I’m headed to DC

On Thursday I will be getting up very early in the morning and heading out to TNNA which is located in our nation’s capital this year. It has been a while since I’ve been to DC, but I will be spending 95% of my time in a convention center, so it isn’t like I will get to see the city.

I am pretty excited and nervous about the trip. Well, not the trip itself but the convention. I adore meeting all the wonderful knitters but I am always worried that I am going to say something ridiculous. Actually I am pretty much guaranteed that I am going to say something ridiculous. Hopefully most people will think it is part of my “charm”. And if you want to increase your chances of me saying something ridiculous come later in the day. The more I have been talking the more I am likely to say.

If you have ever wanted to see any of my pieces in person, now’s your chance! I have plans and chains and sticks and tables and all kinds of stuff to set up my booth, which I am sharing with the awesome Andrea Rangel so be sure to stop by if you are there.

On the YouTube front I finally worked out the tech aspect of doing a Skype interview and had a lovely chat with Stephannie Tallent who has a new Craftsy class on designing your own color work fingerless mitts.

I split the interview up into two parts to keep the videos relatively short. First, an interview that is mostly about the Craftsy class ( I say mostly because staying on topic is not my strong suit):

And then we have what I call the “outtakes” which is where we went more in-depth into some Craftsy stuff and then seriously derailed into talking about knitting while binge watching TV.

I had a ton of fun making this video and I hope that y’all enjoy watching it. If you do please let me know in the comments so I can do more. If you have any suggestions on who I could talk to, please let me know!

Finally a little reminder. I now have a monthly e-newsletter that I would love for you to sign up for if you haven’t already. The first Thursday of each month I will be sending out a recap of what happened in the previous month, what’s on my needles, and a sneak peek of things to come. For at least the first few months I will also include a one time use coupon code for 25% off any of my independently published patterns on Ravelry. Click Here to sign up.

Conversations with yarn

My design process is slightly non-standard. I rarely start with a fully formed vision, sketch the design, and set about finding yarn that will work. I tend to start with the yarn. I have a conversation with the yarn. I try to find out what it likes and dislikes. Where its strengths lie and where it might prefer not to go.

Or.

I start with the stitches. My mind asks me “what if” I did something weird and then I swatch to see what will happen. Sometimes I begin with one stitch and end up swatching a length of fabric where subtle changes in the pattern evolves into something completely different (and coincidentally a gigantic swatch). Often this process begins with yarn that I have laying around. So then I have the fun of trying out the newly born stitch with other yarns to see what kind of yarn the stitch likes.

One commonality you might note in this is that the yarn and the stitches seem to be the boss of me. And they kinda are. Sometimes I manage to bully yarn into doing what *I* want, but most of the time it is me learning from them.

The Ross Farm wool

All of this is lead in to some beautiful yarn that I have been having an ongoing Serious Conversation with. It is a unique and amazing yarn that has been taking me to school.  The Ross Farm raises rare heritage breed sheep with care and love and use their wool to create beautiful yarn. Leicester Longwool to be specific. It is such a different beast from the wools that I typically work with that it has been a very steep learning curve.

It is minimally processed, lightly spun, and undyed. Each label has a picture of the sheep from whence the wool came and the color of the yarn is the color of the sheep. And I wanted to do color-work. Yadda, yadda, yadda

A swatch is a Proto Pattern

I think I might have finally found a stitch for this yarn. This is a combination of my two design techniques. The above pattern was the result of an experimental stitch swatch combined with extensive swatching with the yarn to find what it loved. What do y’all think? Is this worth pursuing? If yes – what type of FO would you see for this? I have one skein each of the two colors with ~ 250 yards of Sport weight.

Maybe a small shawlish thing? Cowl? Scarf? If you can visualize this as something I would love to hear about it in the comments!

Carrying Yarn up the Side – Huh?

If you have knit a pattern with two or more colors you have inevitably run into the phrase “carrying the yarn up the side” or “carry the yarn loosely up the side”. When I first stumbled across that instruction I did what any self-taught internet era knitter would do. I googled it. This was many years ago, and I haven’t tried it recently, but back then it turned up surprisingly few results. I ended up talking to other knitters at knit night and eventually was able to figure out what precisely that meant.

Of course now I take it for granted. And it is like many other things in knitting, everyone has their own way of doing it. And like many other things in knitting, as long as you are happy with your results – you do it the way that works for you! But with the publication of The Peephole Stole I have been reminded that not everyone automagically knows how to accomplish this “carrying”.

