Wow, what a week – can’t believe it is already Friday! As you may have seen, Atlanta’s been making national news for our amazing powers of traffic jam and a few of us were even a part of it, with only one out of four employees who left the shop at noon on Tuesday actually making it home with their cars. But the roads are clear again, we’ve all been reunited with our vehicles, and everyone here is safe and a bit stir-crazy from our snow days. Which means we’re powering out those orders y’all have been placing! As of this writing, nearly all of the orders placed through today are on the mail truck finally winging their way towards you, and we really appreciate your patience and the kind thoughts our customers have sent our way.

But it wouldn’t be Friday without my rambling pattern ideas, right?

All of this cold means I’m really still on a scarf and cowl kick – anything to stay warm. Knitterella’s Chevron Stripe cowl is super chic and includes an option for a basic two-color cowl or a four-color infinity cowl.

Chevron Stripe is knit in the round to create an extra squooshy reversible fabric, and even better, no weaving in ends!

A lot of Stephen West’s patterns are a little more … fashion forward … than my usual style, but I absolutely love Tungata. Folded over double, this cowl is warm, reversible, and so pretty!

You can knit this with either two or three colors depending on how complex you’d like the design to be, and the reversible back can be a solid color, striped, or really anything you like.

I absolutely love this Walt-Painted Baby Blanket (maybe I’m in a Chevron phase) from Fibre Space (which is a really great yarn shop to visit if you’re ever in Northern VA!).

You can knit this with really as many colors as you’d like and you only need two skeins for the main color and 1 for any contrast colors. The texture is a great feature and I kind of love this color combo!

Gradient is a free pattern from ShibuiKnits that indulges many of my knitting guilty pleasures – an easy, fairly mindless knit, fuzzy super-soft yarn, and a gradient rainbow of colors.

Gradient uses three strands of Silk Cloud held together in four colors to create this circular gradient beauty – periodically you’ll change the color of just one strand at a time to achieve this effect.

And then there is the latest in this series, Nursery Cat! We are big fans of Window Cat at ESK, so I’m sure you’ll be seeing some Nursery Cats around the shop soon.