Etta's Cowl

Hi everybody. Welcome to our live crochet event. I'm Brenda K.B Anderson, and today I'm gonna be showing you how to make Etta's Cowl. So you can go ahead and download your pattern. If you haven't done that already, just click on the link in the description or in the comments section too. And you can follow along or you can download this later, that's totally fine. If you just wanna watch, and check it out first, and then download it later, it'll still be there, so don't worry about that. So this project is a beautiful, very large... Here let me unravel this or not unravel it, but unwind for you. This is how big it is you guys, it's very large. A very large cowl that was meant to be wrapped twice around your neck like this and hang. But you can definitely adapt this to be a shorter cowl, a smaller cowl, smaller in circumference. If you just wanna make one that just goes around once or, you know, just a smaller, you know, wrap it twice but it's closer to your neck and not hanging down, it's very easy to adapt this pattern. And I'll explain a little bit more about that as we go along. And this design is fairly straightforward, okay? So if you have, if you're an advanced beginner or an intermediate, you can definitely do this project. You probably don't want this to be your very first project ever. You probably would benefit from doing some, you know, simple, you know, learning how to single crochet, learning how to have double crochet, learning how to double crochet, just getting comfortable with the hook in your hands before you start this project. But if you already know how to do the basics, even if you've never ever worked lace before, this is, you know, definitely approachable for you. So, and lace is just- it doesn't have to be anything fancy, it's just a way of making planned holes in your fabric, that's all lace is. So don't be scared off by the lace part if you've never done that before. So there's only four rows that repeat throughout this cowl. So you can memorize it if you want to or, you know, even if you're not quite there yet, it's very approachable, it's easy to understand. And I also made a stitch diagram in the back 'cause if you guys have watched my lives before, you know how much I love stitch diagrams. They help me so much when I'm teaching, but also just to get the visual picture of where we're headed. So I have a diagram in the back for you guys to, if you wanna follow along, or if you are just a very visual learner, this will help you out definitely too. I'm going to be teaching mostly from this diagram, but everything is written out in this pattern. You know, if you're not a diagram person, that's okay, you have all the information that you need just written out in the pattern. You don't have to even look at the diagram if you are anti diagram, that's okay. All right, so as with my other events, this is live. So please if you have questions, if I, you know, went too fast on something, you need a little extra clarification, please let me know. Just drop your comment in the box so that I can see that you have a question and I'll try to address all the questions during my live event today. So I can already see that Eric Mann had a question, he was wondering if I ever make crochet blankets. And I have to say this felt a little blanket like to me when I was working on it, 'cause it went on and on seemingly for a long time. And I thought maybe I could actually make a blanket. I am actually working on a blanket at home, just finishing up a project that somebody else started, for sentimental reasons I'm finishing it up. So I am working on a blanket, and I have designed a few baby blankets, but I've never actually designed a full size large blanket. But that is definitely something that's on my agenda. That's not today, but in the future I would like to do that. After making this cowl, it made me feel a little more confident about sticking with the project for a longer time. All right, so let's get started. We're gonna talk- first, we're gonna talk about the materials that you need. Basically this is very simple. All you need is a one giant cake of yarn. So this is about 800 yards, it's really 795 yards, and I used almost all of it on these cowls. So, I should also say, this is the same yarn that I used on these cowls, it's just a different colorway. So these are the little tiny balls that I had left over after making these two full-size cowls. So if you're worried about running out of yarn, two things, in this project you can just kind of keep going back and forth until your color changes around to the first color. Again, I'll explain a little more of that in detail as we're working on it. So you don't really have to worry too much about running out of yarn, with this project one cake should be enough. But having said that, it would be wise to make a gauge swatch so that you can make sure that your gauge is pretty close to mine. Because if your gauge is a lot larger, if when you make your gauge swatch your swatch is larger than mine, then you might have a shorter cowl, or your stripes might stripe in a different way that you weren't expecting, which may not be a problem at all. But still I would recommend making the gauge swatch first just so that you can find the hook size that you would like to use to make this project. All right, so you just need one large yarn cake. So this is 800 yards, and this is a color changing with a long color changes. So, which is different than just a variegated yarn where it changes quickly, it'll give it a totally different look. So just keep that in mind when you're choosing your yarn. This would also be lovely in a solid color, or a heathered, or tonal, or something like that. And the lace pattern would really shine if you did something with a lot less colors going on here. But also, having said that, the reason that I chose this particular stitch pattern was because I had already had this impulse bought yarn cake and I wanted to use it on something Lacey. And I was, you know, when you find a yarn that stripes like this, you need to find a very bold stitch pattern for the stitch pattern to actually even show up. 