Off the Needles: Aurin's Treasured Cowl

Hello lovelies!

We're at the end of an intense year - I think not only for us here at Making Stories, but for a lot of us in our lives, 2022 has been ... something. Thank you for sticking around, for supporting us, for ordering from us, for spreading the word about our magazine and our yarns. Every single share, lovely email from you, and purchase helps keep the lights on here. THANK YOU. I cannot wait to start 2023 together with you! We'll be taking a short break between Dec 23 and Jan 1, and will be back on Jan 2, with lots of fun things in store already for the first month of that brand-new year! The webshop will stay open over our break, and orders will be shipped out on Jan 2.

One thing I want to do more of in 2023 is documenting my knits here, in this space. We're starting early with this blog post - with my latest FO! (A full recap of my Lueur shawl is coming in the new year)

Meet: Aurin's Treasured Cowl!

A little while ago, I realized that Aurin was still living in his cotton cowls from the fall, and that while they are sweet, they're NOT warm. One lovely conversation with him about the yarn and color he wanted and three evenings later, and his new Treasured Cowl was done!

I kid you not - the kid is the sweetest when it comes to knitting. He will continuously tell me "Mama, I love your knitting." He asks for things to be knitted for him. He gets so excited when he gets to pick colors. He is WEARING HIS KNITS. I'm sliiiightly melting over this, and I'm cherishing it so, so much.

For the Treasured Cowl, I needed a DK-weight yarn with good stitch definition that is also really soft because the cowl would be sitting against bare skin at the neck. Enter: Garthenor Organic's Beacons, a 100% UK-made GOTS-certified organic yarn that's a blend of Polwarth, Romney, and Hebridean. The Polwarth is what makes it incredibly smooth and soft, while the Romney and Hebridean give it strength and depth (through the darker Hebridean fleeces). It's worsted spun, which almost guarantees good stitch definition.

Aurin had asked for one blue and one pink cowl, and I let him pick which one I would knit first - blue it was! I also let him choose which blue - Dragonfly or Cadet - and Dragonfly won.

Evening 1: I cast on size 9 - technically specified as for 4-5 year olds, but as Aurin is quite tall for his age, I'm always going for a slightly larger size when I knit for him.

No swatching because... well, it's a cowl, I wanted it done, and I figured I would see after the collar whether it would seem too big or too small. No regrets.

10 cm of Twisted Ribbing will never become my favorite thing to knit, but in a good DK-weight yarn and with some good TV company (hello Babylon Berlin!), it only took one evening to make the collar.

Evening 2: I started the raglan increases and shaping, and figured I could just knit until I ran out of yarn. According to the pattern, I would need 2 skeins of the Beacons, but I only had 1 at home, so goal for Evening 2 was to finish that first skein.

I worked up until the round portion of the pattern was done, which was astonishingly far I thought! It only took me a couple of hours, and it's a really intuitive knit, so I didn't need to look at the pattern after the first few rounds.

Evening 3: Skein #2 picked up from the yarn cave and wound up with help from a little helper, and off we went. Flat shaping of the bottom completed, and then stitches picked up and the ribbing worked, and that was it!

I did a Tubular Bind-Off, but for the next one I'm going to try a really stretchy one instead. I love the look of the Tubular Bind-Off (especially as it's so similar to the Alternate Cable Cast-On you use which is AMAZING), but it's nowhere near as stretchy as I'd like.

The cowl is supposed to be worn over the shoulders, and while I can stretch it to get there, Aurin can't. We're all about teaching him how to dress himself, so hopefully a stretchier bind-off will help with that! (Styling on the left by me, styling on the right by him.)

All in all, it was a super joyful, really quick knit. A perfect palate cleanser too!

Treasured is available as a single pattern as well as in our Kids Collection. We still have a few colors of Beacons (including Dragonfly and Koi, which is going to be the pink version) in stock. For sizes 1 through 5 of the cowl you technically only need 1 skein; I would recommend ordering two though just in case you - like me - don't want to swatch :D If you're not using the second one, you can always send it back as long as you haven't wound it up! Sizes 6 to 10 require two skeins.