitting needles. The last thing I knit was a baby kimono for a girlfriend's baby shower.  That baby girl is now 8!

I probably wouldn't have picked up my knitting needles if not for the fact that we got some snow.   It's been weird seeing green grass for the last 3 months.  Of course the kids were so happy to see snow.  Even if it melted within 2 days (no no no!!), we were able to make a snowman and go sledding.

There's nothing like snowy weather to get me thinking of warm and woolly scarves.  So I decided to go to Michaels and pick up some yarn.  I bought some Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick (Grey Marble) after seeing the Katy Cowl pattern on Ravelry.

Since I can't control myself, I also bought these (and some more)

The cowl was very easy to knit.  However, in the 8 years that I haven't been knitting, there has been a lot of new stuff (for me) on youtube.  I learned how to do a provisional cast-on by iKnits.  Although the Katy Cowl pattern says to do a standard cast on, one Ravelry member said she did a provisional cast on.  I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like she knew what she was talking about.  I googled it and realized again, how cool the internet is for crafters.   A provisional cast on allows you to have live stitches that you can knit from (or sew up) seamlessly.  The key word here is seamless! 

I used 10mm (size 15) needles as per the pattern but the yarn label suggested 9mm (size 13).   Since I usually ignore gauge (bad bad bad),  I was hoping it wouldn't be a problem since this was a cowl.

It was truly an easy knit but as I was measuring, I only measured for length.   It turns out that following the pattern without checking gauge made my cowl 1.5" wider.

I forgot to take pics of my grafting but trust me when I say, it looked fantastic!  Only I could tell where I joined the two ends thanks to this handy video:  how to do a Kitchener Stitch for garter stitches. 

Overall, I do still think the cowl turned out nicely.  It took 3 skeins to make and at 6oz/170g per skein, it's a bit heavy in my opinion.  Definitely too heavy for my little model.

I gave this one to my sister who walks everywhere because she lives downtown.  This is what it looked like on me.  Seems like there's so many ways this thing can wrap.

See what I mean?

Onto my next project!