Spinalcat's Crafty Adventures

Today I'm going to go through a bit of my design process for the Merlon Cowl . This design started when I opened up a bag of Rowan Lima at the shop. It's one of those yarns that you can't put down. It is soooo soft and buttery. I bought 2 balls with the vague plan to make some sort of cowl. Something that soft *needs* to be worn around the neck. A huge shortcut in the stitch pattern choosing phase fell into my lap with the arrival of Rowan's Lima Collection book . True to Rowan style, it featured many heavily cabled sweaters. The loveliness of the cabled fabric came as a surprise to me. Lima has an icord-like construction instead of a traditional ply. The yarn is very round, which is very desirable for cables, but I thought the construction would detract from that kind of stitch pattern. As you can see from the designs in the book, that is not the case. From that point, I had a few stitch patterns from a Japanese stitch dictionary that had caught my eye. I ...

The eyelet edging on this cowl made me think of castle towers. A merlon is the solid portion between the slits cut away for the passage of arrows. Rowan Lima is an exquisitely soft alpaca blend. Its i-cord-like construction looks surprisingly wonderful in cables. This cowl is buttery soft, warm despite its eyelet stitch pattern, and has terrific drape. The pattern has instructions for 2 different cowl lengths, and it can also be worn folded over. Ravelry pattern page here . Pattern is $4.50 through my Ravelry pattern store. No Ravelry membership required, payments are processed through Paypal.