Oops. I finished this cowl last year, took a photo of it, and then never got around to blogging about it, or even finishing off the record-keeping in Ravelry. Hey, world: I finished something else in 2021!
The pattern is the beloved Zuzu’s Petals, which I’ve used before and may very well use again. The yarn is from the late, lamented Twisted Fiber Art. (I suppose every project I make with their yarn from now on will have a bittersweet feel to it—sob!). I’d made a shawlette in the Warlock (purple/gray gradient) colorway in 2018, but it hadn’t quite worked out as I had hoped, so I bought a cake of the oh-so-snuggly Catnip to try again. Having made this pattern with this yarn before, I had lots more confidence that this was going to work out.
This is a smidgen different than my other Zuzu’s Petals cowls. I had slightly more yarn than the pattern called for, and I wanted to use as much of it as possible. After two less-than-satisfactory attempts, I did another pattern repeat—roughly rows 1-8, adjusting for the center increase. I then worked rows 33-38, adjusting for the pattern now being shifted half a unit horizontally. There wasn’t enough yarn to do rows 39-40, so I skipped to rows 41-42 and finished with an Icelandic bind off for elasticity.
My confidence was justified: this cowl definitely worked out well. 😊
I am getting into a groove (rut?) with cowls made from super-bulky yarn that hug my neck and shoulders. I’ve made a few versions of The One-Ball-of-Rasta Version of the Triangle Cowl (indigo!blue-green!pink!), and I may make some more in the future. But in making them, I learned that Malabrigo Rasta and Malabrigo Caracol don’t behave identically when knitted, even though they look a lot alike, and that the knitted Caracol cowl I’d made was limper than I liked. Uh-oh.
I wanted to use Caracol again, but it presented me with a couple of challenges. Avoiding a limp final product was my primary goal. Also, this particular hank was a tonal deep blue, so dark that seed stitch would be a waste of time. I didn’t think garter stitch would work either: the texture would still be lost in the yarn, plus, it would need to be stretched to death to go around my neck which would just make the cowl look strained. Stockinette stitch, of course, was going to curl inconveniently.
Okay, maybe don’t knit the next cowl. How about crochet, my go-to craft when I want a final product that’s more firm than stretchy?
Searching Ravelry, I didn’t see any crocheted cowls that were just right. But the pattern for The One-Ball-of-Rasta Version of the Triangle Cowl was about as straightforward as a project gets: knit a strip, block it, sew the ends together, and sew buttons on it if desired. Surely I could do the same in crochet without a pattern. If there was no point in doing fancy knitted stitches because they’d be lost in the yarn, there wasn’t any point to doing fancy crocheted ones either, so I decided to use single crochet. I tried out a few crochet hooks until I got a working gauge that I figured would hold the Caracol together but wouldn’t be too tight to crochet comfortably. And then, using my knitted cowls as templates, I copied them in single crochet. And lo, the Deep Blue Cowl was created.
Deep Blue Cowl
That was in late 2018. Apparently I was so distracted by how much I liked the cowl that I completely forgot to blog about it. Nor did I do anything organized like take notes on my made-up pattern. So late last year, when I wanted to make another cowl using a hank of Rasta, I had to reinvent it. At least I’d recorded the hook size in my Ravelry notes, plus this time, I had a crocheted cowl to work from. And now I have two:
Natural Crochet Cowl
So here’s that barebones pattern:
Crochet Cowl
Row 1: Ch 15. 1 sc in 2nd ch from hook, 1 sc in each ch to end, turn (14 sc). Row 2: Ch 1, sc in each sc, turn. Repeat Row 2 until you’ve used up most of the yarn, leaving a tail long enough to sl st the end to the side of the other end. Pull the yarn end through the last loop to fasten it, but don’t cut it. Block, stretching the piece as needed. When dry, sl st one end to the side of the other end. Sew on buttons if wanted.
It’s like I’ve been knitting faster than I’ve been writing. It would probably be more accurate to say that I’ve been knitting more often than I’ve been writing. Whichever way you phrase it, what it means is that we’re well into 2019, and there are projects I finished in 2018 that have yet to see the light of blog. So this is a summary post to get them documented before I forget about them writing-wise altogether.
