A knitting project that embraces the color pooling

This week I’m working with FIBRA NATURA Cobblestone which is a soft, 2-ply 100% merino wool yarn. One ply is variegated, featuring a variety of beautiful colours, and the second ply is a solid colour.

Yesterday I experimented with different needle sizes to assess the fabric and see how the variegated colors could pool based on the number of stitches.

Today, I’m tossing the dice and letting the colors play out as they may by knitting a cowl.

The pattern I’m using is one that was devised for my guild knitting group. It’s a drop stitch cowl of which there are several available on Ravelry, however, my cohort (Gloria) and I didn’t like the effect of the others we tried, so we devised our own. We call it the Cloverdale Cowl since that’s where we were having a coffee when we came up with it.

You can make this long cowl with any weight of yarn. The pattern repeat is a multiple of 10sts, plus 6, plus 2 for the slipped stitch edges. You can easily adjust the size by casting on 10 stitches more or less, depending on the weight of yarn you select. The instructions are based on what I used with Cobblestone on a US4 [3.5mm] needle to achieve an approximate finished size of 48” x 7½” wide. I also used a provisional cast-on and grafted the beginning of the cowl to the end which is completely seamless.

materials

yarn

• 1 skein of FIBRA NATURA Cobblestone 2-ply 100% merino wool yarn; 600m (612yds)

needles

• US4 [3.5mm]

abbreviations

K = knit

P = purl

St(s) = stitch(es)

SL = slip stitch purl-wise

Rep = repeat

YO = yarn over (bring yarn forward before knitting the next stitch)

RS = right side of work

WS = wrong side of work

Cowl Instructions

Cast on 38 sts – see Optional Variation.

Rows 1 and 2: SL1, knit.

Row 3 (RS): SL1, k6, *yo, K1, [yo] 2 times, k1, [yo] 3 times, k1, [yo] 2 times, k1, yo, k6; rep from * to last st, k1.

Row 4: SL1, knit, dropping all yos.

Rows 5 and 6: SL1, knit.

Row 7 (RS): SL1, k1, * yo, k1, [yo] 2 times, k1, [yo] 3 times, k1, [yo] 2 times, k1, yo, k6; rep from * to last 6 sts, yo, k1, [yo] 2 times, k1, [yo] 3 times, k1, [yo] 2 times, k1, yo, k2.

Row 8: SL1, knit, dropping all yos.

Rep these 8 rows for Pattern Stitch. Work even until piece measures approximately 48″ [122cm] or desired length from cast-on, end on WS.

Bind off.

finishing

Sew cast-on edge to bound-off edge, being careful not to twist.

Optional Variation

Begin with a provisional cast on and do not bind off stitches at the end.

When the desired length is reached, you can either do a 3-needle bind off by picking up the stitches from the provisional cast on, or graft by using the Kitchener stitch to join the cowl.

And here’s my finished cowl …

I love the way the random pooling occurred throughout the textured pattern. It doesn’t look like blobs of color, rather sporadic bursts of color. It truly embraces the pooling effect of the variegated yarn.

Here’s another example of the same cowl knit with a fingering weight yarn over 48 stitches and a US3 [3.25mm] needle. The yarn used in this cowl was from the Ready to Dye Yarn from UNIVERSAL YARN that I Snow Dyed with Rit All Purpose Dye in my April 2024 posts starting with Dyeing wool yarn with Rit all purpose dyes and Snow dyeing yarn for a random effect – 8 steps to a variegated look.

The pooling effect on this cowl is quite dramatic but works really well with the textured pattern.

My roll of the dice paid off for this project. The textured stitch pattern and pooling of the colors added to the attractiveness of both cowls. I’m looking forward to wearing them in the chilly days ahead.

Tomorrow’s experiment is all about knitting sweaters with variegated yarn. I hope you’ll join me as I show an example of obvious color pooling and how to downplay it with FIBRA NATURA Cobblestone.

This is part 3 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 2: Knitting a swatch with various needle sizes tells a colorful story

Go to part 4: How to avoid unwanted color pooling in your sweater projects