Tag Archives: Undertone cowl

More cowls

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Isn’t this a pretty one? It’s Kim Sequeira’s Earth Weave Cowl, a Ravelry freebie. The pattern calls for one skein of Malabrigo Rios and one skein of Noro Silk Garden. My, my. I had both in my stash. The Rios is the “apple green” colorway and, of course, the Noro is responsible for the color-changing blues and greens. This is a slip stitch cowl, a/k/a mosaic knitting. That means there only one color on each round.

Here’s another look.

Earth Weave Cowl is a fun knit and a great cowl. It has a tendency to flip over to its “wrong” (non-public) side when worn. But that’s not any big deal.

This next cowl, tincanknits Undertone, does the same flip-over. Again, no big deal. If the flip bothers the wearer, they can fold the cowl in half lengthwise. Presto! No flip.

Presto? I believe it’s been decades since I wrote, said or even heard anyone write or say that word. A bit of quick research reveals its origins are traced to the late 1500’s when conjuror patter incorporated the phrase from the Italian where it sort of meant “quickly.” OK. Enough digression.

I knit my Undertone, this time, mostly in oddments of String Theory DK. That’s the orange-red shade in the center section. The gold and the green are MadTosh DK left-overs. It’s a very satisfying knit. I’ve knit Undertone once before. (You’ll need to scroll down beyond a beauty of a wrap to see how my first Undertone worked out.) Here’s another view of my new one.

This next cowl is a rather new Ravelry freebie that I just couldn’t resist knitting. It’s loop knallerbse designed by Petra Peinze. I knit mine in Why Knot Fibers Stardust. My skein of Stardust is a beautiful gray fingering weight, with 5% stellina, 20% nylon, and 75% merino. The yarn is next-to-the-skin soft with no scratchiness from the silver sparkly stellina.

Your’re surprised by the shape, I assume. That’s what drew me to the pattern. How on earth would that shape work out? But it does.


Loop knallerbse is an excellent accessory for a blustery winter day. I’ve already gotten a good deal of wear out of it. Hopefully, by June or so, I’ll be able to pack it away for next winter!

Yowza and one thing leading to another

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I’ve only rarely knit with Miss Babs. It always seemed like a lot of buck for the bang. But this set of 100% merino DK weight Yowza really captured me. And so did Boxes and Towers by Kirsten Kapur.

I am basically speechless, OK wordless, about how much I like this wrap.

I can’t get enough of looking at it and petting it.

I made very few modifications to the pattern. It calls for the knitter to cut the yarn and reattach the next color on each piece of the towers and boxes. Speaking of “yowza,” why would I do that and be left with all those ends to weave in? I didn’t cut the yarn except where new colors were needed in a new section. I carried the unused yarn up the side of the piece. It worked fine, including when I needed to pick up stitches along the side where the yarns twisted. When picking up stitches, I made sure to catch the float between the stitches, not merely the yarn being twisted along the edge. I was also careful to twist the yarn the same way each time, bringing the yarn I was using under the yarn I wasn’t using. I don’t know how necessary that was in this piece but I’m obsessive about such things. And I kept it loose and didn’t tighten up the yarn being carried.

The only other modification I made to the pattern was to increase the width of the edging a bit. I purled one round, knit one round, purled one round, and then worked the Icelandic bind-off–instead of picking up the stitches and immediately binding off. I did a yarn over at each side of the corner stitch on each of the three edge rounds.

Here’s another look at Boxes and Towers.

Yowza was wonderful to work with. No knots. No globby sections. The dye creates some heathering in the colorways, but there were no white blotches of undyed yarn. I’d use it again in a heartbeat. I liked working with it so much that I was determined to knit up every yard of it I could. Boxes and Towers required me to purchase six skeins of 200 yards each. The wrap used up about 800 yards. I needed to put that last 400 yards or so to good use. I had 28 grams left of Oakmoss (the green), Haydrick (the gold), Earthenware (the light burnt orange), and Slot Canyon (the light rosy shade). I had 20 grams left of Polished Stone (the gray), and 32 left of Sealpoint (the beige)–so, a total of 164 grams, about 400 yards.

I am really liking how my leftovers turned out.

Both the hat and the cowl are tincanknits knits from their “Mad Colours” book. The patterns are also downloadable on Ravelry. I just wanted to mention the book because I love to spell colors the wrong way, just like the Canadians and Brits. Just kidding. Live and let spell. The cowl is Undertone and the hat is the triangle version of their Prism hat.

I bet you spotted my little cheat–that spicey orange in the ribbing and alternating rows of the cowl. Yep, that’s not Yowza. It’s another oddment from my stash. It’s String Theory merino DK in the Rose Madder colorway. It really anchored the pieces, I think. It also left me enough Yowza to make an extravagant pompom.

Here’s another angle on the pompom, since knitters know that we knit in an era when you can work up some pretty elaborate hats and the first thing people say is…all together now…”I love the pompom.” Here’s another look at the pompom. It is a pretty good one.

Here’s a closer look at Undertone. It’s a quick, fun knit, with lots of potential for interesting color play.