Cowl – Hopefully Creative

Haberdashery Cowl

Knitting one colour at a time but still ending up with a continuous two-colour project.

This cowl has been my travel project since June 2024. This means that it was almost always in my bag and was mostly worked on while I was on the move. I mainly chose it as the travel project because it wasn’t too complex, but there was still some interest in it. Not endless stockinette but a slip stitch herringbone pattern. This meant that I only knit with one colour at a time while slipping stitches of the other colour to create the pattern’s chevrons.

Blue and white/yellow chevron cowl, edge and outside

I found the pattern because it happened to be in the pattern magazine that I had purchased to make this sweater (which hasn’t happened yet). It’s called the Haberdashery Cowl by Ashley Rao and came from Interweave Knits, Fall 2013. I did not pay attention to gauge and it shows. The original is very loose fitting and uses a button to close tighter, but my version didn’t need that. I think it’s because I chose a slightly thinner yarn too; self dyed alpaca 4-ply sock yarn in ‘white with yellow, orange and blue’ and ‘blue with dark blue spots’.

Haberdashery Cowl herringbone pattern on paper

Haberdashery Cowl, light blue and yellow striped knit cowl in progress

The pattern consists of a written section and a charted section. The charted section is published in white and brown, to correspond with the colours of the example cowl. However, mine was going to be blue and yellow and I kept getting extremely confused by the colours, so I redid the chart in excel in my colours and printed it. I added some tick boxes to the right so that I could remember where I was. I think it saved my sanity.

Blue and white/yellow chevron cowl, edge and inside

This thing is also pretty cool on the inside. The beginning of round is just visible on the left where I made the yarn cross over each other. I did block it because the bottom edge was very tight, it’s loosened some with the blocking. Of course I’ve finished this winter item just in time for Spring, it was over 20 degrees Celsius yesterday. So I don’t know how much wear it will see in the next few months. But I am happy that I managed to finish it and I’m ready for a new travel project!

Cowltopus

Joining a mystery knit along to make an octopus inspired “cowl”.

For the first time ever, I participated in a Mystery Knit-a-long (MKAL) last month. A KAL is a project where you get some part of the instructions and should complete those in a set time period. Mystery just means that you haven’t got a clue what the end result is going to be.

Sometime in September, I saw the announcement for the Cowltopus MKAL by Laura Nelkin, an MKAL that was to take place in October. It was on sale and it seemed like a fun idea, and I really like octopuses, so what could go wrong? Well, I forgot about it until about two days after the first clue came out and I hadn’t done any of the prep work. The prep included finding the right yarn and swatching it. I found the yarn I wanted to use, but it still needed to be dyed.

Glas octopus with yellow, retrieved https://www.oceanactionhub.org/octopus-species/

Glass octopus with orange and brown, retrieved https://octolab.tv/species/glass-octopus/

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn around 225 m/100 grams. There should be a main colour and a contrast colour, and both can be composed of mini skeins or just a single colour skein. There should be contrast between the MC and CC and gradients are encouraged. So I looked on the internet for different kinds of octopuses and settled on the quite elusive Glass Octopus Vitreledonella richardi. To match the inspiration, my MC was one full skein of Ultra DK in light blue. For the contrast, I chose to split a skein of Ultra DK into four section and dye them in a gradient from yellow to chestnut/brown.

Two skeins of yarn, left Contrast yarn from yellow outside to brown inside, right Main yarn in light blue

All skeins of yarn for the cowltopus. From left to right, yellow mini skein, orange mini skein, blue full skein, dark orange mini skein, brown mini skein

Once the yarn had dried, the gauge swatch got going. The swatch indicated that I had to size up my needles a little because I couldn’t get gauge otherwise. The first clue had come out on October 3rd, and was supposed to be done by the time clue 2 would be released a week later. I managed to get my yarn dyed and swatch ready by the 7th. On the 13th, I finished clue 1, to get right back on with clue 2.

Hood with yellow - orange gradient, end of clue 1 — Clue 1

Clue 2 went really smoothly and was actually finished on time, done by the 14th. This wasn’t super challenging yet, so I sailed right through it. The only new things were magic knots and needing to pay attention to the stitches. The third clue was where it got interesting. There were two options, brioche knit or ribbing. So I decided to learn something new and got going on the brioche. It wasn’t as scary as I was worried about. The instructions and video companion were very helpful and it all went according to plan.

