Pattern	Basketry Cowl by Lavanya Patricella
Dates	17th October – 1st November 2020
Materials	Colour A: Stranded Dyeworks Merino Nylon 4ply Zooming Home for Christmas – 38g Fine Fish Yarns Suri Silk lace Alpine – 27g Colour B: Fine Fish Yarns Merino Nylon 4ply Sugared Violet – 34g Stranded Dyeworks Mohair Silk Gingerbread Haus OOAK – 14g 3.50 mm needles
Size	One size
Rating	Pattern: 5/5 Finished item: 5/5

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This was very much an on-a-whim cast on. I bought a bunch of Lavanya’s patterns but was particularly drawn to make this one straightaway. I had a couple of Fine Fish yarns in stash that I could use, and I managed to grab a couple of Christmas skeins from one of Stranded Dyeworks’ updates.

This pattern calls for two colours as is common with brioche, each colour being made up of a 4ply and a mohair/laceweight held together. Initially I had planned to pair the Fine Fish yarns together as one colour and the Stranded as the second, but once I had them on the table together I realised that the green tones of the Alpine suri silk paired much better with the darker tones of the Zooming Home for Christmas, and the brighter pink tones of the Gingerbread Haus OOAK went better with the pastel cream and pink of Sugared Violet.

This is brioche knitting in as much as it’s using brk, brp and yarn overs as normal, but the basketweave pattern takes over so I think you wouldn’t necessarily identify this as brioche straight off. It was very intuitive and “just one more round” addictive, so it went much faster than I expected.

Between the mohair, the low contrast and the brioche stitches, the colours blend together but I really liked how the fabric turned out. It is super soft and snuggly and probably the first cowl I’ve made that turned out the perfect size for a double loop! I also chose to knit it as a moebius because brioche produces double-faced fabric, but that did mean I kept having to untwist the non-working yarn back through the loop at the end of every round. A minor annoyance but something to bear in mind. I ended up putting my two Colour A yarns into a small sock sack and the two Colour B yarns into another just to make it easier to handle them.

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