The Arlesford cowl is a mosaic design and knit in the round. Only one colour of yarn is worked at a time. The cowl is wider at the base than the neck, which allows it to spread over your shoulders as you wear it. This is a cowl for town life, perfect for a bit of shopping and lunching. It’s named for Arlesford, a small market town in Hampshire, England. The town centre is the perfect setting for ladies who lunch; Georgian buildings are filled with pavement cafes and boutique shops.
The pattern is for one size. The finished size is:
Circumference at bottom: 96cm (37.75inch)
Circumference at top: 54cm (21.25inch)
Depth: 30cm (12 inch)
Make it your own
Working mosaic knitting flat
You may choose to adapt the pattern to make it into a scarf, or other accessory. I would encourage you to do that – make the thing that will bring you joy. However, it may mean that you need to work the new item flat, rather than in the round. That is possible, and I discuss various ways of adjusting the pattern in this post. I’d recommend that you have a read, if you are thinking of tweaking the arlesford cowl pattern in this way.
Colour Inspiration
I am always a sucker for a bit of autumn colour, and so I chose to make my cowl in the fall colours of yellow, green and orange. There are many different options for colour ways; the yarn I used, stylecraft special DK, has a whopping 98 colours to choose from.
I do not (alas) have colour pegs for all the colours in the range, but spent a happy half hour or so working out some alternative colour schemes with the options that I do have.
Autumn inspired colours
Strong autumn colours. This is the original colour way. I used meadow, lime, dandelion, gold, spice, tomato and walnut.
A softer version of autumn. Colours recipe: meadow, pistachio, camel, stone, vintage peach, shrimp and mocha.
Winter inspired colours
Cooler blues purples, with just a pop of colour for fun. Winter colours used are: violet, lavender, bluebell, denim, grey and boysenberry.
Perhaps the colours don’t match this photo of a winter flower exactly, but I do think that it captures the mood. This is a more muted version of the winter colours. I chose storm blue, sage, lincoln, duck egg, silver, mushroom, and grape.
This option really sang to me, which was a surprise as I usually like the stronger colours. It was only whilst swatching up for another project that i realised a subset of these (grape, mushroom, sage and storm blue) are the colours of my website. No wonder I liked it!
Other inspirations
Pretty much anything goes for this recipe. The main idea is that you have bright ideas against black. Here I have gone for rainbow colours: proper purple, royal, green, sunshine, spice, lipstick and black.
Another option is to choose a smaller range of colours. I did this for my friendship cowl pattern, were I used up various blues, greens and purples against black.
And finally, for some real drama: saffron, shrimp, magenta, boysenberry, proper purple, emperor and french navy.
If you have some time to spend happily browsing all the yummy ways that yarn can go together, I hugely recommend browsing through the mood boards of Pippin Poppycock. There is bound to be something that sings out to you from all the amazing options there.