Reyna
I never know what to do with hanks of fingering weight yarn that are less than 400 yards (366 m), and I only had 395 yards (361 m) of this lovely yarn. Ravelry’s pattern browser came to the rescue. I found Reyna, one of those patterns that looks fancier than just plain garter or stockinette stitch, but lets you stop when you run out of yarn instead of frantically trying to wrap things up at the end of a pattern repeat. Cleverly, the garter stitch bands remain the same from one repeat to the next, but the mesh sections double in width. I’m thinking to try Reyna again with a yarn that I have lots and lots of, just to watch the pattern develop.
(Click to enlarge.)
Gradient Spiral Shawl
Another cake of gradient-dyed yarn and me wondering what to do with it. The pattern for the Gradient Spiral Shawl looks like mindless knitting. I figured it was just garter stitch with regular increases and decreases to produce the spiral shape, and so this would be the perfect project to take along to social events.
Nope.
See those little loops on the outside of the curve? That’s I-cord. And sure, I-cord itself isn’t complicated, but this is I-cord that has to be the same number of rows for each loop, or it becomes obvious when you stand back and look at the shawlette as a whole. And it’s I-cord that gets worked by itself on some rows and worked with the rest of the row on other rows, for joining. And meanwhile, on the inner edge, that’s also I-cord. It made for a lovely shawlette, and I might make another one someday, but it most certainly isn’t mindless knitting!
(Did I mention the I-cord bindoff?)
Dawn Cowl
With the two projects above, I already had the yarn, and went off looking for patterns to use them in. This project was planned from the very beginning. I love the Zuzu’s Petals cowl I did a few years ago. I had vague thoughts of making another one, but for that, I needed another ball of Catnip or its equivalent, and I don’t stockpile worsted weight yarn the way I do fingering. But then Twisted Fiber Art came up with this new colorway. Instant love on my part, and then I remembered I was in the market for Catnip anyway…
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Reyna Pattern:Reyna Yarn: Blackberry Ridge Mer-made Fingering Weight Colorway: Wild Rose Needles: 5 (3.75 mm)
Gradient Spiral Shawl Pattern:Gradient Spiral Shawl Yarn: Twisted Fiber Art Muse Evolution Colorway: Zen Needles: 4 (3.5 mm)
Dawn Cowl Pattern:Zuzu’s Petals Yarn: Twisted Fiber Art Catnip Evolution Colorway: Dawn Needles: 7 (4.5 mm)
Why yes, we’re three days into March. Fewer than three weeks until the spring equinox. The days are getting visibly longer. I no longer leave for work in pitch darkness, and I get home before sunset. I totally get that spring is coming.
It’s still blasted cold, and that’s an impressive amount of snow out there.
I have been buying super bulky yarn in much larger quantities than I usually do. I’m certain this is an instinctive reaction to the cold and snow. But even if I hadn’t been primed to insulate myself with as much wool as possible, I’d have acquired this yarn. Malabrigo makes lovely yarn, but many of their colorways are brighter or warmer than I like to wear. So finding a lovely pastel pink was a happy surprise. Between this particular color and the texture of Rasta, it was like knitting with a strand of cotton candy.
As for the pattern, well, this gave me a chance to experiment. For one thing, the pattern calls for buttons. They’re nice, and I’ve liked what they looked like on the other cowls I made, but they’re not necessary. I think this one looks fine without them. Also, the other cowls I’ve made were beautiful and warm, but they fit rather loosely. So this time, I went down a needle size, and this one has a much closer fit: yay! After all, I’ve got to protect myself against the never-ending chill.
As I mentioned a couple of posts back, conference calls and training sessions do wonders for my knitting productivity. Indeed, I finished the Summer Sky shawlette before I finished the training I was attending that week, which meant I needed a new project the next day. The Blushing Cowlette came together quickly that evening. I’m feeling virtuous as all get-out about it, because I spent no money on it. I already had the pattern, from when I made the Three Shades of Gray cowlette a few years ago, and the yarn was left over from the Chromantic Cowl. (And I still have yarn left—now what?) Since this yarn is the same yarn I did Three Shades of Gray in, I didn’t bother with gauge—bad me!—but used the same size needles I had last time. Just as well, because you start this pattern out on a 20″ (50 cm) circular needle, and my local yarn store has stopped carrying them.
