Look Ma, no knitting!

Once upon a time I endeavored to knit. And I did knit.But very slowly. When the weather got cold I looked longingly at those fabulous knit and crochet wraps that are all over crafty internet sites. And I coveted.

But then I saw this great tutorial! It was intended for fleece material, but I've now made this twice (once with a wool and once with this thin knit sweatery material) and it's worked great.

Here is the link to the pattern and instructions.  It's a free download, but it will cost you 18 pieces of paper to print the pattern. It's a little bit of a pain to tape the pattern together, but the directions are very clear and easy to follow. The hardest part of the whole process is where you are supposed to sew a smiley face to a frowny face. This is very similar to sewing a sleeve or a neckline. Every time, I look at those opposing "u" shapes and think that it's not going to work, but somehow it does. And this one works too. The pattern says that you need between 1 - 1.5 yards of fabric. Let me go ahead and tell you to get the 1.5. If you double the cowl you need the extra yardage. I did the wool with a single layer cowl and it looks great but you have to do some extra finishing. It's just worth the extra .5 to not have to deal with it.

Here are pictures of the sweater like material. I'm keeping this one for myself. I have plans for the one in wool to be a gift so no pictures :-)

Cowl wrap

A little closer up

If you want to be very Abercrombie and Fitch, you can pull the cowl up to make a hood. I, however, am not that cool

Close up of material. It's a purple/plum heather. Is that correct yarn friends? That striped kind of look with multiple colors?