And you know what? It is darn difficult to describe how to do it using words. Luckily I now have a tool in my teaching arsenal for just such a situation. Yay YouTube!

In the video I show how I carry yarn up the side – focusing on using a slipped stitch selvedge because that is a feature in most of my striped patterns. I also show how I avoid tight edges just in case that is an issue you run into. If you have any questions – please do not hesitate to ask in the comments.

I would like to send out a big thank you to the knitter in the Peephole along that reminded me that this is a technique that can cause some difficulties. I don’t want to call you out by name, but you know who you are. I hope that this is helpful to you. And if any knitter out there has something that they’d like to see – just let me know and I will see if I can figure it out!

 

 

Zagless

Last week I had two patterns come out and I thought I would go ahead and talk about one of them. It was a little bit of a surprise for me because these projects are ones that I worked on last Fall in conjunction with Stitch Sprouts and the dyer Anzula. You see, these two independent fiber companies teamed up to produce a series of booklets to feature Anzula’s yarns (and also Stitch Sprouts designers) Yay!

I had the opportunity to work with two different bases Squishy and Cricket. Both are crazy soft and come in an amazing array of colors. For the fingering weight Squishy I decided to do (surprise) a two color mosaic style shawl.

I know, you are stunned. 😉

As you might have noticed I am a bit enamored of this side to side construction right now. This one is similar to Love Child in its shaping, but with subtle and not so subtle differences. For one, there is no lace at all in this. Truly. A actual solid piece. For me, an event, no? It is knit up on larger-than-average needles for fingering to allow the yarn to shine in its glorious softness and to maintain a lovely drape. But I wanted to keep it solid so that we had a truly functional shawl, one that would actually keep you nice and cozy.

The pattern is an optical illusion and one thing that really surprised me is how much the texture creates an interesting overlay that is almost independent of the color pattern. You can see it most in the zigging portion of the stripe – where the texture of the slipped stitches actually moves in the opposite direction of the color pattern.

You can see the whole side to side.

This oddity is why we chose to keep with colors that were very close in tonal value. If you crank up the contrast on the colors I think the illusion is going to be exaggerated and you are going to get something that truly changes appearance depending on how you look at it. Which could be totally cool, I can’t wait to see what people do. But it would have been a giant PAIN to photograph – so we went more subtle.

Of course, with this kind of project I have to lovingly pack up the sample and send it off to live with another. I miss it and its snuggly aspect. I am afraid that I am going to have to knit one of my own so that I can love it and pet it and hopefully wear it! Of course the question there is what colors I might knit it in for my very own self? I love the colors that the pros picked and would be tempted to do the same. But why do the same thing twice? They carry 98 colors to choose from, you can see a sampling on the Ravelry page here. What colors would you match up?

One way to wear the shawl.

The pattern is available in the ebook and soon through your local yarn store that carries Anzula. It is also available as a singleton. The single pattern has instructions in both written & charted formats. The pamphlet had to think about space issues so it is chart only, which really, when you also get 5 awesome patterns from some very talented designers it really isn’t much of a issue, eh?

All photographs courtesy of Stitch Sprouts.

Completing a House – Sardaukar Cowl

Happy New Year! I hope it is treating you and yours well. Mine started out with a nasty bout of the flu – I have decided to consider it good that I got that out of the way early.

Onward and upward!

For the new year I have decided to revisit an old idea. The impetus behind my designing was pieces inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune. I began with House Atreides and it yielded 5 crescent shaped shawls Atreides, Mapes, Alia, Lady Jessica, and Caladan. From there I moved to House Corrino with Golden Lion Throne and Irulan.

But Corrino has never felt … finished … to me. It always seemed that there was one more lurking in there, but it was elusive. That was until I went to TNNA and met Mira from Baah! Yarns. I was wearing Golden Lion Throne and she really liked the mosaic motif. But she wanted a cowl. A tall cowl. A cowl that would keep her ears warm. And she had beautiful, beautiful yarn for me to work with. Shasta is a 100% merino super-wash in worsted weight. It is wonderful to knit with and the colors are fabulous.

Yarn in hand, it was time to address the most infamous arm of House Corrino. While this cowl was going to be beautiful, it also needed to be functional. Its ability to do its job could not be sacrificed just to look pretty. And so I ended up tinkering with, manipulating, and expanding the motifs of Golden Lion Throne to create Sardaukar.

