Design Your Own

Once you know how to knit and purl, knitting is pretty easy to figure out.  The same is true for making patterns.  There are hundreds of different stitch patterns and once you've praticed a few, it's easy to put together your own project or vary an existing one to your liking.

Now, I won't stake claim to this owl cozy.  I've done a few and this one I altered to make it my own but all I did was take out two of the three owls.  Still, I knew what I wanted and knew how to alter the pattern to get what I wanted.  Here are two samples of "my" owl cozy:

I substituted purl stitches all the way around where I wasn't doing the owl pattern.

Today I decided to attempt my own pattern utilizing the cable twists.  I plotted out the number to cast on and what I thought I'd do for each row.  Here are my primary notes:

After my first cable I knew I'd need more space before the next one.  The cabling pulled the stitches very tight in the few spots where I did it.  Here is the pattern I actually executed:

CO 36 stitches and divide evenly over 3 DPNs
R1 - 3: K2, P2
R4: P2, K8, P4, K8, P4, K8, P2
R5 - 6: same as R4
R7: P2, C8B, P4, C8B, P4, C8B, P2
R8 - 13: same as R4
R14: same as R7
R15 - 20: same as R4
R21: same as R7
R22 - R24: same as R4
R25 - R27: same as R1
bind off in pattern

There are three cables spread evenly around the cozy.  When making this one again I will probably use bigger needles to give a little more stretch to the yarn.    Additionally, I may just do one cable about midway through so the cozy won't be quite as tight.  It's hard to tell in the picture, but the yarn is an awesome color almost a neon pink.