Cable knit cowl

Many years ago, I was very kindly gifted a cone of alpaca wool yarn. It was very thin 2ply in a lovely cream colour. There was a lot of it, but 2ply wasn’t a weight of yarn I’d knit with previously. The tiny needles required and hours of dedication to create something so fine didn’t appeal, so I held it double to create a variety of failed projects - a Kate Davies Carbeth (frumpy), a Ysolda Teague Brick (lumpy with anything underneath), a Northside Knit Co Louise (too small), and a Julie Hoover Design Cline sweater (weird sleeves) - being the notable four.

After knitting and frogging and knitting and frogging this poor yarn, I decided I needed to pick a project that would be its final resting place. Enter the Aquinnah by Kerry Robb. This is a scarf or wrap pattern, with three options for width and length. I knew I wanted to make a cowl, I prefer that style to wear, so I knit the narrowest width option and then continued until the length matched a favourite cowl. I finished it by knitting a couple of rows of garter stitch and used these blank rows to sew the ends together. Is it perhaps too wide for a cowl? Maybe, but at this point I’m not frogging it for a fifth time!

I’m very happy to have finally destashed this yarn and have it in a useful, beautiful form that will hopefully last a long time. A cowl is the kind of wardrobe item that will survive changes in body size and shape. It’s a nice basic item that will go with lots of other clothes in my wardrobe. If I decide in the future cables aren’t for me (unlikely, but possible!) I can think of several of my family and friends who would enjoy a regifted cowl, especially in this beautifully soft yarn.

The pattern is a lovely repeating cable knit design, which wasn’t too complicated once I got my head around it. By the end I was able to do it almost from memory, which always makes for a more relaxing knit. There’s enough visual interest for it to be entertaining, without being so complex you have to wholly focus on knitting. I like to watch TV at the same time! I’m really hoping this is the yarn’s final resting place, it deserves to be loved and worn, after all the iterations that came before it.

This is one of the many things I love about knitting - the ability to remake a finished object that isn’t serving you. Although you can reuse a sewn project, by cutting it up for the fabric, often the pieces of fabric are small and awkwardly shaped, making their options for reuse a bit more restricted. The difference with knitting is the amount of salvageable yarn you can regain from frogging a project. You can often knit a whole new garment, despite losing some of the yarn to the inevitable tangles that come with the unravelling process. I find knitting to be less intimidating for this reason, the potential to redo a mistake or a garment that doesn’t work for you, makes starting something new a lot easier!