'Cause otherwise you're just distracted by all the color, and I wanted to make sure I found a stitch pattern that would work with the striping of the yarn. So I was very happy with how this turned out. All right, so you're gonna need the skinny yarn, you're gonna need a crochet hook, whatever you need to obtain the correct gauge, the gauge that's listed in your pattern. I used a G hook, which is a four millimeter hook. And if you're newer to crochet, you may want to use some stitch markers to help you keep track of the first and last stitch of your row. But if you're more confident crochet, you don't even need stitch markers. All you really need is the yarn, and your hook, and your pattern, and a yarn needle for the very last step when we seam this cowl together. And that's it. Very simple. All right, so let's see. And hello to Karen Brock who is watching. I'm happy to have you. And if you would just like to say hi, you don't even have to have a question, I should have mentioned this earlier, just say hi, where you're crocheting from. It always makes me feel good to see people popping up in the comments section, so I know that you guys are out there watching. All right, so I am gonna begin by walking you through the gauge swatch. So, and actually when we make the gauge swatch, we are practicing all the exact same skills you need to know to make this cowl. So let me show you, let me show you on the stitch diagram. We're going to be working across all these rows here. If you've never seen a stitch diagram, then let me help explain a little bit about what this is all about. So when you look at this, all these little symbols stand for a stitch. So if you look at these bottom little tiny ovals, those all stand for chain stitches. It's basically a visual map of what you're gonna be making. So these are all chain stitches. This stitch that looks like the T with one line through it, those are double crochets and you can see them here. It doesn't matter whether they're tilting or where they're located, that's just what they look like. Just a double crochet, just like that. And then the treble crochet has two lines through it. And the only place that the treble crochet appears is on the very edges. You can see here on row four and here on row three, that is the only place, all the rest of these little things, and here that look like Ts, those are all double crochets. So we're just gonna keep it really simple. The gates watch is made exactly like this picture with the same amount of stitches. And you can follow along from the gauge swatch instructions. If you'd rather read them, that's fine. And then once you have completed your gauge swatch and you determine the correct hook, then you will move on to just making the cowl. And you can follow this same exact chart, but notice that there are all these symbols in red. So what that means, I wrote it over here, just in case you forget, you're going to repeat whatever the red section is seven times before moving on in the chart. So when you begin, you'll start over here and you'll make your chain stitches, your chain goes up here, and then you start making, you make two double crochets into this chain, four chain stitches, and you skip all of these chains. I don't have any stitches pointing to them. And then you work some double crochets here, there's one double crochet in this stitch, three into this chain, and one into this chain. And then you'll chain four more. And that section is on red. So you're gonna repeat from the beginning, these stitches over and over like this, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times, and then you'll move on to these stitches here. And then on row two you're gonna begin over here and you're gonna work in this direction. So on note two, any left-handers out there, if you're left-handed, just make a flipped version, like a copy of this, looking at it in reverse, or just look at it in a mirror to be able to work in the direction that you work in. So because I'm right-handed, I would start here and go across, if you, you know, or maybe you're just able to just flip it in your mind, and that's completely fine. As long as you know that you're gonna be following the chart this way, row two will go this way, row three will go this way. So if you're trying to figure out which the beginning of the chart, like which end to start at, when you're looking at the chart, you're gonna start where all of the chain stitches are and read it across. All right, so we're gonna actually start here. We're gonna chain 30, let me just double check and make sure that's right. Yep. We're gonna chain 30 stitches. So we're gonna just make a slip knot. So I draw a little E, little loop-de-loo, flip it over onto this piece of yarn that's connected to the ball, and put my hook under there, and then I'm just going to pull that tight. Well not super tight, loose enough that I can slide on your hook, and then we're going to yarn over in chain 30. