BFF, Triple-Flavoured
Last fall, Knitty's Deep Fall Issue featured a pattern by Ysolda Teague and Stephanie Dosen called The BFF Cowl. It is a cowl inspired by "best friend necklaces," where you kept one part and you swapped the other part with your friend so that you could show the world how you two were best friends forever. The pattern was so sweet that it inspired dkzack, Tara and me to create our own three-person version.
It took some thinking to figure this out. How much yarn should we use? Would we create three rings to link together, or "one ring to rule us all?" And that decision was affected by the weight of yarn we chose: too heavy, and we'd be suffocated by our the love of our bffs... too light, and we'd be cursing them as we knitted through loads of tiny stitches...
In the end, we all chose one skein of Berroco Ultra Alpaca and decided we'd split each skein into three, chose our own stitch pattern, knit three segments, and then tradsies to make our cowls. And then, the inevitable happened: the skein sat in my stash for a few months, ideas on the backburner, with all the time in the world to get it done...
Except, I decided I would move away. And that meant I'd be away from my knitting bffs, and that meant I should work on the cowl right away. And that meant the others needed to get working on theirs as well. And gosh darn it, we got our pieces done right on time.
On the last day before I moved, I told dkzack that sewing this project together was the first thing I'd do when I arrived at our new home... after I walked through the door... and ate food... and washed myself... and maybe unpacked a little... THEN I would get on it.
A week passed in our new home before I pulled out the pieces, but I finally sat down on Sunday and sewed the pieces together. And what a beautiful result:
I'm super-impressed with how lovely the colours are together. I have to credit the others for that, as I had no idea what colours would work. And each has a slightly heathered look to them that gives them that much more depth in person.
So now, I can bring my yarn bffs with me wherever I want. I can have Tara on my right:
Or turn it around a bit and put dkzack front and centre:
Or kinda smoosh us all together, which is the best situation, in my opinion.
It took some thinking to figure this out. How much yarn should we use? Would we create three rings to link together, or "one ring to rule us all?" And that decision was affected by the weight of yarn we chose: too heavy, and we'd be suffocated by our the love of our bffs... too light, and we'd be cursing them as we knitted through loads of tiny stitches...
In the end, we all chose one skein of Berroco Ultra Alpaca and decided we'd split each skein into three, chose our own stitch pattern, knit three segments, and then tradsies to make our cowls. And then, the inevitable happened: the skein sat in my stash for a few months, ideas on the backburner, with all the time in the world to get it done...
Except, I decided I would move away. And that meant I'd be away from my knitting bffs, and that meant I should work on the cowl right away. And that meant the others needed to get working on theirs as well. And gosh darn it, we got our pieces done right on time.
On the last day before I moved, I told dkzack that sewing this project together was the first thing I'd do when I arrived at our new home... after I walked through the door... and ate food... and washed myself... and maybe unpacked a little... THEN I would get on it.
A week passed in our new home before I pulled out the pieces, but I finally sat down on Sunday and sewed the pieces together. And what a beautiful result:
You'll notice that it's different from the original pattern. I sewed them as one continuous loop, because it would not work to sew the pieces into individual rings (unless I wanted to make a hugely thick BFF Headband). The blue is Tara's piece:
The purple is dkzack's piece:
And the green is mine:
I'm super-impressed with how lovely the colours are together. I have to credit the others for that, as I had no idea what colours would work. And each has a slightly heathered look to them that gives them that much more depth in person.
So now, I can bring my yarn bffs with me wherever I want. I can have Tara on my right:
Or turn it around a bit and put dkzack front and centre:
Or kinda smoosh us all together, which is the best situation, in my opinion.
I miss my girls, but I'm so grateful that they've been so supportive throughout the difficult decisions I've had to make over the last year. And it's so nice to have them with me in a way, even in spirit.
Thanks for the Triple-Flavoured BFF Cowl, girls. Here's to bffs everywhere!
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