Progress on the 3d cowl

Last night I finally continued work on my 3d cowl. I had knitted the row that connects the live stitches with the ones left by the cast on, but since I had a better idea on how to bind off the stitches for the holsters I unraveled nearly the whole connecting row (with 160 * 2 stitches it was no walk in the park). Then I bound off the stitches in the pattern and continued with the holsters. The knitting feels like it goes unbearably slowly, but I'm actually already on the 11th row of the holsters. The holsters with their reverse stockinette stitch are not quickly knit - I'm wondering if I could substitute the reverse stockinette with garter stitch for easy knitting. But I think that the garter stitch wouldn't curl and form the holster shape (I'm using the world holster because I got the pattern idea from Nicky Epstein's Knitting over the edge holsters stitch pattern) as needed. 

Before that I finally chose to make the holsters with holes in the bottom and at the end (i.e. create separate stitches for the holsters); now I'm, not surprisingly, doubting whether it was a good decision. But I'll knit this version as it is now and see if I want to include other options in the pattern. 

I measured the cowl, the gauge in the swatch and this full-sized version is almost the same, lucky me. I counted that my 72cm edge will take 142 stitches; the width of those stitches in the knitted cowl is around 70cm. Not a significant difference in this kind of a project, I think. 

Last night was also special to me because I got a comment on the swatch for "kohokuviokauluri" at ravelry. "This is beautiful" is a lot to say about a preliminary swatch, I think. I almost feel stressed about the comment; someone is willing to bet on the beauty of my project before the idea is even complete in my head. I have really only just drawn a simple incomplete picture and tested a few ideas with the swatch... now I feel that I really need to produce a beautiful knitted article. Not that that wouldn't have been my goal before. 

After the last post I've also learned the brioche stitch I couldn't understand. Not so after I found the website briochestitch.com. Their explanation was simple, and I realised that knitting brioche stitch is actually very easy. I liked the look and made a few swatches but the abundant explanations and examples at the site intimidated me a bit. It is a wonderfully rich knitting resource! I'm researching the idea of "gathering", I'd like to create something knitted with lovely layers... This is still a very vague idea, one that I'm juggling among all the others. It seems that that is how I work: many ideas and projects going on at once, some progressing every now and then. 

It is somehow weird to do all this knitting-related stuff. Some people around me are actually starting to think that planning knits is what I do. Today I saw a nurse I meet a few times a month and she told me that I get an excited glow when I talk about my knitting projects. I'm thinking that she's trying to flatter me, but maybe I like it...