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30. Then we are gonna begin working row one. So that starts here. You're going to work two double crochets into the fourth chain from your hook. Because if you count here, that would be one, two, three, fourth chain. All right, so you're gonna do a yarn over. This is how you make a double crochet. Well first let's find the fourth chain from our hook. And also I wanted to point out, oftentimes I crochet into the bottom bump or the the back. Some people call it the back bump or the bottom of my chain, which is opposite of the V shape that you normally put your hook under, like this. If you just flip it over, you'll see these little horizontal dashes, and that's where I usually crochet into 'cause it's just easier for me. But for this pattern, it doesn't matter, you can work into your chain however you like. All right, so we're gonna count four. One, two, three, four, that is where we're going to insert our hook. So I'm gonna put my thumbnail below. We're gonna make two double crochets. So we yarn over, insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. That's the first double crochet. This actually counts as a double crochet, this chain three. But that's the first actual double crochet that we're making. So the next one is going to go into the same stitch, we yarn over, insert in the same stitch, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two, yarn over, pull through two. Then we're gonna chain four and we're gonna skip one, two, three, four, five, six. So we'll chain four. One, two, three, four. And we're gonna skip six. One, two, one, two, three, four, five, six. Let me count that again. One, two, three, four, five, six. Okay, and then we're gonna make a double crochet in the next stitch. All right, let me just make sure I skip the right amount of stitches here. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yep. So as you're working, I should mention, as you're working the actual cowl later on, you do have quite a few more stitches to chain on. And if you lose track of how many stitches that you did, you can just add on a few more. It's not gonna hurt you to unravel those stitches from this end if you don't use them up. But it will be annoying if you don't add them on and then you get all the way across and then you don't have any stitches left. All right, so after this double crochet, we're gonna do three double crochets into the next chain. So we'll yarn over, insert, yarn over pull up a loop, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two. Two more of those. Yarn over, insert, yarn over pull up a loop, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two. One more. And then we're gonna do one double crochet into the next chain. So we have a total of five double crochets right in the spot, but we're not putting them all into the same chain because that just pulls on that chain a little too much and makes it distorted. All right, now we're going to chain four and skip six, again. So one, two, three, four. Skipping six, one, tow, three, four, five, six. Excuse me. One, two, three. All right, we're doing one double crochet here and three double crochets into that next stich, just like we already did. All right. And then one double crochet into the following stitch. There we go. And then we're just gonna keep repeating this section where we had these five double crochets and then four chains right here. And then we're gonna work that over and over if we're working the cowl. But for the gauge swatch... I have a stubborn tickle in my throat. Ah. Excuse me. All right, so we're just gonna continue working this all the way across for our cowl, but for our gauge swatch, we are only working what we see here. So one, two, three, four. And then we're skipping six, one, two, three, four, five, six. And then we have one double crochet, or two double crochets into the second to the last chain and one double crochet into the following chain. All right. Okay, so this is what our piece looks like. And you can see it is mirroring this image right here. We have a little bit of a cluster here and here, and then bigger ones right here and here with three little windows in between. So that's one easy way to check to see if you're on track is to just take a look at the picture and see if what you did matches up with that. So the next row, we're going to begin over here and we're gonna chain three. And then we are going to do three double crochets, chain three, three double crochets into this chain force space right there. So one, two, three. And then we'll do- so that was our turning chain, and now we're working into that chain four space. So we're doing three double crochets, that's, one, two, three. Oops. All right, and then three chains, one, two three. Three more double crochets right here, one, two, three. And then we're going to continue that three double crochets chain three, three double crochets into the other two chain four spaces. So we're just skipping all of these. Yarn over insert, yarn over pull up, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two, and then two more double crochets, one, two, and then chain three, one, two, three, and three more double crochets, one, two, three. All right, and then one last time in the last chain four space, one, two, three. And then we'll chain three, one, two, three, and one, two, three more. I just saw Jessica Hadley's comment, it is huge. Yes, it is huge Jessica. It was funny because when I was making it, I wasn't really intending to make one quite that long, but I really liked how it looked, so I just kept going. All right. So now we've gotten to the end and we're gonna do a double crochet into the top of this chained three from our