Knitting: blue cowl

I just finished my second knitting project, a wool cowl/scarf thing for a friend of mine.

I used circular needles for the first time, and quite like them. Funny story: I accidentally picked it up flipped around about half way through, and worked an entire row in the wrong direction. If I had more patience, I should have probably figured out how to unravel that part and done it again, but I don't. Instead, I just flipped it back the right way when I hit the beginning marker, and there is a  two row tall hole where the rows don't join up that nobody will ever notice. You can tell in the pictures above that the pattern isn't quite right just less than half way up because of it, but I'm working really hard lately on not stressing about making things be perfect, so we're going to say it's still pretty good for my second ever project. And now I will never ever forget that the yarn hangs off of the RIGHT side, hahaha. Oh learning the hard way...

The beginning band of ribbing.

Anyway, now for lots of in progress pictures! (I'm trying to remember to take those with both knitting and sewing, with varying degrees of success.)

A wobbly weird picture of the first quarter or so of body. I got to try out stitch markers and needle point cover things (do these have a name) for the first time.

Oh right, I used the cocoon pattern, and 2.5 skeins of bulky weight Wool of the Andes yarn from knitpicks. Ravelry notes here! I will probably make some wrist warmers from the left over yarn (weather they'll go to the friend as a matched set, or I'll steal them myself is yet to be decided :P), but right now I feel like working on something in a brighter colour. Do you ever pick project order based on the colour of the materials? I find it's much more fun to work with fabric or yarn that is a happy colour, and I usually work more quickly on bright things because I just want an excuse to look at them!

A few lumpy bits, but at least I seem to have naturally decent tension.

Next on the knitting front: learning yarn overs and knit 2 together so I can start on this hat for my sister-in-law.