Hood with yellow - orange - dark orange gradient, with brioche edge, end of clue 3 — Clue 3

Clue 4 was the last clue and where we were finishing the cowl – that turned out to be a hood. It was more brioche but now with waves in it. Actually quite fun to knit! The pattern is designed in a way that you shouldn’t run out of yarn unless you choose to ignore the instructions – my bad. I was supposed to start the end with 4 grams remaining, but I had 3.6 grams of yarn left. In the end, I had to tie in 15 cm of leftover yarn from the dying process to get the last few stitches finished.

Finished cowltopus with knitted octopus — Clue 4

Finished cowltopus, end of clue 4 — Clue 4

I enjoyed learning new things and not knowing exactly what was going to happen throughout the KAL. I’m not discounting doing one again even though the resulting hood isn’t totally my style. I’m very happy that one of my colours was solid, because the finished hoods from other knitters are overwhelmingly busy. I’ve not found much reason to wear it yet, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Sometimes having a fun process is more important than having a good result.

Apiarist Cowl

Honeycomb cowl from some blue and yellow yarn

Some time ago, I bought some lovely blue fabric to make a new winter coat out of. I’ve even decided on the pattern but I’ve not yet managed to convince myself to actually start the project. Instead, I’ve been working on accessories for that non-existent coat. The plan for the coat is that it will be blue with yellow accents and while I’m not sure if that’s going to work out, I have started with that idea in mind anyway.

Since I knew I needed a scarf and potentially a hat to go with my to-be-coat, I dyed some yarn with blues and yellows. I chose Ultra DK and added a fair amount of bright blue speckles and both soft and bright yellow speckles on 22 September 2023. Somehow the yellow came through a lot better but I do like the specks of blue here and there.

Once it was dry, I had to find a pattern to use. The one I chose was the Apiarist Cowl by Claire Borchardt and I started knitting on November 12. I did make a fair few changes to the pattern since I didn’t like the ribbed edge that the original has. A seed stitch edge was included instead. The hight of the honeycombs is also one stitch less (mainly because I can’t count for shit and messed up the first one and decided to go with it).

This was a quick knit (for me) that was mainly completed on trains over the course of a month and a half. Finished on December 26 and since worn fairly often. It’s just a little bit tighter than the Linen Stitch one that I’ve been wearing a lot this fall and winter. Did I entirely forget that I made another one that would work much better; yes. It’s been living in a box since I had to move all my shawls, scarves and gloves away from the hallway where they had been living due to construction dust.

Coat Cowl

Now that the cold season is over, I finished my neck warmer.

In December, I dyed a skein of yarn (Chester Wool Ultra Aran) in dark blue with orange/brown specks to match my dinosaur coat. The plan was to make a cowl that would go with it, to protect my neck from the cold and wind. There is a lot of wind where I live, so this seemed like a necessity. I did already have a cowl, but it was much wider than this new one I was planning. After searching through Ravelry, I settled on the Whirl Me Away Cowl by Samantha Main.

The instructions indicate to replace the left needle tip with a thinner one, so it’s easier to pick up the stitches. So that’s what I did, the right needle was 6 mm and the left 4.5mm. It actually did help a lot with catching the stitches. I cast on 121 stitches and did the stitch pattern indicated until I felt like it was long enough. This took forever! The stitch pattern is very slow even though you’re theoretically knitting big stitches. Once it reached over my mouth, I started deviating from the pattern and cast on extra stitches on the sides in order to create a sort of flared base. This was pure improvisation, the amount of stitches cast on, the amount of rows between etc, it was all seat of the pantsing.

Once the main knitting was completed, I needed to bind off. I tried at least 4 different methods but they all flared too much and didn’t look good. I didn’t want to do a sewn bind off because they take for ever, and I was at a roller derby game. At some point I decided on the plan, and lost yarn chicken by about 10 stitches. So I took the entire bind off out again, frogged some stitches back and redid the cast off. Project done, you’d think. But no. There were some white spots on the cowl where I didn’t put enough dye on the resists initially. So I dunked the finished project in some water, put new dye on those white spots and steamed the whole thing. It was so much better afterwards. I’ve worn this thing almost every day since it was finished. I’ll definitely call this a success!

Unseasonal Neck Warmer

Knitting a self-dyed gift that is slightly out of season.

Last January, my father was not super content with the weather. It was cold out and that made his neck and/or shoulders act up a little bit. So I decided to knit him a cowl. Contrary to my own popular belief, I didn’t actually start or finish this project in time for the winter weather. It also quickly turned distinctly un-wintery, so the project got put back on the ‘to start’-pile.