turning chain. So that's over here. Just make sure that you know where the top is, it's right there. So we're gonna yarn over, insert into the top of the chain three. And whenever you insert into these turning chains, you know, normally you go under the top two loops like that, but if it's turning sideways and you wanna go underneath these two loops, that's fine. It really looks just fine. You don't have to worry too much. Well, that is completely up to you. You're driving your own crochet situation, but I don't worry too much about exactly what two loops I put my hook under as long as I'm in the correct stitch. Okay, so we've worked row two, we've ended here, that's right there. And then we are going to chain six, one, two, three, four, five, six, and turn our work. One, two, three, four, five, six. And we've turned our work. And you might notice these chains are looping downward. They are supposed to, I'm just gonna show you why, just in case you are looking at it and wondering why that first chain is so super long and it doesn't seem like it needs to be that long. So here is kind of where we're headed with this piece. These swoop down here, because later when we sew our cowl together, we want them to fit in these grooves, we want them to swoop down and fit into those. It's like a little puzzle piece at the end. And that way you don't have a straight line going across, you know, it's not really a big deal, you probably wouldn't really notice it, but it's just another extra little detail to make it look really seamless once you stitch it all up. Okay, so we've chained our six chains here, and then we're gonna put five double crochets into this chain three space. There is our chain three space, that little window right there. And we're gonna do five double crochets right into that space. So, one, two, three. Oops. Lost my loop there. We'll do that one again. Three, four, and five. And now we're gonna chain four, we're right here. So this is a section we're gonna repeat a bunch of times if we're actually working on the cowl, but since we're doing the gauge swatch, we're just working straight across. We'll do four chains, one, two, three, four, and then five double crochets in the next chain three space. So I'm just gonna lay this down for a second so you can take a look at this. Because we're doing these five double crochets into the chain three spaces, you really only need to remember that you alternate between five double crochets and then four chains, five double crochets, four chains, five double crochets, and then you know a couple chains at the end. So the ends, you need to pay attention, but as you're working your way across, you just look for these little windows and that's where you put your five double crochets. And then in between those, that's where you put your four chain stitches. All right, so one, two, whoops, three, four, five, and then four chains, one, two, three, four, five double crochets here. One, two, three, four, five. All right. And then we will do two chain stitches to end this row, two chain stitches. And then we will do a treble, which reaches down to the top of the turning chain there, the top of the chain three. So we'll do our two chain stitches, one, two, and to do a treble, you'll yarn over twice, one, two. And then you're gonna insert your hook into the top of that turning chain, which is right here. And again, like I said before, you can fiddle around and you can get your hook underneath those top two loops. But if it's easier, as long as you're going under two loops- so there's two loops on the top and one loop on the bottom of your hook, it seems like, to me it looks great. All right, so then we pulled up a loop and then we're gonna yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two. So the only difference between the treble crochet and the double crochet is that you start with an additional yarn over and then you repeat the yarn over pull through two a couple extra times. All right, so Ivan is wondering if I can hold up the cowl again. You didn't see the start. Yes, absolutely. So here's the cowl, it's looped twice here, I'll show it to you unlooped. This is how big it is, okay, it's very large. But I said at the beginning too that you don't have to make it this long if you don't want to. If you're making it out of this striping yarn though, you might wanna think about starting and ending with the same color. So you don't have, when you're stitching it together, you can't really see the seam in it. Not that, I mean really it doesn't matter that much. You could end it wherever you wanted to and seam it up and it would still be beautiful, you don't have to be so picky about it. But part of why I made it so long was because I was waiting for the next repeat to come around. I started with, I can't remember on this one what I started with a green and I needed to go all the way around, going through one green and making it into a circle. Just I didn't wanna end there, it just didn't seem long enough, so I went to the next one and then to the very next one. So the length of my cowl was sort of dictated by the color changes in my yarn. So if you're doing this out of a solid color or if you don't really care, if your stripes a little narrower than some of the other stripes, that's totally fine. You can just make it to whatever length you wanna make it to, as long as you end with the same row that I tell you to end with in my pattern. 