It was fun to make the Chromantic Cowl, but I never enjoyed wearing it that much, and I eventually gave it away. I’ve realized that I prefer cowls that hug the neck. The Chromantic Cowl hung loosely if I just put it over my head, but it wasn’t long enough for me to loop twice around my neck, so it mainly just got in my way. Bandana cowls, like this pattern, are narrower at the top than at the bottom, and fit the human body much better. Even in summer (especially in summer in my office!), I’m trying to keep my neck warm.
By the way, let me just point out that I didn’t use either a variegated yarn or a gradient yarn for this project. That’s three shades of solid pink. I really haven’t been feeling much attraction to the solid colors lately. Maybe if I knit something really lacy or with a lot of cables in it or something, but on the small projects I’ve been doing, they mostly look boring. So when I finally do use solid yarn, I do something that looks like a gradient!
When I made Three Shades of Gray, I was surprised that you stop increasing on the bottom section of the cowl. I left notes for myself that if I ever did this pattern again, to think about going up a needle size on the bottom section to compensate. Luckily, I ignored me. 🙂 I realized as I was knitting it that the more complicated lace pattern opens up more. In other words, it doesn’t need increases knitted into it the way the top two sections do. You can see that in the blocking photo, where the bottom section is obviously flaring wider.
I want to make more cowls and cowlettes. I like being able to pull something on over my head and then pretty much ignore it for the rest of the day. Depending on how active I am, the shawlettes need a lot of tweaking throughout the day. Yes, I know: shawl pins. You say that like I’d be organized enough to remember to bring one with me to work.
Well, I’m behind in every one of my challenges this year, but I keep working away at them. And here’s a measure of success: I finished another project for my Diversity of Yarn challenge. Aramingo is the project for sport weight yarn.
The yarn was a surprise. Clara is what the pattern calls for, and I liked the cowl pictured on the pattern, which was worked in a lovely tonal golden yellow. I prefer to wear pinks and purples, though, so I ordered a hank in Velvet. It was a lot more variegated than I was expecting. But I didn’t want to spend the money to mail it back, and I told myself that not everything I own needs to be super-subtle, so I went ahead and made the cowl. I think the variegation does obscure the lace pattern, but the colors are interesting enough in their own right. It is wonderfully soft. I hadn’t been expecting the pattern to be chart-only, but that was fine once I got used to it. I gave up on doing a gauge swatch because the combination of ribbing and lace seemed impossible to measure accurately. Now that I’m done, the cowl is a little limper than I could’ve wished, and I probably could’ve gone down a needle size or two. Maybe I’ll make another one in a tighter gauge. And yeah, a more subtle colorway. I mean, this was enough wild adventure for one pattern.
A bandana cowl laid flat may look a bit odd.
The knitting itself was fun. I obviously need to knit heavier yarn than fingering weight more often because it sped along and I loved seeing it grow so quickly. (I’m currently working on a laceweight project. Words like “sped” and “quickly” do not currently apply.) I like the bandana cowls: they stay around your neck without a fight, and they hug the neck closer than tubular cowls do. As long as the cast on (or chain, if you’re crocheting) can fit over your head, it’ll work. At least with a chain, you can check for fit just as you join it. Since I was knitting this on a 24″ (60 cm) needle, I couldn’t tell until I’d gotten well past the join, and it was a bit tense until I knew it would fit. It’s now waiting for temperatures cold enough to wear it, and since our unseasonably warm fall heat wave (94° F/34 ° C) has finally ended, that may happen relatively soon.
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Aramingo Pattern:Aramingo Yarn: Manos del Uruguay Clara Colorway: Velvet Needles: 6 (4.0 mm)
I knitted another Rasta Triangle Cowl. It’s a versatile pattern, and it seemed like it’d be great for another Malabrigo yarn I wanted to try: Caracol. As it turned out, though, Caracol didn’t behave much like Rasta, even though the yarns are essentially the same weight. But, hey, it’s beautiful to look at! And yes, I’m giving most of the credit for that to the yarn.
