Fractal Cowl by Emily Peters

Fractal Cowl

Knitting
Sport (12 wpi) ?
6 stitches and 9 rows = 1 inch
in double-knitted
US 3 - 3.25 mm
400 yards (366 m)
21 inch circumference and 7 inches tall
English
This pattern is available for $4.00 USD buy it now

Fractal Cowl is a double-knit cowl in two colors; the double-knitting makes it warm and cozy even though it’s made from sock- or sport-weight yarn. It’s reversible, so if you make stripes or use a color-changing yarn for one of the two colors, it’s like having two different cowls!

Size: At the given gauge, the cowl is 21 inches in circumference and 7 inches tall. This should fit most teens and adults. The size can be adjusted by changing gauge.

Difficultly: This is double-knit pattern suitable for people who have never double-knit before. Instructions for double-knitting are included in the pattern (as are links to external video tutorials). The pattern includes no shaping and is worked in the round.

Double-knitting is a slightly esoteric knitting skill, but in my opinion easier than other colorwork techniques like stranded knitting and intarsia.

Yarn: The original was knit in Sanguine Gryphon Bugga!, using 50 grams of a background color and 12 different 5-gram miniskeins as the contrast color. Any sock- or sport-weight yarn should be suitable for this pattern.

The pattern is given in chart form.

Fractal: This fractal is a right-angled relative of the famous Koch snowflake. The boundary on the cowl between the two colors is the result of three iterations of this process, and the last image is an illustration of the iterative process.