Wandering Stripes Cowl Pattern

Well, 2020 has been quite a year so far and not gone how we thought it would back in March when I wrote the last blog post.

Obviously, Covid-19 has had an impact on us and one of the main impacts that has happened is that I've struggled to get my weaving mojo going.

This has mainly been down to not getting much spare time to do any craft and when I did my brain was only able to cope with easy knitting as it was easy to pick up and put down again.

Thankfully, the lack of time has been due to us being really busy posting orders as everyone else has obviously found their crafting mojo which has been great fun to see and be part of.

My personal lack of mojo has seen my looms being neglected and me sitting in our shop staring at our yarns and procrastinating what to make next.

Finally, things have quietened down enough for my creative weaving juices to start simmering again and these fantastic pink yarns demanded to be woven.

They are both from our West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK yarns and the colour on the left is Cerise Pink and the stripey colour on the right is Summer Pinks. There isn't a full ball of the Summer Pinks as it had already been used to make a sock.

I then tried to think what type of pattern would work best to show off these colours in the best way.

I decided that a simple check pattern would work well and it would be fun to see how the stripes would sit as the Summer Pinks Yarn has a regular stripe but I knew this would be offset with the warp length.

To make the colours stand out even more I decided a cowl would be great as again it would be fun to see how the stripes would intersect with each other.

So, the Wandering Stripe Cowl Pattern was born and you too can make your own by following the method below. You can also buy a kit that includes the yarn and a printed pattern from our website.

Wandering Cowl Weaving Pattern

Reed: 7.5 or 8dpi Rigid Heddle Reed
Weaving width in Reed: 25cm/10"
Warp Length: 2.3m/7’6"
Total Number of Warp Threads: 80
Yarn: 
West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK in
1x100g skein in Cerise Pink 539 (about 80-90g used)
1x100g skein in Summer Pinks 893 (about 50g used)

Warping Instructions:
Thread your loom in the following colour order with the number being a single warp thread.

Weaving Instructions
For how to weave a cowl follow the instructions on our Hero Cowl Blog Weaving Pattern blog post.

Finishing your cloth:
Once you've finished weaving, wash your cloth in a sink of hot water with wool wash and then remove excess water. Iron your cowl whilst it’s wet and then lay flat to dry.

Finished Size after washing:
21cm/8" wide by 1.9m/6’5” long excluding fringes

Hopefully if you've followed the instructions you should have something that looks like this.

Normally I would have had a better finished photo of me being windswept on the beach. However, this cowl has already found a new home before I could get the final photos done and I hope the new owner likes it as much as I did.

You can also use other colours of the ColourLab DK range to weave this cowl too and I think the following combinations could be fun:
Zesty Orange and Technicolour
Lim Green and Prism Brights
Harbour Blue and Frosty Blues
Silver Grey and Moonlight Grey

I hope you like this pattern and that you have fun playing about with the different colours.

It is a cowl that will help to keep you warm while wandering about whatever the weather.