Tracks is a dense, warm garter-stitch cowl with softly zigzagging slipped stitches running along its length. I was inspired by the maze of rabbit tracks running across my yard on snowy mornings! This is a great pattern for beginners, or for an experienced knitter needing to whip up a quick holiday gift.

The bandana-style join of this cowl/collar maximizes your yardage, so don’t be afraid to use a special skein! The gauge is negotiable: as long as you like the fabric you’re creating, you’re on the right track. I’ve written out the whole 24-row pattern repeat, but you will catch on quickly and you might not need the pattern by the fifth or sixth row.

Skills used:

• Casting on
• Knit stitches
• Slipping the first stitch of every row to create a selvedge in garter stitch
• Left twists and right twists (link provided to an excellent Knitpicks tutorial)
• Binding off, including a three needle bind-off (An astute commenter pointed out that there is no reference in the pattern to a second needle of live stitches--too true! I’ll just add a note here that the “live stitches” to be joined to your BO stitches are picked up from along the selvedge edge of the piece. The photo can explain better than words can!)

This pattern is and always will be free. Feel free to sell your finished objects, as well (as long as I am credited as the designer).

There has been an update published, so if you downloaded this pattern in its first few days, please re-download as of 11/27/2021. Many thanks to kelliott1, Ebeealso, DoTheDay, and jlpresco for serving as unofficial “test knitters” and catching some problems!