Diagoniella Cowl

• Craft:                   Knitting
• Suggested yarn: Sublime Yarns Cotton Silk DK  or Rowan Softyak DK
• Yarn weight:        DK/8ply (11wpi)
• Gauge:                22 st x 34 rows = 10cm/4in
• Needle size:        3.25mm / US 3 , 3.75mm / US 5
• Yardage:             240 - 550 m / 262 - 601 yds
• Sizes available:   3 sizes - short cowl, medium cowl, snood

This cowl is designed to suit everyone. The textured pattern is understated but detailed enough to be interesting, and the deep moss ribbing ensures that cold winds are kept firmly away from the neck. It can easily be turned into a deeper cowl/snood by adding more vertical repeats of the pattern; it is written for knitting in the round. It was designed for someone who cannot tolerate wool next to the skin, and the yarn suggestions are both cotton blends that give excellent stitch definition.

The design was developed from my design research into the fossils found at the Burgess Shale fossil site in Canada, a wealth of amazing plants and creatures which lived in the pre-Cambrian seas over 500 million years ago. Diagoniella was a protosponge, tubular in shape but with an intriguing diagonal skeletal structure which just cried out to be turned into knitting!

Ideally, you should be familiar with reading a chart and also have some experience in knitting in the round. The textured stitch pattern is not complicated, just knit and purl.

Instructions are given for three sizes, a short cowl 25 cm (approx. 10”) tall; a medium cowl 40 cm (approx. 15 ½”); and a snood 55 cm (approx. 21 ¾”).

The photo gallery shows the medium cowl (grey Sublime Cotton Silk DK) and the snood (purple Rowan Softyak DK).

For pattern support, please contact me.

This pattern can be knit in any DK weight yarn as long as it gives good stitch definition.  As always, when substituting yarn, be sure to knit a swatch to check that you are able to get the right gauge for the pattern. Suggested yarn substitutes can be found at https://yarnsub.com/