Stitch Spring Flowers on This Pretty Cowl

The storytelling that often accompanies recipe blog posts has become a bit of a joke on the Internet, with people who just want the recipe already complaining about the fact that the author tells the whole back story of the dish, their family’s reaction, the history of the herb cilantro, before they share the ingredients.

Of course the reason many people write posts like that is because the algorithms tend to prefer longer posts, and you can get more keywords into a post that has more words in general.

As a blogger I don’t mind the storytelling much, and while this trend isn’t found in knitting patterns as much as it is in recipes, sometimes it’s nice to get the backstory on a meal, or, in this case, a knitting pattern.

I think it’s worth reading the story that comes before the pattern on this one. The Orwell’s Garden cowl by Julie Cameron Gray is lovely by itself — a sock yarn cowl worked in the round, covered with dainty flowers.

But the story behind the cowl gives it a deeper meaning and give us something to think about while we’re knitting. It’s about creating things that last, through the lens of gardening, but knitting is similar in that we make things and we don’t know who might enjoy them in the future, what might happen to them when we’re gone.

And if you’re not into the deep introspection right now, you can just scroll through like you do on those recipe posts.

The cowl uses four colors and the colorwork is presented in a chart. It’s not difficult if you know how to read a chart, but it might be more efficient to do the yellow stitches at the center of each flower in duplicate stitch (or even as a French knot to add some texture) rather than knitting a single stitch of that color in each flower. Grab the free pattern from Taddle Creek.

[Photo: Guy Crawford.]

Fall will be here before we know it, and that means there are holidays coming right behind where we might be entertaining at home. It’s always fun to have a hand knit touch in your home for other people to see, and if you’re going to be in the kitchen all day you might as well have some nice knit dish cloths to use.

I love this little plaid hand towel from Darling Jadore. Use a little bit of leftover cotton yarn from another project for the plaid portion. It looks like the horizontal stripes are worked as you knit and the vertical stripes are done with duplicate stitch, making this a quick and easy project even newer knitters can make.

Combine garter stitch and an easy eyelet pattern worked sideways to make the Annette Dish Towel from Cluck Cluck Boots, which is meant to be reminiscent of flour sack towels. It calls for DK weight yarn and you can work it in one color or two (or even three!).

Add a little more texture with this set of kitchen towels from Whileberry Creative. They’re mostly worked in garter stitch with borders in easy knit/purl patterns, and you can work them in sport or worsted weight yarn.

Two of Wands Shop has another cute allover knit and purl pattern they call the Seersucker Textured Tea Towel. It’s an easy repeating pattern worked in worsted weight yarn, and there’s a chart in the pattern you can use, but don’t have to, if you want to practice knitting from a chart.

The Classic Cloth dish towel from Handmade Home by Connie is another one that can use a little leftover yarn in a contrasting color, or you could color block it our use stripes throughout the pattern. This one uses worsted weight yarn and another easy repeating knit purl stitch pattern.

If you like to hang your towel on the oven handle or elsewhere but it’s always falling off, try the Stay Put kitchen towel from Fancy Step Knits. This project is worked in garter stitch and includes a hole partway through so you can pull the towel through itself over a rod or handle. Stripes are optional but a nice addition.

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