The Herbarium Cowl

Inspired by vintage herbariums, muted but beautiful colour palettes and cosy wintery walks, the Herbarium cowl is made up of 12 colourwork patterns and assembled to reflect the pages of a well thumbed botanical book.

With 6 patterns inspired by flowers, and 6 by leaves, this cowl reflects two sides of flora, tied together with colour palettes. Depending on how the cowl is worn, and how the colours are arranged, you can achieve a versatile cowl with a range of beautiful colours.

Originally inspired by Botanical Yarn’s 2025 Advent colour palette and mood boards, I hope this cowl will become a favourite for years to come.

Yarn

This cowl requires a minimum of two colours, but works best with a spectrum of colours that suit the motifs. It can be made using 4-ply, DK or Aran weight yarns. It is perfect for using up small quantities of yarn, or for minis and advents

The yarn is broken down into three categories:

• Main colour (this is the ‘background’ of the squares)
• Contrast colour (this is the ‘motif’ colour’)
• Joining colour, if using the crochet join method explained on page 12, (which may be the same as either the main or contrast)

As each of the designs are knitted twice (or 4 times for 4-ply), I worked each design with MC brown and a CC, and then inverted the colourway so that the brown was CC. This gives it a reversible quality, and makes the most of the meterage of the yarn.