Morning coffee with alpaca fuzz

Some projects are a test of skill. I'm not a cowl person. I prefer shawls, but when I saw the Morning Coffee Cowl pattern, I knew it was going to be a challenge I wanted to undertake.

Pattern: Morning Coffee Cowl by Jen Hurley

In: Knitscene Winter 2019

Yarn: Juniper Moon Herriot Great

This pattern features cables in brioche stitch. I've worked cables before. I'm comfortable in simple Brioche stitch. This was the perfect next step in improving my knitting skills.

I made it in Juniper Moon Herriot Great which is their bulky sized alpaca yarn. It got fuzz all over my hands, desk, and face while I worked with it. It has calmed down since blocking thankfully. I'm not a fan of that mohair fuzz.

I struggled a bit to understand the pattern. More than once I got confused by the next steps. All of the steps were smooshed together on the page making it hard to follow like a more formatted pattern. I'm working another pattern from the same magazine brand and also getting confused, so I believe this is the editing.

I lost count of my rows more than once. Brioche stitch works the same row twice essentially. One pass on the right side, another on the wrong side and working alternating stitches on each pass. I got lost at the start, but the pattern is a simple repeat. Once I picked it up, it was smooth sailing from there.

I didn't have to look up any additional tutorials beyond what the magazine provided so I would consider this a good pattern to learn from. You would need to be intermediate in skill however. I wouldn't recommend a beginner- even a confident one- to try this out.