Heinä

Feels very appropriate to kick off July with a new cowl pattern named after the month. I Finnish, July is called Hay Month and heinä means hay in Finnish.

What: Heinä / Own pattern

How: Circular needle 3.0 mm

From: nurja linen mix, 100 g

One of the best things about working as a knitwear designer is when I get to do collaborations with others. Early this year, two Finnish podcasters from Villapesuohjelma asked me and my friends from nurja yarn shop to take part in their year-long knitting challenge for July. We agreed that a new yarn base and a design for said yarn would be in order and got to work. And that's how this July-inspired cowl begun.

I'm known for the fact that I love to work with warm wool no matter the weather but every once in a while I fall in love with summery yarns as well - which is what happened with nurja's new linen mix yarn base. It's a mix of alpaca, linen and silk, and these light-weight fibers make for a lovely shine and drape - perfect for a summer cowl. My friends from nurja offered me two kits to play with and I surprised both myself and them by forgoing my usual uncolors and choosing this bright neon peach for my sample cowl!

Heinä is a cowl with fun funnel shape. It's wider at the bottom and narrows as it gets to the top. It's a lovely combination of simple stripes and three lace patterns, changing the color for each.

I used up exactly 50 grams of each color so I could easily use the leftovers for another one. Wouldn't it be fun to reverse the colors for a second cowl?

You can find the pattern on Ravelry, PayHip and Lovecrafts. Also, nurja is offering kits with both the yarn and the pattern. And if you're fluent in Finnish, check out the new episode of Villapesuohjelma for mine and nurja's interview and all the details of their July challenge.

Verso

I've been enjoying the spring weather and it has called me to work on some lighter knits for a change. I've never been much of a cowl person but on these sunny days, a shlanket-sized shawl is just too much.

What: Verso / Own pattern

How: Circular needles 3.5 mm

From: Spincycle Yarns Dyed in the wool, 100 g

After mulling over it for a year, I finally decided to get me some Spincycle Yarns Dyed in the Wool yarn from Edinburgh Yarn Fest. It's a gorgeous yarn that's dyed to look like handspun. It's a 2-ply yarn where each ply has been dyed separate creating a beautiful gradient of colors.

I bought two skeins (two different colors) and figured I shoud design a cowl with them. The yarn is sport weight and the two 50 g skeins just wouldn't be enough for a shawl. I never thought I'd need a cowl but I've converted completely. The cowl turned out cute as ever and it's the most handy accessory for this spring weather.

Verso is a cowl that used two different gradient-dyed yarns. It plays on their colors and different textures. The cowl has ribbing, stripes, lace, you name it! It's a fun and super quick knit as it's almost impossible to put it down. You just have to see what comes next and how the colors will behave.

What: Verso / Own pattern

How: Circular needles 3.5 mm

From: Schoppel-Wolle Edition 3.0, 100 g

Handdyed yarns are true works of art and I'm totally priviledged to get to work with them. But it is a fact that they can easily be out of someone's budget. With that in mind, I worked another sample in a much more easily affordable yarn that fits the pattern jus as nicely.

Edition 3.0 has a lower yardage than Dyed in the Wool but if you leave out the seed stitch section in the middle you can actually get by with just two skeins of Edition 3.0 like I did here.

The pattern has an introductory 25 % discount until the end of the week with the code SPRING.

Crooked stripes

More legs for the octupus hunt.

What: Slanted stripes / Andrea Rangell
How: Circular needle 5.0 mm
From: Handspun Pigeonroof Studios BFL/Silk + Triskelion Elmet, 46+ 29 g

For some reason, in the Gift-A-long shawls and other neck things have been separated into two categories. So, in order to tame the octopus I needed knit a shawl and a cowl.

I dove straight into the deep end and fell in love with this huge stranded colorwork thing that some might also call a cowl. After a while I came to my senses and realized that I needed a whole lot quicker project in order to tame the octopus that is the eight categories of the GAL. Luckily, I happened to run into this simple little cowl by the same designer. Though, I will definitely want to make the colorwork thing one day!

This cowl is designed for two yarns: a neutral solid gray and lovely, lively green-blue yarn. The colorful yarn is something I was drooling over at the Spincycle yarns booth at Edinburgh Yarn Fest last spring. It's super pretty. The yarn is made to have colors behave as if it was handspun. It was also quite expensive so I didn't buy it - though I really really wanted to. Luckily I happen to spin myself so I did have the real thing in my stash.

I had a couple of options but in the end I chose this lovely BFL/silk mix from Pigeonroof Studios with the colors running from yeallow to brown and orange. I paired it up with wonderfully woolly Triskelion Elmet in a color that reminds me of wheat fields.

The cowl was every bit as relaxing as I hoped. It's worked in the round with decreases at one end and increases at the other which made the stripes slanted. Also, the width of the stripes kept changing. That's it. I only wish I would've picked smaller needles as this turned out a bit too loose.

Woodland creatures

We were talking about hoarding buttons at the local knitting groups meeting. Hands up, who doesn't have that set of just perfect buttons you never dare to actually use on a project. Yeh, I figured I wouldn't be the only one.

What: Briochevron cowl / Stephen West

How: Circular needle 5.0 mm

From: De Rerum Natura Gilliatt + scraps, 200 + 166 g

We decided to fix the problem and have a button KAL. The idea was to first go through our button stashes and find our favourite buttons, and second, come up with a project for those buttons. I've had these cutest woodlander buttons for years and never knew where to use them.

A while ago I fell in love with a friends Briochevron cowl she knit with colorful scrap yarns and that's what I wanted to do as well.

The little woodlanders demanded to be paired up with woodland colors. I went through my stash for any thicker green scraps and sorted them to go from light to dark green. I paired up the greens with a light colored Gilliat from De Rerum Natura.

Once I had the taste of destroyng scrap yarns, I couldn't stop. I actually knitted the cowl way too long and had to tink quite a bit. A friendly advise from someone with experience: make the buttonholes to that end of the cowl you want to have on top, not the other end. If only I had realized it at the time.

The colors on our hedgerow were so beautiful I had take pics immediately before the leaves dropped. So the buttons are at the wrong end here and I hadn't shortened the cowl yet.

With all its faults I still had to fix, I was already so in love with the cowl I started using it straight away. I warmly recommend this project to anyone with heavier scrap yarns.