Cowl for Grandma

I have been knitting away these last few months on the cardigan below, and during the off time I have had from that (ha) I have been making my grandmother this (just finished) cowl.
She asked me for it oh, back in October. Since I love my grandmother I ran right out and bought the yarn for it, but quickly realized I had just signed up for a class on my sweater. The deadline on that came first. So it's the first week of December its done and its cold out, I plan to send this baby down to her asap.


I literally just finished it and blocked it tonight.

I took some shots of the cowl before it was blocked. It's a really bumpy mess at this point due to all the lace detail in the pattern. It causes the yarn to wave up and down and you really cant see the pattern all that well here.


This is the cowl pre-blocking inside out. It looks like an egg crate.


Voila! Its amazing what a little water and heat can do.
I steamed it on a piece of clean white linen and lightly sprayed it with water for the night. You can really see the shield pattern now.



Here I am testing it out in my PJ's after blocking. Its shorter than my cowl, which is the same pattern, but she asked for it that way. I hope she likes it!



It was knit from this beautiful and very large skein of Alpaca Yarn with an uneven spin to it. It was $25 for the 1 lb. skein but I could knit 3 cowls out of it! I think I am going to have to knit a fun loose scarf with the rest for myself. Its so soft and the cream color goes with everything.