Yarns to Love
The Quilty Cowl
Sometimes things work out, you know?
For instance, our favorite color-shifting yarn, Freia, meets up with a design by Amy Christoffers. It’s the sort of thing that really makes us smile, when a pattern and a yarn are uncommonly suited to each other.
Right up front: we’ve brought in MDK-exclusive Freia yarn bundles for the Ocean Waves Cowl, so we’re eager to make sure you know that we’ve got these.
They’re $52 (and 10% less if you’re an MDK Society member—$46.80) for the pair of hand-dyed yarns to knit this irresistible little puzzle of a project.
The cowl can be made short or long—just order two bundles if you’re making the long version.
Two colorways available: Papyrus + Wildflower.
The thing is, if you showed me these color combinations and told me they would knit up into a beautiful cowl, I would be skeptical. A failure of imagination, maybe—or maybe I just don’t have a feel for how a subtle-shifting hand-dyed yarn behaves in the mosaic environment.
Lucky for us, Amy Christoffers totally has a feel for this.
And if you’ve worked with Freia’s yarn before, you know how mesmerizing it is to watch a color shift imperceptibly right before your eyes from, say, orange to pink to purple. Or dark gray to sunshine yellow. How does Tina Whitmore make her yarn do this? She’ll never tell.
As we ease into this new Field Guide, where Amy Christoffers is showing us her mosaic knitting ideas, this Ocean Waves Cowl is such a star.
Bundles here. The pattern appears in Field Guide No. 29: Mosaic, sold separately, right here.
Oh Ann…why oh why do you do this to me??? I am on a strict yarn diet, and CANNOT order anything else, but these cowls are SO GORGEOUS!!!!! I really want to cast on immediately! Maybe I can find something in my ever-growing stash!
this sure looks a lot like Andrea Mowry’s Montana Mountain Cowl (2020). In the pattern design world, how do designers acknowledge inspiration by others?
Totally agree with you and other similarly inclined commenters. My first thought when I saw this cowl. I know inspiration is fickle, but….
I attended the eponymous 2019 retreat where Andrea debuted her cowl and taught a class on its construction— a highlight of my knitting CV to be sure!!
This pattern & yarn combo are perfect. Freia’s yarns are a dream on the fingers, I am using the fingering for Julia Farwell-Clay’s Picket Fence, and I’m always happy.
This pattern is awfully similar to Andrea Mowry’s Montana Mountain Cowl. Just saying.
I agree that this pattern is very, very similar to Andrea Mowry’s Montana Mountain design. Is that ethical?
I, too, noted the similarity to Andrea Mowry’s design but hers is knit in a tube and grafted. Also, the stitch pattern is from one of Barbara Walker’s dictionaries. You can’t copyright a technique so it is fair use for all designers to use.
I love the distinct shapes that Amy made using the negative space between the mosaic motifs; it really pops in the yellow/green version, which has my name all over it.