'Cause otherwise it's not gonna seam together very well. All right, so let's see. Pamela Ara saying, hi from Missouri, hello Pamela. And she has a hard time with patterns. So videos help me follow patterns. Yes, absolutely. I think that that is a lot of why people love watching the videos, because it's so much easier to just see someone do it. And it's nice if you have reference to the pattern at the same time or also a chart, I love the charts. But it's good to have different modes of being able to teach and being able to take the information in I think. Oh, Christina Landreth is asking what weight of the yarn I'm using? Yes, thank you for bringing that up because I completely forgot to mention that. This is a DK weight or a light worsted weight, CYCA number 3. If you're shopping at the store, oftentimes your yarn label will have that CYCA number and that tells you how thick your yarn is. Number three is like, it's a little thinner than most worsted weights. And worsted weights are the the kind of go-to Afghan thickness of yarn that you find all over the place. And a lot of the Big Box stores have that, so it's a little thinner than that. All right, so let's see, one, two, three, we've done up through row three. We ended here with that treble. Now we are going to begin row four, and that starts with five chains. So four- and that's going to take the place of another treble stitch. And then there's this little chain, and then we do three double crochets into this chain, two space. All right, so we're gonna start with our five chains, one, two, three, four, five, and we're gonna turn our work to work across it. And then we are going to work those three double crochets into the chain two space right here on the end. So we'll do three double crochets, one, two, three. And then we are going to skip over this group of stitches and we're gonna work into the next chain space. We're gonna do three double crochets chain three, three double crochets in all into this chain space. So one, two, three. Chain three, one, two, three and three more. One, two, three. Okay, and we're gonna repeat that again. And you may be noticing that in this pattern, with the exception of these stitches that go into the turning chain, all the rest of the stitches are actually made into chain spaces. So it makes it really easy for you to figure out where your stitches actually supposed to go. You're just looking for little windows to put your stitches into. So three chain three and three more double crochets here. One, two, three. Okay, and then we've gotten across to right here, we're going to put three double crochets into that chain, two space, and then chain one, and then we're going to do a turn treble crochet into the top of the turning chain. So this might be a little confusing because we have four stitches that count as the turning chain and two stitches that are just counting as chain stitches. So we are, as you can see from the diagram, we're putting that treble into that fourth stitch when we count upwards, one, two, three, four All right, so we're gonna do three double crochets, one, two, three. Into that last loop there, then we're gonna chain one, and then we're gonna do one treble into the top of the fourth chain. So treble we yarn over twice and we're gonna count up one, two, three four. That's where we're gonna insert our hook, yarn over pull up a loop, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two. Just like that. All right, so we have already finished row four. And so now we're gonna do row five that begins over here with three chains. And this is a very similar to row one here, it's almost the same. One, two, three. For our turning chain and we're gonna turn our work. And then we are going to work two double crochets into that first chain space. So that's right here, there's the chain space, so two double crochets into that chain space. Then we're gonna chain four, and then we are going to continue working our groups of five double crochets into those little windows. So five will go there, chain four, five will go there, chain four, and then we'll finish up, all right? So we'll we're doing two double crochets into that first chain space, one and two. And we're going to chain four, one, two, three, four. And then we're gonna work five double crochets into this window here, one, two, three, four, five. Now we're gonna chain four, one, two, three, four. And again this red section is the section you would repeat. You would work this whole section over and over a total of seven times before moving on to this, if you were making the cowl, instead of just the gauge swatch. So we're going to make our five double crochets into that little window. So yarn over, insert, yarn over pull up a loop, yarn over pull through two, yarn over pull through two. We'll do that four more times, one, two, whoops, three and four. So that's a total of five. And then we're gonna chain four, one, two, three, four. And here we are all the way at the end, we're gonna do two double crochets into that chain one space, and then one double crochet into the top of this chain four, which stands for a treble crochet. Okay, it's kind of taking the place of a treble there. So one, two, those are just into that chain space. And then the last double crochet, we chain into the top of that chain four, we work into the top of the chain four. So we'll count up one, two, three, four. So we yarn over, insert, yarn over pull up a loop, yarn over pull through two, you're an over pull through two. All right, so now we have worked all the way through here and we would continue, let's see if we're working the gauge swatch, I think we repeat up to row two, yeah. So we do one, two, three, four, five. Repeat row two, and then we can check our gauge after that. And just