Quick As A Wink Cowl
Cast on Ksenia Naidyon’s super simple Quick As A Wink Cowl as you press play on your favorite holiday movie, and you’ll be binding off before the credits roll!
Your ticket for last-minute gifts or instant knitting gratification, this cowl is as easy as it gets. Just rows of garter stitch with a color swap for fun, then bind off and seam your ends together… And you’ve made something stunning in a flash!
Ksenia designed this cowl with a generous height, which makes it, as she says, “a dream to style: as a hood, a shoulder warmer, or, of course, a cowl with some extra cozy folds.”
All this lightning-fast beauty could only come from one place: Our bountiful, super-bulky Gentle Giant!
Gentle Giant is a magnificent single ply of 100% merino wool, plump and lofty and just incredibly soft! Its beautiful halo glows in the winter light, and its cozy abundance is wonderful to wear.
It only takes three skeins of Gentle Giant to cast on for this cowl, so pick up yarn for a few, and you’ll have a stack of amazing gifts… quick as a wink!
Designed for Purl Soho by Ksenia Naidyon, the talented designer behind Life Is Cozy, where she shares patterns for her beautiful hand knits, instructions for must-know stitch patterns, and reviews on needles, books, and notions… Everything we knitters love!
Share your progress and connect with the community by tagging your pics with #PurlSoho, #PurlSohoBusyHands, #PurlSohoQuickAsAWinkCowl, and #PurlSohoGentleGiant. We can’t wait to see what you make!
Materials
- Purl Soho’s Gentle Giant, 100% merino wool. Each skein is 48 yards/ 125 grams.
- Main Color (MC): 2 skeins; approximately 96 yards required
- Contrast Color (CC): 1 skein; approximately 48 yards required
- US 17 (12 mm), 32-inch circular needles
We used these colors for our samples…
MC Heirloom White + CC Super Pink
MC White Peppercorn + CC Graphite Gray
MC Winter Bark + CC Heirloom White
MC Calico Pink + CC Cowrie Pink
GAUGE
8 stitches and 16 rows = 4 inches in garter stitch
SIZE
Finished Dimensions: Approximately 24 inches in circumference x 13 inches high
PATTERN
With Main Color, cast on 26 stitches using a basic Long Tail Cast On.
Row 1 (wrong side): Slip 1 knitwise with yarn in back, knit to end of row.
NOTE: Use a removable stitch marker, safety pin, or piece of scrap yarn to mark the next row as a right-side row.
Repeat Row 1 until piece measures approximately 8 inches from cast-on edge, or if using Gentle Giant, until you have used all of the first skein of MC, ending with a wrong-side row.
*Next Row: With Contrast Color (CC), knit to end of row.
Continuing with CC, repeat Row 1 for approximately 8 inches, or if using Gentle Giant, until you have used as much of CC as you can, ending with a wrong-side row.
Repeat from * with second skein of MC, ending with a right-side row and several yards left over.
Bind-Off Row (wrong side): Bind off all stitches knitwise, leaving a couple yards for seaming.
SEAMING
Fold piece in half, wrong sides together, aligning bind-off and cast-on edges. With bind-off edge in front, thread bind-off tail onto a tapestry needle and sew edges together using a whipstitch. Sew the last stitch twice.
FINISHING
Weave in all the ends and gently steam block.
Where are the instructions for the color block cowl? Not the border one, and what size needle?
Thanks
Hi Arlene,
We are so happy you are going to give this pattern a try! The Quick as A Wink Cowl uses US 17 (12 mm), 32-inch circular needles, and three skeins of our Gentle Giant yarn. If you scroll down past the photos, the pattern begins after the last two images of the blush color and beige color skeins of yarn. Please let me know if you have any other questions and I would be happy to help!
Happy knitting,
Gavriella
Hello, I was hoping to make this in the super soft merino with US 11 needles instead of the gentle giant (I thought it would not be so chunky and lay a little more floppy). I plan on making the color block version. Do you have advice for # to cast on with the super soft? or any other advice for the switch of yarn for this project?
Thank you!
Hi Jennifer,
Thank you for writing in! That sounds like a great idea! We would suggest starting with a gauge swatch. Once you have that, you can measure your stitches per inch and multiply that number by 13! This will give you your cast on number. After you have that number you will be able to follow the rest of the pattern instructions! I hope this helps but please let me know if you have any other questions!
Happy knitting,
Gavriella