Moss Stitch Cowl

This project has been ‘stewing’ in my brain for at least a year and I’m totally jazzed that I was able to get it completed so quickly.

Back when I only knew how to crochet, I bought 2 skeins of Blue Sky Bulky (50% Alpaca & 50% Wool) yarn from Nina, one of my local yarn stores.  They had a gorgeous knitted version on display I was inspired by and I bought it thinking I could just crochet it instead of knitting it.

I went home and tried it out, and failed miserably.  The yarn was so thick… the crochet stitches ate up so much yarn and as a result my scarf looked too small and very stiff; nothing like the lovely knit version I saw at Nina.  I frogged the project and re-wound it up in a ball and it’s been sitting in my stash ever since.

Fast forward two years and some months, I now know how to knit and I found myself at Nina once again.  I asked about the knitting pattern they once had and they were able to direct me to the proper needle size that I would need and gave me a pattern for the cowl from forever ago.

These are the needles I had to use to knit up my infinity-cowl:

I included the pen in here for a better size comparison.  These are US size 19 needles.

The ‘pattern’ really wasn’t much of a pattern I soon found.  You just cast on however many stitches you want for the width of the scarf and then moss stitch until you get to your desired length/run out of yarn, whatever comes first.

For the newbie knitters, moss stitch is just Purl 1 Knit 1, all the way across one row.  The second row is the opposite; you knit where there are purls and purl when you come to a knit stitch.  (It’s just the opposite of ribbing.)  It creates a nice bumpy texture, a lovely stitch pattern.

On my cowl I believe I cast on 15 stitches and worked until I ran out of the two skeins of yarn.  My goal was to use up this yarn from my stash since I knew I would never make anything else with such a chunky yarn, so I tried to make it as wide as possible with having enough length to go around my neck at least once.

This meant that I had to frog it (ie undo completely) once; initially I had cast on 19 stitches and I didn’t have enough length on the cowl to be able to fit comfortably around once.  So I ripped it out and cast one once again with fewer stitches with a decent result.

You may have noticed that I’m working on de-stashing both my yarn and my fabric this year.  I truly do have plenty of fabrics and yarns that I can choose from at home before I need to go out to the store.  So here’s to de-stashing and having a wonderful time doing so!  :)

In: Knitting

Tags: Cowl