Sardaukar the cowl

I had always known that Sardaukar was going to be a cowl. The costuming from the SciFi mini-series had the troopers in these giant, bulky, black cowls and when you think of it a cowl is a logical and functional accessory. It is protective and elegant, just like the Sardaukar. But I didn’t want to be too literal with the cowl and I had to wait for the inspiration to hit. And I am glad I waited

Flat size is 11 x 19 1/2

The mosaic pattern has been expanded a great deal from what is in GLT, and the lace has been pared down to its bare essentials. Working the mosaic in the round is much easier than working it flat and the same goes for the lace. You don’t have to think about where the yarn is positioned when you slip stitches – it is always on the inside of the cowl. And the only purling that occurs is in the edge ribbing and when you need to purl a YO that is framing a slipped stitch.

As you can see, your neck will be warm.

Now, I did something with this pattern I don’t normally do. The instructions are only available charted. That is because the pattern is one giant chart (I split it up so that it is on several pages). Due to the nature of the mosaic, there are no repeated rows. That makes this much more of a color-work project than lace. But even with that it is no where near as challenging as GLT. If you have been considering GLT but have been intimidated, this might help you get your feet wet.

A bit of detail.

Now that House Corrino is done, the next logical place to go is Harkonnen. And I am going to go there, when I find the inspiration. I have to admit I am stumped a bit for ideas because they are just so … so … evil. There is a part of me that wants to do something named Feyd and riff on his … umm … bathing costume from the movie. But I just don’t know. I am open to suggestions and would love to hear them (and your thoughts on this new piece) in the comments.

 

 

Love Child – a shawl

Here are words that I never thought would ever come out of my mouth: I love Yak!

Yak fiber that is.

Meeting a new fiber is always an exciting experience, but it doesn’t always end well. Luckily this is a love story. This yarn from Gale’s Art is a blend of Merino, Yak and Silk and it is a treat to knit. The name is more descriptive than fanciful, MYS622 – but it tells you what it is, a 60/20/20 blend of the aforementioned fibers. In a way it is similar to the cashmere blends with comparable blends, but the Yak is decidedly different than the cashmere. It is wonderfully soft, but it has a weight to it that cashmere lacks. The yarn also has a … coolness … to it, in the hand it feels almost like it is slightly damp – but it isn’t. Now that could be the high silk content? I am afraid I am not a fiber expert, but what I do know is that it knits wonderfully and has fantastic drape. The yarn itself feels heavy in the ball but the finished shawl is remarkably light weight (yet warm at the same time). Plus, it comes in absolutely glowing deep colors.

When we started talking about working on a piece together I absolutely knew I had to do color work. Gale was looking to put together a kit for the upcoming Fall fiber festival season – and I was pleased as punch to be a part of the project.

Hello lovely

Presenting Love Child. The name? Well it is a bit silly (but when am I not?) but it comes from my attempting to describe the idea over the phone. I believe what I said was “It is as if In Uffish Thought and Captive got together and had a two color Love Child.”  A few hours later I received a text message cursing politely thanking me for getting the song stuck in her head. And the title stuck as well.

You know me and swoops.

If you have been playing along at home you probably recognize this shape. I have become enamored of it. The side to side construction makes me happy because it allows the knitter to adjust easily to their yardage and desired size of project. It retains the curved neckline of a crescent that allows it to hug the shoulders and wear comfortably, but its hybrid triangular shape makes it deeper down the back and provides more styling options. The slight asymmetry shifts the “point” to one side to eliminate the dreaded “arrow pointing at butt” effect that so many dislike about triangular shawls … all in all I think the shape has a great deal going for it.

This shape just wears in so many ways

For this version I have eliminated the lower edge “trim” that you find on In Uffish Thought and BitterBlue. It streamlines the shawl and takes it into a more casual and functional piece. It is also the result of a whole pile of math to create shaping that is of an every other row style as opposed to the binding off some stitches style. Both have merits and I thought I would play to see what I could come up with. I wonder what would happen if I did both …. hmmmmmmm?

Are you ready for fall?

