Icelandic Cowl

Icelandic Cowl started as a beautiful ball of Madeline Tosh- Tosh Sock in the colorway Iceberg.The name of the cowl is just a play on the colorway name.
Again, this cowl showcases my love for the mobius.  It also works from the center out using a 2 row repeat and finishes with a beautiful scalloped edging. The yarn has a subtle monochromatic variegation to it which in my minds eye gives the look of sunlight rippling on ice.
This cowl is sized in Small (40 inch Bust) Medium (46 inch Bust) and Large (53 inch Bust)
Wear it as a shawl, cowl or even twist up to cover your ears.
You can purchase this shawl on Patternfish or Ravelry for $6.00

Twisty Cowl - design notes and a question!

The idea for this cowl had been kicking around in my brain for some time before I actually put hook to yarn. I had designed a knitted cowl with a simple stitch pattern in a funnel shape and it was way more successful than I had anticipated, so I wanted to use the same principals in a crochet design.

I had the perfect yarn - a jumbo hank of Baby Twist by Alpaca with a Twist. Baby Twist is soft enough for next-to-your-neck wearing, and because it is a DK weight, it would look good in a variety of hook sizes/gauges. Because the jumbo skein has over 500 yards, I knew I could make a whole project with just one skein!

So, bottom up, because I wanted to establish the stitch pattern quickly, then achieve the funnel shape by decreasing hook sizes as I stitched.

Choosing a stitch pattern took some time - I wanted it to be easy to stitch but look interesting. And alpaca yarn is VERY warm - so I wanted to have a little but of openwork so that the wearer wouldn't suffocate if she lived in a place wear sub-zero temperatures are not the norm, but of course if it was too open, it wouldn't be warm at all! I settled on this double crochet cross stitch pattern.

While I had originally planned for no decrease stitching at all, I had pretty much gotten to the smallest hook I could use prettily with this stitch, but I still wanted a closer fit at the neck. So I added a couple of rows of decreasing. I think that at this point in the pattern, the stitch is so intuitive that even a beginning crocheter could handle the decreases.

Now for the question - how far down over your shoulders do you want your cowl to go? My model is 5'5" tall and wears and adult small - you can see that the bottom edge of the cowl just covers her shoulders. Yet a friend of mine who is close to my height (5'10" with proportional should width!) said she would like to make it wider at the bottom so it would cover more of her shoulders. What do you think? How wide do you want your cowl to be? I am genuinely curious, as the width question had never occurred to me - I prefer my cowls to sit on top of my shoulders!

Twisty Cowl is available for download at Patternfish.com, and in print versions through your local yarn store, and the Patternworks catalog.

Southern Lights Cowl

I love cowls. Seriously. Being a Florida girl, scarves just aren't practical for us. We only get to wear them for maybe a few weeks out of the year, and even then it's only for the few minutes between vehicles to buildings. But a cowl, especially made in a lightweight yarn, can be worn whenever. And you don't look like you forgot to take off your scarf when you came in a building.

I designed the Southern Lights Cowl at the beginning of this year. The yarn I used, Crystal Palace Yarns Mini Mochi, literally jumped off the shelf at my LYS and demanded to be made into a cowl. Not only that, it demanded to be made into a nifty mobius cowl. Always one to listen to my yarns, I obliged. The result was the Southern Lights Cowl (so named because the colors reminded me of a darker version of the Northern Lights and I live in the South).

This cowl works up quickly (only 15 rows, no turning!) and would make a great gift. In honor of that (and my favorite month of the year), the Fibers By Tracie group on Ravelry is having a Crochet-a-Long for the SLC. You can find all the details here on Ravelry.

The pattern is available as a download on Ravelry for only $4.00. That and 400 yards of fingering weight yarn will make a great gift for someone (or yourself). So won't you join us in the CAL? Cowls are hot right now and you can make one for your very own! :)