Fingering weight cowls

This is Stella Ackroyd’s Seascale. I knit mine in the yarn the pattern calls for: Brooklyn Tweed Peerie. Peerie comes in 45 shades. I chose “Aurora,” which is basically teal. This 100% merino yarn is from Utah and Nevada sheep. And it’s spun and dyed in Maine. Pricey? Yep. But I only needed 1.4 skeins of the 50-gram skeins–295 yards. The yarn is wonderful and I very much like the pattern.

You probably have a version of this “Wearwithall” pattern that gives wrong directions for the seed stitch border. I’ve been in touch with the designer. She initially wrote correct though somewhat idiosyncratic directions for the borders. As the pattern photo clearly shows, and as the pattern stitch is labeled, it’s supposed to be seed stitch. But if you follow the directions you’ll be knitting one-by-one ribbing. It would only be a newbie knitter who’d go awry, but still the error is unfortunate. My pattern is a paper copy, not digital. Hopefully the error will be corrected soon in the digital copies. After the original round of each border section,  you’ll be knitting the purls and purling the knits for the remainder of the border and all will be well. This works:  Round 1, K1, P1, ending on a K1. Round 2, P1, K1, across the round. Repeat rounds 1 and 2 for a total of 10 rounds.

I’m not an expert at lace and it took me a few pattern repeats to be able to confidently read my knitting in the lace section. But a bit of concentration was so worth the effort.

Until fairly recently, I’ve not been much of a fan of fingering weight cowls. For me, cowls are about warmth and I thought DK or worsted would be best. This next cowl, Martina Behm’s Wolkig, is probably what first convinced me to consider revising my view.  Wolkig has more than 2000 Ravelry projects posted since it was released by Knitty in the fall of 2017. Ahem…this is my 6th Wolkig.

And it’s the first one I’ve not gifted!  Mine is knit in Hedgehog Fibers Sock. The colorway is “butter.” I am so pleased with it that I’ve been wearing it around the house this spring, and outside. It’s lightweight enough that I don’t look silly wearing it even though it’s finally (but just barely) not cold anymore.

Here’s a closer look:

Soon after knitting my yellow one, I needed some mindless knitting and decided to cast on for another. OK, whoever wears this is going to be making a bit of statement. But I still like it:

This one is knit in Baah Yarn’s LaJolla in the Blueberry Lemonade colorway.

I’m setting my LaJolla version aside to possibly include as an upcoming charity auction item. Or it may make it’s way into my holiday “pick your knit” gift baskets. Maybe you’ll want to check out some of my earlier versions?

 

The knitting community owes Behm a big “thank you” for this great free pattern. In fact, I may go to Ravelry right now and put the pattern in my queue again so I don’t forget about it.

4 thoughts on “Fingering weight cowls

  1. The cowls & the models look really nice🙂
    Always enjoy a good cowl pattern, thanks.

  2. SMILE!!!!!
    Ha!

    I don’t have the patience yet to knit in fingering weight. That shawl I did for my sister ruined me on fw for a while! I love these cowls though. Very nice!

  3. @Linda…for me, the pint-sized nature of cowls makes the fingering weight a lot easier!

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