Drape yourself in colour with this pretty cowl, which offers some technical fun, too
Cowls are enjoying a resurgence this season - and with good reason, as Judy Furlong explains: “Anyone who has fought with a scarf dangling its ends where they were not required will fall in love with a cowl – all the cosiness of a scarf with none of the annoyance. “This cowl uses a very old stitch which is a combination of cables and eyelets and is very simple to do. The purl stitches between the cable effectively create a very large rib, allowing the cowl to be draped out over the shoulders or hugged together around the neck, to suit the mood.
There are a few technical challenges here – the edges are in reversible knitting to create hollow tubes, while short-row shaping is used to narrow the neck edge. The cowl is knitted flat and completed by grafting the ends together. “This could be simplified by just working a rib at the edges and the ends could be joined together by a three-needle cast-off or simply sewing together – not the same look, as there would be no shaping, but fine if you don’t fancy the challenge,” says Judy. Judy has chosen to use Rico Design’s self-striping Creative Poems Aran.
