Summer Flowers

Summer Flowers is a cowl built around one stitch, a little cluster flower that repeats across every right-side row. You work it flat, row after row, and the flowers line up into a field of open blooms held together with short chain loops. It is the kind of piece that looks like it took real skill and actually rests on a two-row repeat you will know by heart before long.

The whole cowl comes out of a single skein of fingering weight. That is part of the pleasure of it. You pick one special skein; the sample uses a soft sock yarn, and you watch it become a finished thing without a second ball or a color to manage. The open flower stitch lets a hand-dyed color move and shift as it works up.

You crochet the piece flat and seam it up the back into a cowl. Blocked, it sits 32 inches around and 12 inches deep, close enough to loop once at the neck and full enough to sit soft against a collar. It works up fast, and despite the name, it is a cowl for any season, light in summer and an easy layer once the air turns.

YARN: 

375 yards / 343m of fingering weight yarn, one skein.

The sample uses Serial Knitters Underground Dye House Cherry Creek Sock (80% superwash merino, 20% nylon, 3.5 oz / 100g = 450 yards / 412m) in the color Flower Girl.

HOOK: 

US size E/4 (3.5 mm), or the size you need for gauge. Make sure you take the time to verify it before you start.

NOTIONS: 

Steel tapestry needle.

GAUGE: 

In pattern, 4 repeats and 10 rows = 4 inches / 10 cm. Check your gauge before you begin. It sets the depth of the cowl and tells you whether your one skein will carry the full length.

FINISHED SIZE: 

Blocked, the cowl is 32 inches / 81 cm around and 12 inches / 30.5 cm deep. Block it to those dimensions so the flower stitch opens up and the loop sits even.