I designed this cowl for the Northampton Wools Escape to the Cape week end last year. We put together “trash” balls of yarn from my extensive supply of leftover yarns, trying to keep the weights near the 4.5 sts to an inch. Sometimes I combined yarns, and I put roughly 175 yds in each ball. I wound the balls on the ball winder, counting about 25-30 turns of the handle for each different yarn. I tried to give each ball 6-8 different yarns for both color and texture variation. I just tied the yarns together and left the tails long.
The idea is that every time a new yarn comes to the needle, you should change the stitch pattern. I have given lots of different patterns all of which are simple to do.
Go make a trash stash ball and have some fun. Everyone that has taken this class has had so much fun that they made more than one cowl!