Remember the furry yarn I bought recently, the Sirdar Alpine? I was so eager to have a furry cowl that I cast on just a few days after I bought it, but I kept messing it up. Since I was going for a plain, simple cowl that I could double, I just cast on with straight needles and started going. Three skeins sounded like a lot, so the first time I cast on 25 stitches. Once I got mostly through the first skein, I realized it wouldn’t be long enough and I frogged it. Surely 20 would be good, right?

This time I got through about a third of skein two before I decided I wasn’t getting the length I wanted. While I was rewinding it, I found out that this yarn will knot itself if given the opportunity! I had one spot in skein one and two spots in skein two where I finally had to cut the yarn to get rid of the tangle. So if you play with this yarn, and you have frog it, just be very careful! The third time, I went to Ravelry and found a few projects, and cast on 15 as someone else had. What do you know, third time’s the charm!

This is one skein’s worth, and I now have the second skein added. One more skein and I can stitch the ends together and have the softest, furriest cowl ever…just in time for spring.

But here’s something non-knitting related: the girl is a flutist, as some of you may remember, and she got tickets to see James Galway for her birthday. I’m not a flutist but even I know who he is, so I got to go with her. The concert was SO good, just beautiful music. His wife, who’s also a flutist, joined him for the next-to-last piece. Then afterward, they were out in the lobby signing programs! So we got to meet James Galway!

Okay, so, he’s 80 and it was after 10 pm and he seemed really tired, so he was pretty much just signing programs. But his wife was chatty and charming, and he was happy to let me get a photo with them, and it was a really fun evening overall. How lucky I am that both my kids inherited my love of music!