Black Knit  Cowl

Materials: 3 skeins Valley Yarn Sugarloaf (52% Merino Wool, 48% Microfiber) in black from Elann; size 9 circular needles.

Time: One weekend.

Cost: About $10–maybe even less!

Consider the cowl.  Not only are they a relatively trendy winter accessory–a cursory browse on Etsy will reveal as much–but they take less time and yarn to knit than scarves, and you don’t have to worry about the ends coming undone or tangling up in your headphones or bag.  (Not, uh, that I speak from constant experience, or anything.)

So here we go: the world’s easiest, softest cowl, knit in the round in 1×1 rib with a tubular cast-on, over about 130 stitches on size 9 needles. The Sugarloaf yarn was perfect.  I wanted something soft, warm, and fairly resilient, as my skin can be ridiculously sensitive, and it fit the bill — plus, it was cheap.

I really biffed the tubular cast-off, and I was running out of yarn, so I bound off normally at the bottom instead; that’s why, as you can see in the photo, it flares out.  I prefer to think of this as a design feature.

American Apparel-esque Circle Scarf

Materials: 1.5 meters poly/rayon blend jersey from Fabricville.

Time: 20 minutes.

Cost: $4.50.

Oh, American Apparel.  How overpriced you are.  How skeezy your internal politics.  Yet how I sometimes covet your clothing.  Happily, the $33 Unisex Circle Scarf is ridiculously, ridiculously cheap and easy to duplicate.  I hesitate to say any more on the subject, lest I insult your intelligence.  Because it is a rectangular piece of fabric, with a seam.

I really like jersey fabric for scarves.  It’s lightweight and really soft (see: aforementioned skin sensitivity), and has the added advantage of being washable if you spill crap on it, or to meet general standards of hygiene.  And for this project, I found a surprisingly nice poly/rayon blend on sale at the fabric store: it has a smooth finish and a nice drape to it.  (I’ve been contemplating buying a bunch more of it the next time that I go back, though that will result in an oddly matchy wardrobe.)  Fabric choice is really key here; you’ll get a very different result from a slinky fabric, or a thick cotton knit, or a woven (if you can get it over your head).

They’ve changed the dimensions listed on the website since I made my scarf–theirs are a bit larger–but I bought a meter and a half of fabric and trimmed it into a 37″ x 50″ square.  I used the fake overlock stitch on my machine to sew it into a tube (so it’s 37″ tall, and 50″ in circumference).  Sizes should of course vary according to fabric choice, as discussed above, but it’s a perfectly lovely cowl.  I do not, perhaps unsurprisingly, plan on taking them up on the idea of wearing it as a minidress.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 12:51 pm and is filed under diy, projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.