One of the reasons I like this pattern is that it doesn’t have a gauge. It simply instructs you to use size 15 (10.0 mm) needles. Generally, I’m fine with that—not having to knit gauge swatches contributes to the near-instant gratification element of this project. The Rasta worked out fine, but Caracol is a thick-and-thin yarn, and the 15s were too big for it. The cowl is lovely to look at, but annoyingly limp. (Lesson learned: whatever I do with my other skein of Caracol—yes, I have another one—I don’t plan to go above size 13 (9.0 mm) needles.) Oh, and the cowl was a pain and a half to block. Not only did it go limp, but touching it to gently pat it out to a rectangle was enough to get damp blue-green lint all over my fingers. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I had to pat it back into a rectangle. The pattern instructs the knitter to stretch the heck out of this piece, but I decided with the first one that I would be happier if it was shorter and hugged my neck more. But the Caracol stretched out merely by becoming wet. I ended up pushing it together and hoping it would shrink as it dried. Which it did. Sort of. Not enough, alas.
Lint and limpness aside, though, it’s a glorious color. I love the stained glass effect created by the black binder thread wrapped around the wool. And unlike the Rasta cowl, where it was a struggle to find good buttons, I found good buttons for this cowl practically the moment I walked into the fabric store.
So, cowl, yes. But I want more this year, knitting- and crochet-wise. Looking over last year’s stats, I was disappointed that my pie chart of yarn weights had only two “slices” in it. So I made up my own Diversity of Yarn Challenge. It’s pretty simple; make something this year in each of the eight standard yarn weights. Caracol is super-bulky (#6 Super Bulky), so I’m off to a good start. I’m currently knitting a DK-weight sweater (#3 Light). I can easily come up with a fingering weight shawlette (#1 Super Fine). I have plans for a chunky weight sweater (#5 Bulky). That leaves jumbo (#7 Jumbo), worsted (#4 Medium), sport (#2 Fine), and lace (#0 Lace). Plus the actual knitting/crocheting of these projects, of course. I have most of these yarns in my stash—okay, I learned there was a Jumbo category as I was writing this post, and I’ll need to get some yarn for it—it’s just a matter of finding patterns for them and making them.
About three years ago, I made a cowl in Malabrigo Rasta. I liked the yarn—soft! pretty! thick!—the knitting was simple and fast, and the cowl is attractive. But it’s basically a cylinder around my neck and it doesn’t quite work for me. I wanted something somewhat more shaped. So there I was, still with Rasta-lust, and not sure how to satisfy it. A two-skein Rasta project seemed like it might be a bit excessive: I’m too short to really carry off one of those ginormous Outlander-style cowls, and besides, wouldn’t I be a bit top-heavy and in danger of tipping over? 😉 But I didn’t know if one skein would let me do anything more than cylinders in various stitch patterns.
Last spring, Suncat and I were doing our annual Not-Yarnover day, which involved visiting yarn shops that are technically local, but not our usual favorites. At one, I saw Malabrigo yarns all dyed in this lovely colorway, and the Rasta called. But what to do with it? Conveniently enough, the store had a skein knitted up in this pattern. It looked promising. Note that it’s narrower at the top than at the bottom, just as the neck is narrower than the shoulders. So it covers the area where the neck joins the shoulders, while minimizing the gap between the cowl and the body—a gap that lets chilly air in. This is good. So I was able to justify buying the yarn. (Okay, I can usually find some reason to justify buying yarn, but I thought this one was particularly good.)
The knitting was easy: there isn’t even a gauge to shoot for (whee!). Finding good buttons was more of a challenge than I expected, but the fabric store down the street has a reputation for great buttons, and they were able to come up with these. And it was really nice getting to knit something besides fingering weight yarn. (Note to self for 2017: knit something in some other weight of yarn!) I love the look of seed stitch, but I usually don’t have the patience for it. However, in super bulky yarn, it was only a couple of hours of knitting, and even I can make it through that.
I like this cowl enough to try it again. By now, I’ve picked up a couple of skeins of Malabrigo’s Caracol, which looks to be interchangeable with Rasta, plus I’ve acquired another skein of Rasta. (So much potential!) Maybe I’ll use seed stitch again, or maybe I’ll try some other simple stitch. The main point is, I can have fun playing with these yarns, finish the project super-quick, and not feel like I’ve wasted my time or money because I’ll enjoy wearing the finished project. Win-win!
