Explore colour dominance illusions with this simple cowl, which creates a dense and warm colourwork fabric.
Suitable for a range of yarn weights and styles.

The Wave By Wave cowl is a simple but impactful cowl, which makes a feature of yarn dominance. Knitted in the round, this cowl alternates colours every other stitch, creating a vertical stripe. By manipulating how you carry your yarn, the illusion of one colour being bolder than the other is created.

Suitable for beginners to colourwork and experienced fair-isle fans alike, this cowl will keep you colourful with its striking right side, and interesting wrong side.

The pattern includes a full video tutorial, taking you through each step from casting on to blocking. It also includes some useful tips and tricks that might help you along the way.

Yarn

This pattern multicoloured example is worked in a DK weight yarn, with 1 main colour and 12 contrasting colours.

This pattern can be worked in a minimum of two colours. Solid, veriegated or fades can be used, or the contasting colour could be changed at regular intervals to create the desired affect.

Main colour (including i-cord edging): 75g/170m
Contrast colour(s): total 60g/140m

The yarn used for my main sample is from Beehive Knits, from their 2024 Advent fade.

If using 12 colours as per the main example, you will need 5g/12m of each colour

The secondary example, with blue main colour is knitted in Aran weight, using 100g of both a solid main colour and variegated contrast colour. It uses a provisional cast on and is then joined to create an infinity cowl.