Inspiration
My Personal Flock of Four
Dear Kay,
I’ve now made two cowls using the yarns in our Flock of Four mini-skein sets from Solitude Wool. It is all just so fascinating, I tell you.
We’ve sent out a bunch of these at this point, so I wanted to do a show and tell before we run out.
The good women of Solitude Wool did a beautiful job of setting us up with four different breeds of sheep fleece, spun four different ways, in 73-meter (80-yard) skeins. Up top, you can see just how much each skein varies from the next.
This makes for excellent fooling around with these yarns. I dove in with Cecelia Campochiaro’s Corrugated Wrap pattern from Field Guide No. 5: Sequences, adapting it to a cowl so I could use as much of each skein as possible. (A download of the Sequences ebook comes with this set of mini skeins.)
My modifications:
• Size US 8 (6 mm) needle.
• Cast on 40 stitches. I did a provisional cast on using a crochet hook so I could kitchener the ends together when I finished.
These stitch patterns are total catnip to me.
There are stockinette panels separating each sequence.
The stitch patterns are reversible. Amazing!
Broken garter stitch, here in the middle, is one of my favorites. You do something like knit 3, purl 3 (or whatever), then on the other side you knit the purls and purl the knits.
The results are stitch patterns that would be a pain to write out. But when you just knit along, it’s just so easy and intuitive.
Sometimes a stitch pattern takes 4 or 8 or even 16 rows to resolve as a repeat. Those are such fun.
Pop quiz: what’s that sequence? OK I’ll tell you: knit 5, purl 5 broken garter.
The minute I finish one bit, I’m scheming up the next. Knit 5, purl 2? Purl 1, knit 6? The fun of seeing what you get is the high-stakes drama that’s really working for me right now.
Speaking of high stakes, I hope everybody is easing into the holiday season.
Gazing upon the wreath on the door, which is just about all the decorating I’m going to do this year! Note please that my pandemic hair has now officially arrived at “ombre.” Last cut? January. When am I going to cut it? When the vaccine arrives in Nashville. How’s your hair these days?
(Kermit’s hair, of course, is perfect.)
Love,
Ann
Kermit is totally copying your pose.
I have the female version of Kermit. Her name is Astrid.
Love the cowl. Ombré here also. Had very short hair for many years, grew out curly and a nice salt and pepper. One trim/shaping in early summer. Now waiting for vaccine.
The cowl and yarn are scrumptious. But I’m sorry. Kermit steals the show in that picture.
I ordered the yarn yesterday. Looking forward to making the cowl. I finally quit coloring my short hair during the pandemic, and, I love the color! It’s a salt and pepper gray. I did have it cut a few times during the last several months. Miss my stylist. Happy Holidays, everyone!
Do you switch yarns when you switch patterns? Use all 4 different yarns in the cowl?
Never mind! Clicked through and saw the explanation!
Where did you find the explanation? I’m not seeing it.
Looks like such a fun project! It turned out lovely!!!
You should donate your hair! You need 9 1/2”…
Thank you so much for this post! I love the yarn, the pattern, and the scarf- but I truly love your hair! Looks exactly like mine! No cut since January, and won’t until the vaccine show up. I’m still laughing about “ombre” and I’m going to steal that term!
@Ann, I love the cowl. My hair is also ombré (and has not been this long since my wedding in 1999). My colors are different it I’m dreaming up new styles and colors for when I do go see the inside of a salon!
My yarn arrived and just needs to be wound. Just a few more fingerless mitts to finish first. I am both excited and a bit apprehensive to embark on this project.
Field Guide No 15?? I’d love to see Jillian Moreno do a post on The Flock of Four!
Holy smokes thanks, Karyn! It’s Field Guide No. 5 not 15! Too much virtual egg nog over here—thanks for your Library of Congress-level knowledge of Field Guides. Fixed! And yes, Jillian would be an excellent reviewer of these yarns.
Totally read my mind. Could not decide on the Flock of Four. Took that close look in today’s taunt, which made it irresistible. “Let there be white”.
Ann! This is glorious. I love the mods, your hair, and Kermit, too.
Love this yarn! I’d been dithering on whether to order but now maybe I will. I let my hair go grey about nine years ago, best thing I ever did. I save about $1000 per year. Kermit is gorgeous. We adopted two black and white litter mates in September, I wish I could post a photo. I go to the salon as they really know their stuff when it comes to cleaning.
Yes, what I’ve saved on hair cuts during the last 9 months goes into the knitting wool fund!
I made it a quarantine thrill for both me and miss 11 years old: she cut about 10″ off my hair. She had So Much Fun, and kept saying “I can’t believe you’re letting me do this.”
It turned out well. I thought I was going to do some more layering and trimming, but it looked so good (and maybe I wanted her to enjoy her work) (any maybe I’m lazy) I left it.
Aww! What a good thing to do for Miss 11yr old. Not to mention brave.
This is one of the sweetest quarantine hair stories I’ve heard. Good for you!
