Meet Honey Cowl. It’s Antonia Shankland’s incredibly popular cowl. A freebie on Ravelry. OK, you probably already met Honey Cowl if you’ve been hanging around in knitting circles in the last decade or so. It’s another goodie though oldie. In fact, it’s such a goodie I’m featuring it all by itself in this post.
I knit mine in Madelinetosh Tosh Sport in the Dried Rose colorway. I’ve had two skeins in my stash since November 30, 2013. Hmmm. I was saving them for something special. More and more I find I have difficulty deciding what to knit with sportweight yarn. Honey Cowl is designed for DK weight yarn. It dawned on me that the cowl would look great in any weight, so long as you’re not fussy about gauge or the size of the eventual loop. That’s true if you reckon you’ve enough yarn to complete the cowl.
Glass Head thinks this two-round slip stitch pattern ends up as a stunning and cozy cowl. So do I.
This is sportweight yarn, but it feels more like a DK. I knit the largest size (220 stitches) on a US size 7 needle. I ended up with 28 grams of yarn left from the 540 yards that I started with.
I used the Chinese Waitress cast-on, so called because Cap Sease learned it from a Chinese waitress she met in a restaurant. It creates a well-behaved, almost crochet chain look at the start. And at the end the double chain cast-off matches the Chinese Waitress cast-on very nicely.
The edges curl on purpose since the piece starts and ends with a few rows of stockinette.The slightly more decorative edges looks quite nice. I gave the cowl a light blocking to tame the roll and make it a tad more uniform. This one’s for me!
I knit my first Honey Cowl way back in September of 2011. I used Madelinetosh Tosh Merino DK in the Grasshopper colorway. My current plan is to knit Honey Cowl more often than once a decade.
More than 27,000 Ravelers have Honey Cowl project pages. And it’s in nearly 14,000 queues. It’s definitely a knitworthy pattern.
