How to knit: kitty cowl

Over the past few years I’ve really been struggling to get my knit-jo back – the wedding crafting really took the fibre love away from me and I’ve just about completed one or two projects a year ever since. You know that feeling when you read something you wrote a while back and you think you must have been abducted by aliens or had a brain transplant because you don’t recognise the person who wrote this? No? Just me? Well, anyway, sometimes I read my old knitting blog and I have no fucking clue what I was on about. Use it or lose it, as they say.

But I think this might be the year the knit-jo is back. I definitely learnt my lesson about stress knitting and I’m keeping it all chilled and non-outcome attached. In yoga philosophy there is the concept of vairagya – non-attachment. I’m trying to apply this to my crafting (it’s bloody hard, I tell you) and focusing more on enjoying the process rather than worrying too much about the outcome (see what I did there? that’s how you merge yoga and craft in one blog and pretend that the two aren’t weird together).

I did, however, get a request for a knitted good, and I decided to oblige. In fact, more so, I decided it might be a fun creative challenge to design said knitted good myself. Don’t be too impressed. It’s a cowl, probably the easiest creative challenge I could have gone for, but that’s the level of my cognitive abilities these days (yes, this is why I haven’t blogged anything in a few weeks, the brain well is rather dry).

I knew I wanted texture, and as it’s for a boy, cables were probably the best option. But I didn’t want it to be the usual boring cables, so I flicked through my pattern book and found the perfect combo. I was going to make it out of the last skein of my Perth cardigan and call it the Victory cowl (the cables look like Vs). There was a plan in place.

Then I saw this yarn. It’s completely inappropriate for something with texture, as the cables don’t show very well. But it looks like kitty. It looks like kitty. I had to have it. And thus was born the kitty cowl.

If you don’t care about knitting, then I will spare you and tell you, you can stop reading here. Maybe scroll down and look at the photos. Maybe. Because the rest of this post is the pattern for the kitty cowl. Enjoy!

Kitty cowl knitting pattern

The pattern has not been tested. If you spot any errors or if anything is unclear, do let me know 🙂

Instructions

Cast on 38 stitches in your preferred method and join in the round, being careful not to twist
Place marker to indicate start of round
Knit 3 rows of K1P1 rib, or desired length

Cable pattern

The cable pattern is rows 1–8 and is repeated 1.5 times here, but you can adjust to the desired length of the cowl
Row 1: K2, *K3, C6b, repeat from * to end of round
Rows 2–4: K across
Row 5: K2, *C6f, K3, repeat from * to end of round
Rows 6–8: K across
Row 9: K2, *K3, C6b, repeat from * to end of round
Rows 10–12: K across

K3 3 rows of K1P1 rib, or desired length
Cast off using rib cast off