My end result was a shawl that is remarkably easy to knit. I memorized it without really trying and truly enjoyed the knitting process. It has some easy lace and a very repetitive rhythm, there is one fancy stitch for the leading edge increase – but you will soon get the hang of it.  It is also easily adjustable (as I said, one of the pluses of this shape) both in size and the possibilities for customization. I chose to have the striping pattern produce regularly spaced bands of color – but one could also muck about with the color changes and create one’s own banding pattern that suits one’s fancy! As is typical, I thought about how I could change up the colors as I was knitting it – but relied on discipline to stay the course.

Yet another way to wrap.

The photo shoot went beautifully and I had a very hard time narrowing down the shots.  I also almost fell into a stream. Fatimah said “Fall with the camera in the air.”, because she totally knows what is important! The shawl itself will be traveling to New York Sheep and Wool (Rhinebeck) with Gale and she will be offering the pattern in a kit with her stunning yarn. If you are going please stop by and say hi! I also believe that she will have the kits at Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) – which I will be attending! If you are going give me a holler and maybe we could say hi!

I would love to hear your thoughts on shawl shapes in the comments. Likes, dislikes, suggestions? Please speak up!

 

Edited to answer request in the comments:

I know I say it, everyone blogger says it – but I love comments. Without comments it is kinda like throwing pennies into a wishing well and never finding out if your dream comes true. Unless I receive feedback I don’t know if I am giving y’all the information that you want/need/enjoy. So when I saw the specific request from shoelaceswitcher in the comments I was all like “A schematic?” it had never occurred to me to put that in a blog post. It took a little fiddling to convert the file I have from the pattern into a JPG that I can put on the web – but it wasn’t anything too exciting.

So, here it is! I hope it gives you the info you need.

Schematic of shawl

Cables are Cool

Cables are Cooool <<<click for pattern page on Ravelry

First off, you have to say the title of this hat in the correct way. You have to use your best number 11 (Matt Smith) Dr. Who voice. (link is to video). It is a subtle reference, but hey, I like to amuse myself.

Cables are Cool

Now – you probably know I have a weakness for slipped stitch/mosaic style color work. I keep dreaming up ways to incorporate it into other knitting techniques to try and do something a wee bit novel. And it avoids stranding. I don’t like stranding. I mean I can totally do it if I really want to, and I might yet design a stranded pattern, but for now I am having too much fun with slipped stitches.

This is the smaller version

Which led to this hat. My newest victims are cables. How to create a cable that looks like two different color cables that weave in and out of each other. I think I managed the effect quite well. Now, this isn’t a beginner level pattern. I had to create my own cable nomenclature (which might give you a clue to why these two posts came about) and fiddle about with the charting software a bit. But I think I ended up with something that makes logical sense.

I love it when I catch Fatimah laughing

And then there was the matter of yarn. I wanted to use something that had a wide palate of colors that people could choose from and that was a joy to knit with. Luckily I was able to work with the amazing color minds at Dream in Color and they provided their luscious new revamp of their worsted base Classy. Super soft and easy to work with, I am thinking it will become my go-to for when I want a plied worsted yarn. Nice and floofy and in a bajillion colors, I just couldn’t go wrong.

I like the brim and think I could have gone even bigger.

For shape I wanted to go with a nice slouch, mostly because it allowed me to repeat the cables more – because more cables = good. I decided to end the cables before I really got into the crown decrease because really, who wants to fiddle with the decreases and the cables at the same time? The fun thing with this technique is that it allowed me to have this cool stripey pattern on the top. If you wanted you could switch to knitting in solid after you finish the last cable and have a solid top.

See, laughing

After finishing the first hat I had a ton of yarn left over and I decided to go ahead and knit a smaller version. The Adult/Large is a very loose fitting hat. It stays on but does not bind the head. Because of that people with heads on the smaller end of the spectrum might find it a bit too big. Hence a smaller size. But it is for quite small heads and will therefore also be appropriate for your bigger youths (tweens/teens). While knitting the smaller hat I also tried out a brim variation because – well, why not? Because it is just ribbing you could make it as long as you want to have a big fold-over brim. I went with four inches total for a 2 inch brim when folded.

 

Between the different sizes, brim options and color choices – you can really make this hat your own. I cannot wait to see what people knit up? What do you think your preferences would be?

 

 

au Courant

What do you want to hear about? Do you want to have a detailed description of the pattern proposal process and the wonderful experience that was working with Twist Collective? Or do you want to peer into the dusty corners to try and understand the slightly off mind that would even dream of combining these two techniques? Maybe you want to see my relatively pitiful attempt at a “fashion sketch” that is required for pretty much all proposals?