More crochet! Yes, I still knit. I’ll get a knitting post or two up here sooner or later.
This is one of those patterns that can be customized to different weights of yarn and made in different sizes. I was in the mood to use up a skein of sock yarn, and it’s not hard to find shawl and cowl and scarf patterns for about 100 g of fingering weight yarn. But I wanted to use that skein of Smooshy I’d tried to use for a Damson and which had proven to be a bit short. A design that would let me stop whenever I ran low on yarn and not at a specific point in a pattern was perfect.
I’d say the pattern was fairly easy to crochet. May Cheang deserves credit not only for the pattern itself, but for presenting it in such an easy-to-understand format. She included a photograph for practically every step. (The things you can do when you’re not limited by printing costs.) This was great, since she uses what is possibly a unique pattern stitch. It’s much easier to follow instructions that say “Insert the hook here, here, and here” when a photo clearly indicates where each “here” is. Many crochet patterns include charts, but I’m not sure even a good chart would have been much help with parts of this stitch.
Okay, Cheang adores the pearl edging, but it was a lot fussier than I wanted to deal with. The cowl may be a bit smaller in circumference than I’d intended just because I was tired of making one little pearl after another. But the finished effect is a nice change from standard chained edgings, and it was great not to have to count zillions of chain stitches and hope I wasn’t off by one or something. Still, if I do this cowl again, I’ll probably use a different edging.
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Alkira Cowl Pattern:Alkira Cowl Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy Color: Cool Fire Hook: G (4.0 mm)
It could be argued that someone with multiple tubs of yarn in her stash doesn’t need more yarn. I try to remind myself of this whenever I go somewhere where yarn is being sold. This reminder worked as well as it always does when I went to Shepherds’ Harvest this year: I came home with two balls of yarn. At least I also came home with a plan for one of them. Annie Modesitt had a stand, and along with the yarn she was selling, there was a crocheted cowl on display. The pattern was free on her blog, I’ve been wanting to do more crochet, the cowl only took one ball of yarn…a sale was made.
Modesitt warns you that the pattern hasn’t been tested. It worked fairly well, although I did better following the chart once I got started than trying to figure out where I was in the written directions. The two weren’t exactly alike when it came to joining the round, but generally I only needed the written directions for a couple of rows of a six-row pattern. But I’m mystified as to how she got the gauge she did for the original cowl. The pattern gauge is 8 sc/1″ (2.4 cm), using a size F (3.75 mm) hook, with the option of using a G (4.0 mm) hook for the first and last rounds to keep them from being too tight. I’m a tight crocheter, so I figured that if anything, I’d go up a size. Instead, the best I could manage was 7 sc/1″ on a size B (2.25 mm) hook, the smallest hook in my set. I refused to drop down to steel hooks to work with fingering yarn! So I resized the cowl for the gauge I was getting, eliminating a couple of pattern repeats. I want to see the display model again and see what 8 sc/1″ looks like! How did she crochet that yarn that tightly on an F hook?
I should have seen one problem ahead of time. This is a gradated yarn, but it’s also symmetrically dyed instead of starting at one color and ending in another. Since the cowl needs to end on a specific round of the pattern stitch in order to look right, I didn’t make it all the way through the yarn. So I have less purple at the top than at the bottom. Not that that’s going to be apparent when I’m wearing it, but I liked the purple and would’ve liked to have seen more of it. I’m happy to report that the yarn texture improved after its first wash. I’m wondering if the yarn started life as a sock blank to be dyed. Whatever its origins, it looked and acted as though it had been knitted and then unraveled, with a limp, unspun look. But the tight gauge kept that from getting out of hand, and then it bounced back after it had soaked in water for a while—at least until I stretched the heck out of it while blocking it to open up the mesh. The yarn, a merino/bamboo/nylon blend, feels nice, although the tight gauge robs it of a bit of its softness. With this pattern stitch, it has a nice drape.
And I’m still in a mood to crochet, so on to another crocheted cowl pattern! I don’t know why I even bother to maintain a queue on Ravelry. When it’s time for a new project, I look over the queue, decide I’m not in the mood for anything on it, and go off to browse patterns until I find something entirely unexpected. Then I put it into the queue at #1. Is that cheating?
Silver Threads 