I love to see variations on knitting patterns. It’s fun to see what knitters do with a designer’s ideas, and as a designer sometimes it’s fun to think about different ways that you could do things and change the look or feel of a project.
Tif Neilan played with this idea herself with a set of two bandana cowls called Variations.
These projects are both worked in five colors of sport weight yarn, and they’re worked flat in interrupted stripes of garter stitch in different colors. There is shaping worked in different sections to give it the shape it has, and you work a three-needle bind off to finish the project and join it into a cowl.
The bind off is meant to be visible, but since the rest of the project is garter stitch you can decide to wear the seam side in if you’d rather.
The difference between the two projects is their size, with cowl 1 being a smaller version and cowl 2 more like a shawl.
The first variation measures about 24 inches/60 cm around the neck and is 20.5 inches/51 cm long and the longest point. The second option is around 25 inches/62.5 cm neck circumference and 28.5 inches/71 long when worn. The smaller one uses 400-450 yards (402-411 meters) of yarn, while the larger calls for 655 to 660 (599 to 604 meters).
It could go without saying that this would be a great stash busting project where you could change colors even more often as you run out of yarn. But if you know me you know I’m never going to go without saying it. So grab your leftovers and get to stitching, why don’t you?
Both of the patterns are on Ravelry: Variations Cowl 1 and Variations Cowl 2. Don’t miss the projects tabs to see all the, uh, variations, different people have made!
[Photo: Tif Neilan]
