Knitting

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Review – Cowlgirls!

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Whether its cowls, gaiters, snoods, bandannas, collars, necklaces or scarves, Cathy Carron’s Cowlgirls brings you the variations that you love.

Knit them back and forth. Knit them in the round (and a chart showing how to go from one to the other), this book revels in accessories to keep your neck warm and snuggly in stripes, laces, braids and cables, stitch patterns.

Forget tired scarves and bulky turtlenecks—funky, chunky, hip and happening cowls are where it’s at! Following up her hit book Hattitude, author and designer Cathy Carron weaves a fashion statement that puts in-the-know women head and shoulders above the rest. Among the more than 40 patterns provided here are a cozy neck wrap featuring a built-in iPod holder, a lacy drawstring hood, and a woven necklace sparkling with Swarovski crystals.

Comments

  3. Just completing “Hidden Treasure”. Looks great only problem is there are errors, this is the 1st cowl I’m making, hope there aren’t errors throughout the book.
    You don’t k2 p2 on rows 2 & 4 and bind off on
    row 3. Things start to go wrong when you get to the buttonhole flap as this is the one complicated row in the whole project.
    Just read it through and do what makes sense to you and not what it says!

Have you read?

A Shawlette with a Ton of Design Options

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette. 

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up). 

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley. 

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design. 

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like. 

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going. 

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry. 

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]