The Calm Cowl

This is my first crochet project where I have followed a pattern; the calm cowl inspired by Kate. The yarn is Madeleine Tosh DK in Ink. I love the variegated hand dyed colour of the yarn.

The pattern said to chain 211 and that this should measure about 165cm. Mine was much shorter than this so I decided to add an additional 50 chain. I wanted it to drape and now I can also wrap it around my neck 3 times if I want warm and snug.

This cowl is crocheted in the round – that is you are going in a continuous circle. The pattern said to be careful not to twist your chain after the first round and I fussed around quite a bit and found it quite difficult to tell whether I had this right. I added the first additional two rows as Kate did with hers before starting the first double crochet row. I was quite excited how good it was looking after about five rows and then to my dismay I saw that it was twisted after all! So, like all of my crochet projects so far, I unravelled it and started over. Second time round I found the second row really odd and was sure it wasn’t like the first time I did it and I found the instructions really difficult to follow – something didn’t feel right so I put it down. When I came back to it I realised straight away I had the back of the work facing me and was trying to go in the wrong direction, no wonder it seemed odd! So once I figured this out it was really easy.

I had two skeins of yarn so I simply used one up and then determined this as being half way. The pattern has the double crochet feature rows only at the beginning, but I wanted them on both edges so I finished the second half as a mirror image of the first. I’m really pleased with the result; you can also find it ravelled here.