Simple knitted cowl

It's hot. Damned hot. But it's March for goodness sake. We are in the midst of a 10 day heat wave when we should be having cool nights and mild days. Today I was kicked out of the house so Mr Practical could sand the floor in the 'last bastion'. This is the room in the middle of the house that was the kitchen and is to become the study. It's the last room to be renovated. Needless to say I went quickly. Anything to help. So instead of spending a sweltering day stitching in the air conditioning I spent it outside. My sewing machine was calling me but I had to make do with hand worked things. My body clock has started to crave cooler crafts like knitting. So I went to my stash and found some wool that talked to me ("come on, take me, use me"). I had been thinking about a cowl. I have heaps of scarves but I want something smaller, closer fitting.

So I found this wool in my stash (Cleckheaton folklore in green). It's a lovely green-green tweed of varying widths. Its label recommends knitting in 6.5mm needles  but I don't have any of that size (there's something that I will have to remedy). But I found some straight needles in 7mm. No rounds so I had to knit something with buttons or ... Hmmmmm buttons. I found a great pattern here. But the cable patterning would not do the lovely variations in the wool justice. But I really liked the ends - moss stitch with buttons. So I decided moss stitch ends and then simple stockingette.

To get the right width, I CO 24 stitches. Then 8 rows moss stitch. I knitted as many rows as I could in the one ball leaving enough to finish off the moss stich and buttonhole end. This was straightforward: knit 3 rows moss stitch, 4th row K4 BO3 K4 BO3 K4 BO3 K4. 5th row K4 CO3 K4 CO3 K4 CO3 K4. 3 more rows of moss stitch and BO. I was pretty happy with how it felt straight off the needles but I've set to soak and will pin it out tomorrow. Photos to come. And I think I'll need some new buttons...