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!

If you love the yarn used in this project, you’ll love all of our other yarn, too! Explore our 35+ lovingly created yarn collections, in nearly every natural fiber and spectacular color you can imagine… Only available here at Purl Soho’s online yarn shop!

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 yarn. Each skein of this super bulky yarn 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.

Looking for more inspiration? Explore all of our free knitting patterns and knitting tutorials, buy one of our many knitting kits and yarn bundles, and shop for beautiful yarn. We have over 35 gorgeous natural fiber yarns in 100’s of magnificent colors, designed to bring integrity, beauty, and joy to your next knitting project and only available at Purl Soho!