Chloris is the ancient Greek Goddess of flowers and spring time. The name Chloris means means “pale green” and “fresh.” Think of the spring greens you see when bulbs start to sprout and show through the ground and the fresh green buds of leaves on trees!
The Chloris Cowl celebrates the Wheel of the Year turning to spring with the promise of longer and warmer days. Spring flowers bring us the first show of colour for the year, and I always think they are the most magical. It’s like their presence thins the veil between worlds and you can see the fairy folk dancing in amongst them in skirts made of petals and hats made from Beech nuts.
When designing the Chloris Cowl I wanted to evoke a feeling of spring and secret gardens. Gardens that are long forgotten, where nature is free to roam and vine it’s way through once well kept spaces. A garden no one else knows about but you stumbled upon one day and felt safe and protected within it’s boundaries. A place where you might catch a glimpse of a magical creature fluttering past!
The Chloris Cowl is a close fitting cowl with plenty of length to pull up over your ears while still keeping your neck warm. Knit in the round using stranded colourwork to create bright and bold floral motifs, Chloris is designed to bring colour into your world when the start of the year is still grey and dreich. The sample is knit using Queen of Purls Hand Dyed Citadel DK in Space Junk, Swamp Thang, Flowers of Sulphur and Love Lies Bleeding. Citadel DK it a 100% British Blue Faced Leicester which gives the cowl a lovely drape with that beautiful silk-like lustre which BFL is known for. It’s started and finished with striped garter stitch rounds which gives it a modern and fresh feel. The pattern calls for the colourway Swamp Thang to be used as the contrast colour for the garter stitch, but you could use any of the contrast colours that you like.
I recommend this as an intermediate colourwork project as there are long runs of stitches which means long floats, the biggest being 17 stitches long, so I’d advise being comfortable with floating your yarns. You can also catch the yarn at the back of a stitch if you prefer doing this. I personally do not as it always shows a flash of the floated colour through the front of the fabric and messes with my tension. I find the long float manageable in terms of length and wearability and there are only 4 rounds in the pattern that have this float length.
There are also 8 rounds which require the use of 3 colours at once. If you are comfortable with stranded colourwork, this should be relatively easy if you’ve not done it before. To finish the cowl, a version of the Icelandic Bind Off is used which makes an edge that is practically identical to the Long Tail Cast On that the pattern calls for. I will I’ll be providing video tutorials of how to manage your yarns for the long floats and three colour rows and a couple of other techniques used in the cowl.
Full disclosure – I have lost my camcorder and tripod so there will be a delay between the pattern being published and the video tutorials being made. I’ve turned the shop and my flat upside down looking for them to no avail. I had planned for the tutorial to be live at the time of the pattern release, so please bear with me, I’ll get them up one way or another soon!
Morning update – I found the camcorder and tripod!!! Tutorials will be up next week!
Find the Chloris Cowl pattern on Ravelry here!
Use code GREENTHUMB for 25% off the pattern price until 23.59pm on 14.01.18!
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