Or do you just want to see the pretty pictures? Because we can totally do that!

Photo by Linus Ouellet courtesy Twist Collective

I was waiting impatiently to see how the photography for this shawl turned out … and I was not disappointed. I hope you love it too. This pattern involved quite a bit of indulging myself. If you hadn’t noticed, I like to push the boundaries a bit, break a rule here and there. One day I was visiting my best friend (who is a knitter of course) and I started paging through her copy of The Haapsalu Shawl and, just like any knitter, was in awe of the beauty of these intricate stitches.

But can I leave well enough alone? Hah! Never. Where I stray from being on the “normal” side of things is that my first thought was “how can I make this two color?” The review I linked to refers to the book as “The Estonian Barbara Walker” which explains a great deal, considering my obsession with Walker’s Mosaic knitting concepts. Long story short (don’t laugh) I spent a great deal of time figuring out how to make this happen.

Photo by Linus Ouellet courtesy Twist Collective

And this was the result. I will be forever grateful to Twist Collective for being willing to publish such a adventurous pattern. The entire issue is absolutely beautiful and if you haven’t taken a look at it yet, you should. I will be here when you get back.

It is a big piece, my biggest to date. I am not going to lie, it is a lot of knitting. But it was nothing that even resembled a chore because of the unbelievable yarn I had to work with. The incomparable Miss Babs supplied the perfect blend of Merino and Silk in her fingering weight Shiruku in the colors Helen of Troy and Cygnus. In my proposal to Twist I was fairly adamant that they yarn needed to contain silk. This was necessary for a couple of reasons.

The slip stitch color-work technique used in the pattern creates a situation where there is a lot of compaction of the stitches. If you have handled any “traditional” mosaic work it can be quite … dense. Much of my development time has been centered around figuring out ways to thwart this tendency. One solution I have arrived at is knitting at a larger gauge than normal. A second component is the lace itself; adding in holes creates a more bendy fabric. The silk is the final component.

Silk has fine drape and allows the fabric to move and flow just as a shawl should. It also has very little memory so it improves the shawl’s ability to retain its shape once it has been blocked. Now, you might ask “Why not just go 100% silk?” which is a good question. Silk tends to be a very well defined yarn and the stitches stand out individually. Which is not precisely what I wanted. My yarn needed some floofiness, some bloom. It needed to fill in a bit so that the color-work had more of a presence.  So the Merino/Silk blend is perfect! And shucks if I didn’t have to knit with it. The sacrifices I make for y’all. 😉

Photo by Linus Ouellet courtesy Twist Collective

Well, I have babbled on haven’t I? Considering that I started out with questions please let me know in the comments if there are any questions you have about this new shawl. If it is complicated enough, or if there is more than one, I can do a whole additional post. If you have an easy one I will answer in the comments.

I want to wrap things up by sending a special Thank You out to the awesome Raveler CathyG. The knitting of this shawl took place during my jaunt around the MidWest and she was kind enough to allow me to take over an entire room in her house to block this big guy. Crawling around on the floor with someone is an excellent bonding experience and I was pleased to have it with you!

Gyre and Gimble

Have you seen the new issue of Knit Edge magazine from Cooperative Press? If not you should.

I want to let you in on a little secret. When a designer has something that is being published in a magazine (be it electronic or hard copy) they are just as surprised as you are when it hits the public. We have a general idea what season it is going to come out in, but as far as opening up Ravelry and seeing it pop up in the new patterns feed. Just as surprised as you!

A close up, for suspense purposes.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at Ravelry and found I had a new pattern listed under my name. Woo Hooo! So excited! And this is one that I have hinted at and wanted to show off for a good little while. Remember when I said that I might (Ha, might) have more Alice in Wonderland up my sleeve? I totally wanted to say “Just you wait until you see my cool new scarf!”

It is super long, the neck is wrapped twice!

This is Gyre and Gimble. It has been in the works for some time concept wise. I have been wanting to do something that uses the same concepts and techniques as Golden Lion Throne but that in no way even resembled it. As I started playing around with combing slipped stitches/mosaic and lace in different ways I stumbled upon this technique that is kinda, sorta like traveling cables in that you have a line of stitches that move across the surface of your knitting. But instead of raised cables you have lines of color.

See how long? This is loop + pull ends through style.

