Snowy Day and Peru Cowl

 Today is the day I was finally going into the office rather than work from home as JJ came home at 7 am from Malaysia this morning!!! Then THIS happened, the important visitor cancelled the meetings and I decided to work from home as Miss Y was home one day early from her outward bound week. Came home 10 pm last night rather than 5 pm today. All due to the SNOW! There was no snow at 7 am, then there was a light scattering and then and then it came down like a blizzard all afternoon!

 Pristine drive this morning as JJ was at the Unit by 9 am with Miss E for her work experience meeting and I was on the computer working...

 Then by early afternoon it got heavier and heavier:

The kids went outside to play and got soaked, trampling all the snow into the house and I decided to have a break and do some crochet with ''Father Brown'' on i-player: a rather enjoyable new BBC series of a detectivacious Catholic Priest. Oh and the new series of ''Miranda'' must be rubbing off on me as I'm coming up with new words, silly I know but oh ''SUCH FUN''.
So here it is: here's some yarn I bought last week, the KATIA PERU came from THREADBARE yarns : www.threadbareyarns.co.uk which I finally visited when open- I went twice when it was closed without notice- a lovely little haven with a really good choice of yarns and the PERU was good value as it was £5.99 but with 20% off was about £4.79 per 100g, for 100m. The others are Rowan cash soft from House of Fraser: the navy is a 4 ply and the cream a DK.

 With the PERU and a 10 mm hook I started to make the chunky cowl in Simply Crochet magazine: facebook.com/simplycrochetmag  issue 1.

 It's a Carol Meldrum pattern using 3 balls of Rowan BIG wool and a 12 mm hook, but I thought I'd give it a whirl as the photos appealed to me. Works up FABULOUSLY quick but I personally didn;t like the 3 plain trebles at one end and I kept going until almost 100g was crocheted up when I decided I HAD to undo it and start again MY way.... This is most unusual as I just never undo, go back , reverse or amend...but I just knew that it would nag at me and bother me every time I'd wear it. '' just not quite right'' would be buzzing around in my brain.It's those 3 trebles at the far right, see?

 But I love the stitch pattern and the way it's graduated into a cone shape by varying the stitch heights.

 While I undid the work of the afternoon it kept snowing and this is Miss Y and dogs...

Then finally I cooked dinner and worked some more and then reworked the cowl my way:
chain 24 sts and then work pattern over 23 sts instead of 21 with 8 dc, 8 half trebles and 7 trebles in the between the crossed treble groups row. this makes 5 groups of crossed trebles which looks nicer too, being an uneven number.
And I replaced the 3 tch for the treble with a 2 tch as my 3 ch was too tall and was gaping.ONE ball of PERU makes a warm snug fitting cowl, I was going to make it out of 2 balls as I bought 2, BUT I hate having a cold neck and those very fashionable low slung slouchy cowls are decorative but just NOT WARM enough for me so as it was shaped like a funnel with a wider and narrower end I thought I'd see how it looked/ felt/ fitted... No buttons either as I have those planned for the slouchier cream CASHSOFT cowl from interweave...just slipstitched it closed.

 This is with the wide end near my chin and the narrow end on my shoulders.

 At 3.30 pm I walked the dogs, but had to take Pippa back as she first was limping due to ice and then ran so fast home that she pulled me over, flat on my face in the snow! Ouch.

 There was much crochet with Father Brown and a cup of hot chocolate- in my lovely mug from DELFT- afterwards and WW cake bar: these are delicious and I have no idea why they are discontinued?

So this is the cowl the extra warm way: narrow end at the upper end and wider end on shoulders.

 Mmmm so snuggly and soft and warm! I shall be trying it out on the dogwalk tomorrow.

Bye now, happy snow days!
Measurements are : 23 cm high, 50 cm circ at narrow end and 66cm at wider end.