Captivating Cathedral Cowl Pattern Released, don’t miss it
The Cathedral Cowl Pattern Released today has a 15% discount with the code Cathedral, but if you’re a newsletter subscriber, you’ll get an exclusive code for 30% off the cowl and the matching hat. For 15% off right now, use code Cathedral
The gothic arch cables give an architectural twist to a simple accessory, available in two widths but with instructions on how to make wider or narrower, the Cathedral cowl is a great unisex garment. Make it in a neutral colour for men and go with your Wow colours for ladies.
The cowl is knitted in the round and worked bottom up, the cables are easy to follow and every other row is just knit the knits, purl the purls, very easy. The yarn I used is available in our store and is machine washable on a wool wash.
Launch offer 15% off the Cathedral Cowl pattern with code Cathedral, offer ends 16th November at midnight GMT.
Newsletter subscribers will get a code for 30% off the hat and the cowl in an email later today with a reminder a couple of days later, so you don’t miss the code, you can sign up here
About this design – I wanted to make a cabled Cowl and was inspired by the gothic arches of cathedrals used in the design of my Cathedral Cables Hat. The upper and lower borders are knitted in a simple rib pattern.
Measurements Size based on 5mm/US8 needles for body of cowl Slimmer Cowl Size 1 Wider Cowl Size 2 Circumference unblocked, it will stretch when worn and during blocking for wool yarns. 22 inch/56cm (33 inch/84cm ) circumference Height of cowl 9 inches / 22.5 cm, 9 inches / 22.5 cm Yardage – 210-340 yds
Written instructions The cowl is worked in the round using either circular needles or double pointed needles (dpns) and worked bottom up. Instructions are charted and written line by line.
Cathedral Cowl Pattern Gallery
Cathedral Cowl, top cowl in light purple yarn, bottom cowl knitted with stone coloured aran yarn
Cathedral Cowl knitted in Stylecraft Special Aran with wool in the Hollyhock colourway
Cathedral Cowl knitted in Stylecraft Special Aran on top, underneath is the Blue Faced Leicester Aran version using the stone colourway
Cathedral Cowl pattern, shows one light purple cowl and one stone coloured cowl arranged on teal washed planks.
The Diamonds and Lace Hat is ready for testing, available in four sizes, Child, Teen/Adult S, Adult M and Adult L to fit most of the family.
Diamonds and Lace Hat Yarn Choices
The Diamonds and lace hat is knitted with DK weight yarn, I used two yarns for the samples so far. For the Teen/Adult S size I knitted this with light grey coloured Austermann Merino Silk worsted. It’s a super soft merino yarn blended with silk and gives amazing stitch definition with all the bounce you’d expect of a merino yarn.
For a more affordable yarn choice, and partly because I fell in love with the colour called Mellow Yellow, I used Stylecraft Bellissima DK yarn.
The smallest size used less than 45g of yarn, approximately 140 yards of yarn. The Teen/Adult Small size used approximately 66g or 165 yards of the Austermann Merino Silk yarn in the light grey. The Adult M should use (with a 10% allowance just in case) 240-280 yards and the Adult L should use around 300-340 yards or so.
Diamonds and Lace Hat ready for testing – Gallery
Diamonds and Lace Hat pattern showing the crown of the Adult sized hats
Diamonds and Lace Hat, child size in Mellow Yellow Stylecraft Bellissima DK
Teen/Adult Small version of the Hat using Austermann Merino Silk in light grey.
What comes next in the Diamonds and Lace pattern family?
Do I knit a shawl or wrap to match the hat and cowl, or should I design some fingerless mittens? Let me know what you think.
What yarns are suitable for testing the Diamonds and Lace Hat?
Enchanting Evergreen Cowl Pattern Released, don’t miss it
Enchanting Evergreen Cowl Pattern Released, don’t miss the launch discount which runs out at midnight on 30th October. You can get 25% off the pattern and also the matching hat with code evergreen
The diamond cable pattern features cables, a texture pattern in the centre of the diamonds and a reverse stocking stitch background to make the cables pop. It matches our Evergreen Hat pattern. It’s a quick knit worked in the round from the bottom up.
