And then there’s Eleanor.

Knitty Eleanor Cowl

I actually cast on for Eleanor in mid October but those 132 stitches sat for two weeks – just the promise of a cowl at that point. I knit it in fits and starts, hence the delay in finishing this beautifully simple pattern. I thought chart-reading would be a problem after my long knitting hiatus but this is easy-peasy. If you’re sitting on the fence about this pattern, time to jump in and knit it!

It helps that I rediscovered my Knee-sel™ from Nancy’s Knit Knacks.  Totally worth whatever I paid for it.  The name comes from the fact that you can prop it on your knee to read and knit at the same time.  It is a perfectly portable easel with a pop-up flap to hold papers or charts in place.  It made knitting in the waiting room so much more manageable, without having to wrangle papers along with a wily ball of yarn and needles.

By the way, I have no affiliation with Nancy or her Knit Knacks.

Choices and modifications

• The pattern calls for sport-weight such as Lorna’s Laces or similar.  I used about 2/3rds of one skein of  Kitchen Sink Dyeworks bamboo merino worsted with no adjustments for gauge. Despite weight difference, the cowl still retains the grace of lace but with a bit of heft from the slightly beefier yarn.

• I chose to knit the piece flat because I found it easier to manage moving the stitch markers. I cast on using size 9 US and switched to size 8 once I finished Chart A.

• I used Ravelry member Nakiru’s modifications to Chart B to make the pattern more symmetrical:

Edit rows 17,  31 and 45 of chart B so that the decreases in these rows showing “k-k2tog-k2tog-k2tog-k2tog” become “ssk-ssk-k1- k2tog-k2tog.” I tinkered with the pattern chart to make this mod a bit clearer:

Eleanor, Chart B Mods

• By the way, there is a bit of errata in the written instructions. Where it says, “When you begin working Rounds 5, 15, 35 and 48,”  it should read “When you begin working Rounds 5, 15, 35 and 43.”  The chart itself is correctly highlighted.

• Because the yarn is worsted weight, I did not repeat rows 23-49 as called for in the pattern. I had already reached the finish height of 12” by the time I hit row 50.

• I used a Kitchener stitch to seam the cowl. It might have been easier to do a 3-needle bind-off or crochet the two sides together but this way, the seam came out nice and clean with little tell-tale thickness on the inside.