Love the yarn and the cowl. Think I’m gonna try it out, too. Hair — I did the opposite. I wanted mine to finally be gray so I decided to cut out all the dark stuff. What was I thinking? Do you know people who defy reality?? Yep, that was me. By the end I looked like the bride in that show (well, crap, I can’t remember the name but it was a young Jewish girl from Brooklyn who left the group and emigrated to Germany and met some musician students — great show). Great news — it’s been 7 months and now I have salt and pepper hair. More pepper than salt. The pandemic is a great teacher.
My husband has been cutting my (short, layered, already white) hair since March. Yes, really. And doing a good job, considering that he qualified for the job by practicing law for 35 years and never trimming anything but his beard and the bushes.
Kermit looks like the nightclub doorman who has turned you away because you didn’t meet the club’s (semi-imaginary) dress code!
The cowls are beautiful but I love that down here, it’s about pandemic hair. I went through the ombre shades a few years ago when I decided to go gray. If I’d known there was a pandemic ahead, I would have waited. But still, one of the best hair decisions I’ve made. I’ll be curious to see, when this is all over, if one result is more women, not THAT old, with shiny gray hair. Until the pandemic, I was getting massages regularly with the money I was saving from no longer having my hair colored.
Beautiful cowl. My sister recently called and said I needed to cut her hair. I pointed out I was trained as a lawyer, not a hairdresser, and she replied it was me or her husband and when could I come over. We set up outside and I was told to just “trim” it, but every time I cut there was a jagged edge and I swore, whereupon my sister said I was “not inspiring confidence.” I thought I was done at one point, but one side was considerably shorter than the other. Long story short, she ended up with a bob and I drove off vowing never to pick up scissors again. She did like the bob, though.
I am loving these comments! What a hoot it would be to have an MDK Zoom meet-up of WIPs: before pictures of pre-Covid hair held up with a knitted/crocheted WIP!
Got the Flock of Four right off and am saving it for January. Love your cowl, Ann.
Are my eyes deceiving me, or have you not alternated the narrow stripes of stockinette? For the shawl, the alternating is important for the reversibility, and that’s how the pattern is written.
Good eye! I definitely did this differently from the pattern–I wanted the stockinette on the outside of the cowl, so I didn’t do any reverse stockinette sections.
My hair was last cut and colored in March and also won’t be cut again until Nashville has the vaccine. I have embraced the gray, which I had been curious about and really like. Fortunately, zoom and good lighting make the divide not so apparent. I have a question – did the cowl you are modelling take one set of the yarns or two?
My very short hair did not get cut from February to August. When I walked into the salon with chin-length hair, my hairdresser didn’t recognize me.
That’s a stunningly beautiful cowl. You’re getting to me! Question: Can we get the yarn without the field guide? I purchased the Sequences Field Guide when it came out. Or is it the same with or without download?
Kermit…oh my heart.
I’ve been referring to my hair as like the song from Rudolph. Sing it with me, “Silver and gold, silver and gold….” 🙂
Love the pattern changes in this…am now making a lapghan that has pattern changes every 10 rows or so…yes, truly addictive! On the hair front, went gray a few years ago, and don’t miss doing the coloring at all. When my local salon here in Mass. had to shut down for a few months, my husband and I sent a card and a check to the owner for a few months of haircuts she would have given us, had she been able to open. It takes a village…
Someone in a Rav forum I am in called it “grombe” — grey + ombré. Fitting.
Stay well and safe.
p.s. — Enjoyed “seeing” both Ann and Kay at the VKL zoom on Friday!
I’m growing out my hair until I see my sons on the West Coast. The trip was supposed to be last April.
I knit one son a blanket with many different stitches on 49 different panels. It was fun to decide what stitch to use, however I see some new ones to try. I like this scarf and the 4 different wools would be very neat to play with. Enjoy the rest of the year.
I like your hair long. I have done the same thing as well as letting the last of my artificial color get to the very end. One thing about long hair is the PONYTAIL, which I have not used since nursing school circa 1969.
Is it possible to add 2 or 3 stitches to each edge for an Icord effect?
I am also waiting for this to pass. My hair is now just above my waist. I love the flock of 4 but am in the middle of a huge move (Packing, I hope I never have to do it again) so I cannot get them. I hope you have something like them again as I am sure they will sell out before I get all the moving expenses cleared up.
I had my hubby trim an inch off mine and it looks pretty good. My last hair cut was in Feb.
Just received my yarn and anxious to get started! A couple of questions:
1. I’d like to make this a scarf instead of a cowl. Would you let me know how long yours turned out to be? It looks very long in your picture.
2. Did you work 36 rows of the Sequence Patterns and 12 of the Spacer Patterns? I can’t count your rows…
Thanks for the inspiration.
Ann said this in an email:
Whitney!
I used one Flock of Four for my cowl. There’s not going to be enough yarn in one set to get a scarf if you’ve cast on 10 stitches more than the 40 that the cowl calls for.
If you cast on 40, you’ll get a scarf that’s around 55” long, and you’ll use just about all of the yarn. I worked the sequences for 3” each sequence, with 10 rows of stockinette between each sequence.
Hope this helps! And I hope you have fun exploring these yarns.
All best,
Ann