A note on sizing: The cable pattern itself is VERY stretchy, as is the ribbing with this yarn. It will easily fit between a 17 inch neck circumference and up to a 23 inches, you can add pattern repeats to make the cowl wider and I have included instructions for that. The smallest size will be a neat fit on my Dad who has a 25 inch head circumference but the 2nd or 3rd sizes worked very well on him.
Tension/Gauge: Lightly Stretched Ribbing: 20sts x 32 rows = 4in/10cm sq Ribbing Unstretched: 32 sts x 32 rows = 4in/10cm sq Body of Cowl using larger needles in cable pattern unstretched: 16sts x 27 rows = 2.25in x 4in/5.5cm x 10cm 20st x 28 rows using 4mm needles and dk yarn in stocking stitch
Measurements Size 1 18-22 inches, 46-59cm Size 2 22-26 inches, 56-66cm Size 3 26-30 inches, 56-76 Body Circumference Unstretched 18 inches/43cm 22.5 inches/57cm 27 inches/68.5cm Rib Circumference Unstretched 17.5 inches/33cm 22 inches/56cm 26.5 inches/67cm Height of cowl 11 inches/28cm or 7 inches/18cm for shorter cowl for all sizes
Test Knitters Wanted – Evergreen Cowl pattern on a teal wash plank background
Evergreen Cowl pattern on a teal wash plank background
Evergreen Cowl Cast on with Stylecraft Highland Heathers in the Gorse colourway, the cowl has intricate diamond pattern cables with textured centres.
Today I’m chatting to a good friend of mine, designer Mary E. Rose. She has a pattern release tomorrow in honour of Ruth Bader Ginsberg aka RBG.
Hi Mary, can you tell us the name of your gorgeous new design?
Hi, Loraine, I would love to tell you. It’s called Dissent to honour Ruth Bader Ginsberg aka the Notorious RBG.
What inspired you to make the Dissent collar?
During the summer of 2020 a friend of mine was participating in an event for GISH, which is an international competition to do “strange” things for good causes.
The participants get a list of various tasks which range from art projects to things like collecting donations of hygiene products and dropping the off at your own local homeless shelter.
One of the fun challenges was to knit or crochet a collar inspired by RGB that contained either a portrait or a message to or about her.
I’ve been working on a lace alphabet for a long time, so when my friend asked if I could knit a collar on short notice, I could quickly come up with a plan. I wasn’t even thinking of making it a pattern until some people commented on my Instagram photos that they would be interested in buying the pattern.
I’m surprise and excited at the interest in the pattern and hope that RBG would love it.
What is it about RBG that makes her so important to women in the US?
The list is long! Some of the things she secured for women in the US were the right to sign a mortgage without a man, the right to have a credit card or a bank without a man, the right to get a job without being disqualified for their gender, and the right to keep or get a job if they were pregnant or had kids.
She also helped put in place legislature that protected the rights of people who aren’t women or don’t identify as women…the LGBTQ+ community along with protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities.
Can you tell us more about the Dissent design itself?
The collar is worked flat, starting with the center panel, which reads Dissent in lace, to top edge is finished with a picot bind off and then stitches are picked up along the bottom of the panel and lace leaves are knit top down to either a crochet chain bind off or a plain lace bind off.
Three buttons are added when it is finished to make it easy to put on and take off. It has both charted and fully written line by line instructions.
What elements did you include in the Dissent Collar and why?
I felt I had to include the word dissent in the pattern as her most famous collar would be worn on days when no oral arguments were allowed and she would use her white lace collar to express her “dissent” to whatever was being discussed or had been decided. The crochet bind off is a nod to her “favorite” collar which is simple, white and very mesh like.
Where and how can we buy the Dissent Collar pattern?
The pattern, to remember RBG is called Dissent and will be available in my pattern stores on both Ravelry and Payhip on Monday, October 5th (and Love Crafts soon afterwards, their site takes a little longer.) so plenty of time for US knitters to make their own to wear while (absentee) voting from home.
I would like to note that as it is a political statement, poll workers will most likely not let in-person voters wear their Dissent Collar to the polls.
From today through Election Day in the US…Tuesday, November 3rd all proceeds from pattern sales will be split between two groups.