Cue the emergency-more-yarn-purchase in June, and I decided that I might as well buy some nice yarn to dye for this cowl thing I’d been planning. I got two skeins of Merino Superwash/Tussah Silk Chunky Weight yarn. Since my dad likes wearing red, I decided that I would dye them red with black. There was no real pattern, just alternating red and black sections. When steamed and dried, it turned out that here were still some white-ish parts too, but it still gives a lovely effect. I then set out to find a pattern. I chose Biker’s Cowl / Dickie by Elaine Phillips. There were only a few changes in that I used fewer rounds in the neck and in the body as I didn’t have enough yarn to do all the pattern suggested.

The knitting only took 6 days. It was pretty much smooth sailing even if I did have to frog the last few rounds in order to get the finishing started before the yarn ran out. I actually manged to finish it right in time for his birthday. However, because I didn’t actually go over to see him that day, it had to wait until last Wednesday to finally be presented to him. We’ll see if it is nice come winter, if we have a cold spell this year that is. I am happy with it though, and to me it felt real soft and smooth.

Linen Stitch

I’ve had my eye on a particular skein of yarn for quite a long while now. It was yellow moving into grey/purple and white every so often. I couldn’t figure out what to make from it, because doing a sweater would make another racoon. However, it was calling to me and calling to me and eventually I gave in. I bought it and sought a pattern that would fit. In the end, I turned to the Chickadee Cowl, a one-skein bulky linen stitch cowl.

Cast on using the drunken German cast on and got to work. It’s a very easy but satisfying stitch and can be worked quite fast. It took me about a week of rows here and there to finish it. I’m not entirely sure how to wear it, but it is quite nice and I really like the colours. I know it’s a little late in the season for something like this, as Spring is definitely here, but sometimes you just have to be anachronistic.

Forgotten Graduation Dress

While writing the beginnings of the next post, I found out that I’d never told you about the Graduation dress I made for this years Summer Graduation (this was June…). I still want to because I really like that dress.

Years ago I was wondering around the interwebs looking for nice patterns when I found the Eva Dress pattern by Your Style Rocks. I thought it was really nice, especially since I like cowls. It also seemed fairly easy to put together, so for last summer’s graduation I decided to make it. It started as about 2 meters of black knit fabric with horizontal wavy stripes in red, yellow, blue and green. I cut out the pieces, but made some modifications.

Shortening the dress before even cutting it out, I’m only 158 cm (5’2”, approx.) and skirts hitting below the knees isn’t too flattering for me. So I took off around 9 cm.
Using only the lining piece from the middle section but reversing it to serve as the actual middle piece. I didn’t really like the gathers and didn’t think it would work in this fabric. I also put it on the crossgrain to create some difference.
I added a hook and eye to the back, where the instructions tell you to sew a pleat.

It went together really easily and hemming actually wasn’t a disaster either, although it is quite a deep hem. Yay! I like the shape, the skirt is the right length, I like the colours, I’ve actually worn it to other events too and I think it’s just cute.

Here you can see the front and the back of the dress. I’m still not entirely sure if placing the middle on the cross grain was a good idea, but I also don’t really care I think. You can also see the pleat in the back.

Some details, the cowl neck, which may be a little wide, but it’s fun to wear. Also, the hook and eye that holds the pleat in place.

Last but not least, this is how deep I needed to hem it. I did serge all the insides, but I think my serger is a little on the fritz so it’s not always very pretty. Next post will be the Convocation dress, the dress I made for this week’s official event.

Deadline Work (2) – Cowls

The first deadline went by, then came the second. The important visit, said visit was the Queen of the Netherlands, the real one. I came so close I could have touched her if I wanted to, which I didn’t because I value my life. Anyways, the brief was to wear something formal but festive. I knew I wanted to wear something I’d made myself. I’d already decided that I was going to be too busy to make something new, so I’d settled on wearing the grey pants.

But, lo and behold, I managed to have a Tuesday off which I’d sort of forgotten about. I thought that that would be enough time to make myself a cowl top. I traced a shirt I already owned with a cowl and frankensteined it with a shirt pattern I’d traced long before, that has formed the basis of several shirts (here and here and here) I still wear. I found some grey stretch stuff with blue that I liked in my stash and sewed up a storm. I finished this thing, from pattern making, to cutting, to sewing, to finishing that same day. That almost never happens. All in all I was very happy with the end result, see before you the front and back.

I personally like the cowl a lot, a close up is on the left here. I was also doubting how long I should cut it. In the end it turned out I could wear it as a dress, see right, if I felt inclined to show more leg above the knee than below. I don’t, but I couldn’t resist seeing what it looked like in picture form. I will not wear this out of the house like this, it is so far out of my comfort zone that the Oort cloud is closer by.

I do like this shirt, is comfortable and I see quite some wear for the future. Next segment is the wedding present.

Tag: Cowl