2020 Colourwork club The 2020 Colourwork Club ran as a subscription club at the beginning of the year and featured three accessory patterns designed to progressively grow your colourwork skills. All three patterns are now available as individual patterns.

Brunstane Cowl
I designed the Brunstane Cowl specifically to be a good first stranded colourwork project: it’s both manageable and skill-building. The colourwork design intentionally begins by alternating colours after every stitch, so you don’t need to worry about tensioning the floats, then gradually increases to a maximum of 5 consecutive stitches in each colour. The bold, graphic design is shown in three relatively high contrast palettes, and has a clear foreground and background pattern, making it easy to tell which colour you should be using when, and which should be dominant. The pattern repeat is only eight stitches, so you can find your rhythm.

The cowl is a simple tube, tapered slightly so that it flares around the shoulders and hugs the neck. This shaping is achieved by simply changing to a smaller needle size; there’s no increasing or decreasing to worry about combining with the colourwork. A cowl is also the ideal circumference to practice your stranded colourwork tension on: working on one circular needle means there are no “ladders” to worry about at the gaps between needles, and I find the larger circumference and regular length needle tips helps knitters to relax.

Brunstane features Rauma Petter, a woolly DK superwash. I chose the yarn because the weight is easy to learn new skills with, and although it’s a superwash, it’s not too slick and blocks well.

Yarn
Double knitting / light worsted weight wool yarn

MC: 185 yds / 170m
C1: 185 yds / 170m
C2: 71 yds / 65m

Shown in Rauma Petter (100% superwash wool, 109 yds / 100m, 1.76oz / 50g) in:

Neutral
MC: 302, C1: 310, C2: 304

Classic
MC: 320, C1: 343, C2: 309

Vibrant
MC: 308, C1: 344, C2: 331

Notions
Stitch marker

Sizing
Length: 14” / 35cm,
bottom circumference: 26” / 65cm,
top circumference: 23” / 58cm

Gauge
23 sts and 28 rnds = 4” / 10cm in charted stranded colourwork pattern in the round on needle A

Needles
Needle A: Size 7 US / 4.5mm 24” / 60cm circular needle
Needle B: Size 6 US / 4mm 24” / 60cm circular needle
Change needle size as necessary to get gauge, and use a needle one size smaller than needle A for needle B

If your ribbing tends to be loose use needle B for the bottom ribbing and one size smaller than B for the top.