Evergreen cowl pattern, coming soon, it’s knitted in the round, with entwined diamond cables and textured centres.
I am a sucker for cables, they’re interesting to knit, give texture, depth and most of all warmth to any knits. So, I cast on for a short loop cowl, worked bottom-up and in the round using circular needles. I’m using a DK yarn from Stylecraft for version 1 as it will then go with my Campside Cardi knitted with the same colour. The colourway is called Gorse and it’s a yellowy green with heathering in teal, yellow, dark green and the occasional bit of black.
Evergreen Cowl Cast on with Stylecraft Highland Heathers in the Gorse colourway, the cowl has intricate diamond pattern cables with textured centres.
Once this one is finished, I’ll be casting on another using some Debbie Bliss Blue Faced Leicester Aran, though I haven’t chosen a colour yet, but stone or burnt orange would be lovely.
The Evergreen cowl will be a shorter loop approximately 23 inches circumference, but with instructions on how to make the cowl loop longer to wrap twice or three times around the neck, or make it taller for cooler climates.
You can sign up to test knit in our Ravelry group and testing will start next Monday and last for about three to four weeks. There will be a dedicated thread in the group for the test, so look for that.
Do you like the diamond cable pattern? Let me know.
Baby Knits and a design journey – what I started with and how my design ended up
It depends on the design, sometimes I doodle with the yarn, swatch and play around and the yarn tells me what it wants to be. That’s easy, it’s intuitive and pretty much always works out.
Other times, I have a vision in mind, in this case a dress with a bib/bodice top and a lace skirt. I started knitting the skirt bottom up and in the round. I wanted to keep the piece as a seamless dress, minimum finishing.
Mary Eleanor Dress Pattern
Baby Knits and a design journey – Version 1
Version 1 was knitted half a dozen times as I perfected the shaping of the bib/bodice to make it easier to knit and reduce the finishing as much as possible. There is a neckband at the front to pick up, but that’s the only time you pick up and knit any stitches.
Baby Knits and a design journey – Yarn Choices
My go to for baby projects would normally be Stylecraft Special DK where I know that the Mum is busy, hasn’t time to hand wash and won’t need to worry about the item being washable. In this case I had a bag of several colours of Patons 100% Cotton DK, no two the same and wanted to design something using a cotton yarn.
The thought being that it could be a 3 season layering piece in cotton, cotton/bamboo or acrylic/cotton blends. In a superwash wool yarn, it would be suitable for Winter worn over a long sleeved top or sweater.
I’m not a yarn snob and I truly believe that the right yarn for the project has to be suited to the recipient, how they need to care for it and fit their lifestyle. I use a lot of blended yarns, acrylics and cottons for baby knits and prefer superwash wool to non washable wool. That’s my choice. For tea cozies, I’d like a roving wool which is easy to felt and will keep my tea warm.
Baby Knits and a design journey – Version 2
Version 2 was after discussion with the Testers they preferred the idea of buttons on the fronts and straps on the back with buttonholes. A quick bit of editing and a change to narrow the neck (more stitches for the straps) and it was perfect.
Test knitting is for me, a vital part of perfecting the design but also in getting the explanations right so that knitters can follow the instructions easily. I break down the sections of the pattern so it’s clear which part you are working on, try and make any shaping as easy as possible, chart them where needed and ensure it’s really obvious what you need to do.
I narrowed the neckline to make a better fit, but kept the wider shoulders which should be an inch or so wider than the child’s shoulders. Partly for layering but also to allow for the differences in kids. I was a skinny child but my brother was a chunky kid. We’re all different and the best advice I can give is to knit the bodice/bib to fit the child and make the skirt longer or shorter to suit their shape. All the measurements are included in the pattern so to some extent you can pick and mix, but allow extra yarn if you are adding length at all.
The pattern is available to buy in our online shop on the website, in our Ravelry Shop or our Payhip Shop. 25% off until 31st August with code babybeautiful
There’s no coded needed in our online shop on this site, the pattern is already discounted to make it easier for you.
If you’d like me to chat more about our design process, yarn choices etc, do let me know and what patterns you’d like me to feature.
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