Tucking Into My Tucked Cowl

Back in July at the Jyväskylä Knit Festival I took part in Nancy Marchant's workshop on tuck stitches, and a large part of the class was about casting on and starting to knit a cowl using one of the tuck stitches in the class handout. Nancy told us to start with around 96 stitches, or some more or fewer, depending on the circumference of the cowl we wanted to end up with. Because I knew I wanted a cowl long enough to wrap around my neck twice and not be too tight, I thought it would be a good idea to go with 300 stitches. It just sounded like a nice, round number.

As the class went on, I learned I had made more than one mistake early on that bothered me enough that after the class I frogged the original beginning of the cowl and started all over again, with the same number of stitches and design, just minus the mistakes. I had picked Brooklyn Tweed Arbor as my yarn, largely because we were supposed to bring DK weight yarn and, despite my ridiculous stash, I don't have a lot of. But it actually worked out fine, and I had enough of the white and grey colorways to end up with a decent sized cowl. I think for my next cowl I'm going to go with something a bit more drapy, but I'm still happy with this one. It's my first project made solely of Arbor.

The tuck stitch pattern is reversible, and I actually prefer the wrong side! It's the reversibility that now has me hooked on tuck stitches, and I plan to make more cowls with different stitch patterns, because I think cowls and tuck stitches are a good match. Not that I was the one to come up with that idea originally! I have Nancy's book on tuck stitches, which has a ton of different stitch patterns to choose from. Now I just need to make up my mind regarding the stitch and yarn!