Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Porcellana Cowl

I saw this cute little cowl pattern on KnitPicks a while ago, and thought it looked like a quick and easy little lace project.  Their Shadow lace yarn is a lovely heathered wool, so I ordered some in a nice deep red, to try it out.

Of course I can never let things be simple, so I decided to swap out one of the lace motifs (a zig zag that I didn't really like) for a different lace motif (a sort of leaf or petal design) and rewrote the chart by hand with that substitution.  It turned out to be a bit of a complicated pattern, with one motif containing lace on both sides (i.e. no rest rows on the wrong side) and several different motifs across the width, so I never managed to memorize certain parts of it and needed to refer to the chart the whole time.

After listening to about a million podcasts on my brand spankin' new iPad, I discovered that I'd finished the knitting, so last night I blocked it out on the living room floor, and today I grafted the two ends together to make a lovely long cowl.

The website suggests that you can wear it long "for a chic look" but I didn't feel particularly chic with it like that.  Maybe it's just me.  Of course, one little twist and doubling it up makes a pretty and featherweight cowl that sits like a cloud around the neck and looks lovely, too.

That's one more in the "completed" column.

5 comments:

Brandi Beckett said...

You always look chic Rhonda.

Really pretty lace design. I love the yarn colour too.

Miss you

Katherine said...

Pretty pretty! I think I have some of that exact yarn stashed somewhere. I'm inspired to see how lovely it looks when knit up.

TerriK said...

I'm knitting the Porcellana now and am nearly done. May I ask how you grafted it together? Did you use the mattress stitch or? I wish I'd done a provisional cast-on so I could use the Kitchner stitch, but it's too late now.

Rhonda said...

Hi TerriK,

I did use mattress stitch to graft the two edges together. In retrospect, I had also considered that using a provisional cast-on and kitchener stitch would have made a more invisible seam, but alas, I thought of it too late, like you.

I hope your Porcellana turns out lovely!

Sakia said...

Hello! Know that it is a little late, but I love your variation on the cowl!!! Great selection of a replacement lace panel! Also, thank you for the helpful tip about a provisional cast-on. Recently purchased the cowl pattern and was wondering: Do you happen to have the chart for your variation? If you are not able to provide the chart, where did you get the leaf lace stitch pattern from and how many stitches is it across? The cowl's zig-zag lace panels are 9sts. Thank you for sharing!