do not scowl, it's ultra-cowl!

yes indeed, i have knitted a giant-ass cowl. two, in fact.

i made this one out of some chunky acrylic yarn i found at a thrift store over a year ago. do you realize how difficult it is to find super chunky vegan yarn these days? it seems that caron has discontinued its simply soft thick & quick line, and every goddamn other non-novelty, super chunky yarn has animal fiber in it.

since the red yarn wasn’t exactly what i was picturing for this cowl i kept searching, and i finally found “now i know” yarn, from knit-for-brains.com. knit for brains is a fabulous resource--their selection isn’t huge, but they have bamboo, banana silk, corn fiber, cotton, hemp and soysilk yarns, all vegan, all the time.

i bought four skeins of nik organic cotton yarn in “wise.” details, from knit for brains website:

Now i Know! Organic Cotton is made in Peru: handspun using a traditional Pushka spindle, and dyed using eco-friendly vegetable extracts.

After harvest, the cotton fiber is brought directly to the spinners to prevent commute time and transportation costs, workers are paid a fair wage and guaranteed an 8-hour workday and an hour lunch break, and gifts and incentives are awarded to higher-than-average quality work.

isn’t that great? the yarn is nice and chunky (not *super* chunky, but i made peace with that.) it comes in twisty hanks, so i used my kitchen chair/toilet paper roll method to spin it into cakes. illustration:

i’m not sure if this is how other knitters who aren’t equipped with a fancy yarn swift or ball winder deal with the problem of hanks, but here’s my jimmyrigged method: i unfold the hank and wrap it around the backs of two chairs, cut it loose, and use an empty toilet paper roll to slowly and methodically wrap a proper center-pull yarn cake.

the yarn was a bit thick-and-thin and irregular, which i wasn’t expecting, and the stitches ended up looking kind of funky...

but i don’t mind, it adds character. plus, it only took two skeins to make the cowl, so i have two left over to make some other piece of fabulosity. here’s the finished cowl, secured with three vintage buttons my grandma gave me: