Learn As You Go
I’m a knitter who always loves learning new skills, and the best way for me to do that is to choose an interesting project that features that technique and learn as I go.
My most recent pattern, the Dinkins Bayou cowl, is a great example of that. It’s got a number of techniques that may be new to some knitters, but each of them is featured in a bite-sized way that offers enough practice to feel confident in the technique without getting overwhelmed by it. And of course I provide links in the pattern to video tutorials for these techniques, because, well, at heart I’m always a knitting teacher, and I want you to feel supported and successful when you take on new things.
The Dinkins Bayou cowl is named for one of my favorite places: a still, quiet, little inlet just off Florida’s Pine Island Sound — a place where egrets and manatees flourish among the mangroves and rushes, where the quiet of an early-morning kayak ride is often interrupted by the splash of mullet jumping, the call of a roseate spoonbill returning to its nest, or the whoosh of a dolphin surfacing to breathe.
The cowl explores the colors of the water and the shapes of the and the flora that thrives along its edges. Its rows of variously-colored motifs remind me of the many colors I see in and near the water on a day spent along the bayou; when worn in the depths of winter, this cowl brings me right back to the light and warmth of the Gulf coast.
The cowl starts and ends with an I-cord edge — one of my favorites for cowls — which gives a beautifully rounded finish that doesn’t flip or curl or misbehave in unwanted ways. The main body of the cowl features a series of colorwork motifs that are created through a combination of several techniques, including elements of inlay (or Roosamine) and a special kind of elongated stitch. I hope you’ll find them both interesting and, with the support of the written and video instructions, easy to do.
These motifs are placed far enough apart from each other that many knitters will want to lock their floats. I provide instructions on that, too. And if you’ve attended one of my Ladderback Jacquard classes recently, this would be the perfect project to whip out that technique for managing your floats.
I was lucky enough to get to work work with Simple DK yarn from The Backcountry Knitter on this project, in Turf for the main color and the Mountain Range Collection mini skein set for the contrast, but you can use any smooth DK-weight yarn of your choice: approximately 210 yards (192 m) of a solid or tonal color for MC and 40 total yds (35 m) of CC in your choice of 1-5 solid, tonal, or variegated colors. That makes this cowl not only a great learning project, but a great stashbuster, too!
Click here to buy the pattern on Ravelry, or here to purchase on Payhip. You can also see all my available patterns on the Patterns page here on my website.