compare it to my gauge. If your gauge swatch is bigger than mine, then you'll wanna go down a hook size. If it's smaller than mine, then you're gonna wanna go up a hook size. So these are all, this is really all you need to know in order to make this cowl, in order to create the lace pattern. So, but one tip I wanted to, before we get to the seaming part, I wanna mention, I should have mentioned this at the beginning, if you're starting out, if you use the same yarn that I did and you're starting out and there's just a little tiny bit of one color and it switches to another color, then I would recommend just pulling off that color until it gets, you know, like if there were just a couple of- if it was just a little bit, like, you know, wrapped around a couple times, I would just unwind that and cut that off and start with the next color. Because when you come around to the end and you wanna end with a color, you don't wanna have two different colors to stitch it to. But to be honest, it's gonna be all wrapped around your neck and lovely. So if you just wanna ignore that, you're like, Brenda, I don't need to do that. We don't need to be so picky, that's okay too. It's just one of those things I didn't realize until I was most of the way through my first cowl and I had kind of wished that I had just started that first chain and the first row all in one color, it changed halfway through the middle of my chain and I was kind of regretting that later, not the big a deal. Okay, so you would just continue working back and forth and back and forth when you're creating the cowl until you have reached, let's see, what do I tell you here? I tell you to repeat rose two through five, another 31 times or to one and a quarter inches shorter than however long you want it to be. And you have to- and then you need to end with row five. The reason is because row five fits in, like remember how we talked about the little puzzle pieces earlier? You have to end with a row five so that it fits in with your chain shape that's happening here, so that it looks seamless, all right? So you will do that and your piece will look like this. A very long rectangle. And, you know, sometimes people like to put a twist into their cowl on purpose. I didn't do that with this because I felt like it was unnecessary, it's very, once you block this, and we'll talk about blocking in a little bit, it is a very drapey and it has a lot of, it doesn't- you don't need it to have a twist in it to make it lay nicely. So I just laid my ends out. Let's see. I just wanna make sure I'm not twisting it. Let's see here. So this was my foundation chain row right here. And this was my ending row right here. And you can see how I have, let's see, on the very last row that I did, which is right here, it changed color to this color, and then I thought, well, okay, I'll just work this up until I end with another repeat of row five, right? And then it'll be the same color all the way across. 'Cause we have this sort of lighter purple and I wasn't sure about sewing those two together, but when I did that, I ended up with the opposite happening. It just so happened on this particular cowl that this last row, whether I worked row five here or if I worked another repeat and ended on row five, it was changing even the next color. Either way, I ended up with two different colors to sew too, but I figured they're so close to each other, it's not even gonna bother me. And I'm so easily bothered by this, as you could tell, I keep talking about it. But I will show, I think this is a good example, so that you can see what it looks like when you match it up, you know, and the color matches versus not matching, which, again, not gonna be that big of a deal. All right, so you'll lay your pieces out and you could choose whether to block this ahead of time, like you can block it before you sew this, or you can, if that's easier or you can wait until you stitch it. I actually blocked mine both because I wasn't really sure. The first one I did, I blocked it before I stitched it, and then I thought, oh, maybe I didn't really need to do that because when I stitched it together, I still wanted to block that little area, so I ended up blocking that part twice, which isn't really that big a deal. All right, so you're just going to seam these together, you just need your yarn. You're gonna fasten off with a long yarn tail, and you're going to just thread it on a yarn needle and you're gonna match it up. See how that little window should match up directly between these two windows right there. And you can pin this if you like, but I would recommend if you have those little sewing clips, those would work well. You can use safety pins also, but things kind of slide around, so I'm just gonna kind of hold them and you can tell whether you're matching it up as you go. You can tell whether those pieces belong. You can just match that window up with here and hold it with your finger, and then whip stitch these stitches together. So I'm just going through the top, the foundation chain, which is the top, and then the last row worked. I'm just doing a whip stitch by stitching into every stitch across, they should match up. Same amount of stitches, just like that. And this will make it look really, quite seamless. You probably won't even be able to tell where you had ended and where you began. Just like this. And after this, after I seam this, I'm going to talk a little bit about the blocking. So if- and that's all there is to this lovely cowl. The thing I loved about it so much was that it was just a really simple thing to make. And I wanted