New Cabled Cowl Design

Here’s what I’ve been knitting pretty much exclusively for the last 2 weeks: a new cowl design with that Handmaiden Casbah 5 that I posted about when it arrived. I was so inspired by the cowls on the Fall 2009 Burberry RTW runway show that I just knew I was going to have to make some new cowls this year. These cowls are different from the ones we saw last year in the handknit world, they’re way more dramatic and generally more oversized. This one is inspired by this cowl from the show, but I’m knitting it in more knitterly cables and in much heavier yarn (at least that’s what I assume, I haven’t seen the thing in person).

It’s about 3/4 done right now and by the end will have used all 4 skeins of the Casbah 5 . . . so about the same amount as it takes to make a small to medium sweater. That should give you some idea of the dimension! It’ll be about 34″ around and at least 20″ long by the time it’s done. The weather’s definitely taken a turn towards fall in the last week or so, which is no surprise given that it’s almost October (how the heck did that happen!?!?), so I’m starting to think about fall knitwear. I wore my first sweater last week in fact! This cowl should definitely come in handy this winter . . .

The complicated cable you see is a variation of a cable I found in one of my pattern books. This was my first time knitting a whole project with wrapped cables, until now I’d only just swatched/learned them but never knit anything using them. It took a while to get the hang of it! I’m toying with the idea of doing a quick video how-to on wrapped cables, what do you think of the idea?