Even though summer doesn’t technically start until the Summer Solstice later this month, I measure my seasons by crafting milestones.  Summer has arrived when Camp Loopy starts and Tour de Fleece looms on the horizon.

This month I completed my first Camp Loopy project in record time.  The theme this year is dinosaurs and the criteria for the first project were to select a yarn or pattern with some texture that might mock the kind of texture you find on dinosaur skin.  So you could either choose a textured yarn (speckles, stellina, etc.) or you could choose a pattern that would give your fabric texture.

I originally thought that I would knit socks for this project, but given the yardage requirement (400 yds) and my small feet, those would have had to be knee socks! So I started looking for something else with texture.   I settled on a shawl/cowl combination, Appia by Hilary Smith Callis, and used a single skein of Knerd Fingering in the colorway Fired Up!

Overall, I loved this knit.  I knit the cowl per pattern, only modifying by adding some extra pattern repeats at the end to use up all but about 4 grams of the yarn (~440 yards). I think this style of cowl is super wearable and I love the bright, fun color. I would highly recommend Hilary Smith Callis’ patterns, and she has several in this style in both fingering and worsted weight.