Took a break from working (I’m feeling kind of stressed after losing two days to being sick, but am trying to be chill about it) to finish off this cowl. It has SO many mistakes in it, but I am going to wear it anyway, in the spirit of embracing imperfection. The biggest mistakes:
• I wasn’t paying attention and made the initial garter section many rows longer than I was supposed to (I think 14 instead of 7?) — at that point, I almost decided to turn the whole thing in to a sweater, but then re-evaluated how much patience I actually had, and decided that would be UNWISE. I also thought about trying to put in a lifeline, cut it, and unravel half the rows, but I was afraid I’d mess it up, so just going forward seemed the better part of valor.
• I am not at all sure I got the main pattern right when I started it
• I apparently SWITCHED to a different pattern halfway through, without noticing — I was confident I had the pattern memorized, and clearly, I didn’t! This is what happens when you put your knitting down for a month — or maybe that’s just me?
• I was running low on yarn, so the ending garter section is only 3 rows instead of 7 (or 14!), so it looks weirdly asymmetrical
And yet — once you wear it as a cowl (single or doubled), no one other than me will likely ever notice or care. And the yarn is still just as gorgeous as it was when I started (Malabrigo Rios), and it makes me happy to look at it. It is going to look GREAT with a brown leather jacket, and I will have to remember to put Kavi in it next autumn and take her to the woods for a photoshoot, because she will look super-adorable.
Although autumn is almost over, and I picked this to be an autumn project, I think I will go ahead and use the second ball of yarn to make a matching hat. I thought about gloves, but they are a pain to get right, lots of counting, etc., unless you go with the fingerless option, and my fingers are cold all the time, so fingerless seems not the smartest choice for me. A hat *should* be relatively easy, esp. if I pick a very simple pattern. The goal is to show off the beautiful yarn, after all, not my erratic needlework.
Anyway, finished something, not for sale, just for me — happy. It’s nice to have some projects that I don’t try to monetize. 
I don’t think I’ll ever be a fast enough knitter / crocheter to do it professionally — the margins are just too small, even if you charge an arm and a leg for hand-knits.
Will link in comments to the pattern this was supposed to be, the Autopilot Cowl. (Which is also meant to be quite a bit longer, but that was a deliberate choice on my part — I knew I would get impatient knitting such a long loop.)