Then I decided to see how far I could push the illusion and create something that looks like the stitches had been embroidered or woven into a solid ground all tapestry like. It still has the repeated nature of mosaic color-work, but I don’t think that anyone would look at this scarf and go “Hey, nice stripes.” Because that is what you are knitting. Stripes.

Well, stripes and lace with slipped stitches. That is the magic combo. The other magic combo going on here is the yarn. Pixie from Dragonfly Fibers in Another Kind of Green & That Ole’ Chestnut. Kate at Dragonfly is a magician with the dye pots and I think that there are any number of colors that would look awesome in this scarf. For me it was a close thing between doing this green & brown scheme to evoke leaves vs going with charcoal and red/orange to make flames.

Here is the whole thing flat.

Another reason I have been chomping at the bit to show this piece off is how happy I am with how the photographs turned out. I used a new, awesome, model to whom I am totally grateful for getting up too early on a freezing morning (do you see the ice? ICE in Georgia!) and looking so beautiful. For once the weather cooperated fully and things went beautifully if freezing-ly.

Finally, if you pop over to either Knit Edge or Ravelry and plop down your cold, hard … umm … PayPal/Plastic … you not only receive this pattern but an entire magazine. The concept of Knit Edge is that while yes it has patterns (a total of 5) it also has really fascinating articles about knitting and the knitting industry. And the patterns are deliberately a little more complicated or interesting than your standard magazine fare. I also believe that, on the Knit Edge page, they are offering a special for new subscribers.

So, there it is! Click on over to Ravelry and say Hi! to Gyre and Gimble. If you like it, maybe favorite or queue it. Leave a comment if you feel the need. And guess what? This will totally count in the Lace-a-long!

 

Scrappy Split Stitch Cowl

Do you remember the fun knitting that I did back at the end of summer with my Swap Yarn? Those mitts were worked with two strands of yarn held at the same time and they got my creative juices flowing. I played around with some ideas but then (as I tend to do) got distracted by other things. Luckily one of the ideas was good enough that it kept nagging at me.

It kept nagging and then I stumbled across these incredibly cute 25 g balls of British Blue Wool from Erika Knight and something clicked. The idea was formed and I was off. This yarn is spun from Bluefaced Leicester or BFL which is quite possibly my favorite wool ever. It has a soft hand like merino but has a luster to it that makes you think it might have some silk or something. It takes color in a way that is deep and rich and makes me happily satisfied.

I chose 4 colors (buying two balls of one of them) and then got to knitting. Meet the Scrappy Split Stitch Cowl.

The Scrappy Split Stitch Cowl was born.

Because the yarn is DK the finished piece does not look heavy, there is fine detail in the stitch work. But it is worked on size 11 needles with the yarn held double so it knits up as quick as one of those super bulky cowls. Honestly! Once I got everything figured out (and there was some frogging mind you) I sat down one morning, cast on, and was finished by the end of the day.

I had to get out and shoot in the snow.

Don’t get me wrong. Bulky cowls can be awesome but sometimes you don’t want that bulky look. I managed to get some modeled shots and would you believe that I was lucky enough to have a wee bit of a snow. I rushed out with my live-in model and tried to get some fun snow shots. My model is used to living in Florida so she didn’t manage to look particularly pleased with being in the snow – but I think the shots are fun!

It was pretty darn cold, but it warmed up quickly. This is Atlanta after all.

As usual this pattern went through a test knitting process and something unusual happened. For several of the testers as soon as they finished their first cowl they decided they wanted to knit another one! I consider that to be a testament to how fun and fast this pattern works up. And it’s flexibility. You can substitute yarn and use scraps that you have laying around. You don’t need much of each color and you could definitely use more (or less) colors than I have called for.

I would love to see it in a solid and a gradient, or even two contrasting gradients. If you like long cowls you simply cast on more stitches – no need to even figure out a stitch repeat. Want it taller or shorter? Work more or fewer rows! If you are at all worried that the stitch is too complicated don’t be. I have included step by step instructions with photographs. Not because it is difficult to work, but because it is difficult to explain. If I could sit down with each of you and show you how to work the stitch it would take about a minute, tops, for you to get it. But words are more clumsy so I broke everything down to wee bits.

Another view of the cowl. Do you like my new mannequin?

So, what do you think? Do you have some yarn laying around begging to be this cowl? Are your creative juices flowing? I hope so.