to teach a lace cowl that was very straightforward and could be made by any sort of adventurous or advanced beginner. But anyway, after I finish seaming this, I'll be talking about the blocking and then- so if you have any questions, you should get them in now because I will be ending this in just a little bit. So another thing I like about teaching a new stitch pattern while making a cowl, this is something that I've done a few times now. Cowls don't need to be absolutely, you know, they don't need to be made to a specific set of measurements. I mean, if it fits around your neck and you like how it looks, then you've succeeded. So I wanted to teach this particular stitch pattern, a lay stitch pattern on something that people could wear and use, and it wouldn't need to fit exactly perfectly. I mean, it will fit exactly perfectly on everyone. It doesn't need to be a very specific size is what I'm trying to say. All right, so this is probably gonna give you a good idea what this is gonna look like. That that little foundation chain is just gonna nest right down into all those little valleys. Just like that. And with a little bit of blocking, this will look just like any other part of the cowl. You won't even be able to tell where it is. So, and that's because we are stitching, you know, in the same color. But I'm gonna skip down to the end and show you, maybe you can see the difference between the two purples, but I'm just gonna fasten off here and then I'll show you what it looks like down here. You know, you'll be able to see a little tiny bit of the whip stitch going into the lighter purple color, but it's gonna blend in pretty well. If I was doing this with the lighter green and the very dark purple, you might be able to see not only where the whip stitches are. So you can kind of see them here showing up. But the thing that bothered me when I first did this was that my foundation chain, which is right here, was one color, and then this was a starkly different color the first time I had done this cowl. And then you could kind of see the edge of it right there. And so your eye would be led a little bit to that spot. You could see where you started and where you stopped. But I know I'm being very particular about my theme here. But I just want you to know when I learned on this project, in case that bothers you also, but you do not need to feel like that needs to bother you. It really doesn't. All right, so maybe you can see now, there's my whip stitches and you can see, you know, a little bit of this sort of brighter purple here nesting against the lighter purple. It does show up a little bit, but in these two colors it's nearly, I mean, it's not very noticeable, it's nearly invisible in these two colors, but if this was a lighter green color, you might actually be able to, that might distract you just a little bit. So if you're making this for yourself and you don't care about that, then you shouldn't care about that. But, you know, if you wanted to enter this in the state fair, then maybe you should think about that. All right, so you just steam it and then you can block that again. So let's talk a little bit about blocking. Let's see. And I wanna say hi to Teresa. She's watching from Portugal, and thank you for the compliment on the cowl. Yes, she likes the big cowl. I like it too. Let's see. And Ivan has a question, on your whip stitch as you finish the cowl, are you going through two loops of each stitch or just one? That's a good question. I was going through two, but you could just go through one. If you go through one, it will leave a little bit of an extra ridge, which is completely fine, but it won't be quite as sturdy. I was really going through, you know, two loops on that foundation chain, like two loops below my needle I should say, because you're pulling it down with those two loops and then two loops, basically two loops that are touching each other, you're going around those sets of two loops. But either way, it doesn't really, it doesn't make that much difference really. I don't think you'd really be able to notice it. It's just something you might wanna just start doing it through the two loops, and then if that bothers you, you can switch to one loop if you'd rather do it that way. So, and hello to Kelly Bauer. Hi Kelly. All right, so let's talk a little bit about blocking. So normally, well, a lot of people like to skip the blocking step. Let's just say that. I definitely did not block things for a very long time because I just thought my stitches were fine and I didn't worry about it. Because I read all these things saying, oh, it fixes your stitches. And I thought, well, my stitches are pretty even, I don't need to worry about that. But what I didn't realize was it does even them out a little bit more than I had thought, but also it can add drape to your acrylic projects if you block it with steam. So this is something that I never even realized until just a couple years ago actually, and I've been crocheting for a long time. I was blocking something and then I noticed, after I steamed it, it had so much more drape. I was actually making a hat, and I really did not like how stiff it was looking when I put it on my head, the stitches looked very nice, it was a cabled hat, and then I steamed it and then all of a sudden it had all this extra drape. And I thought, oh my gosh, I don't know why this didn't occur to me before. But what you're really doing when you're blocking something with steam, especially in acrylic, is you are getting the fiber to relax into the shape that you want it to be in. It's almost like you're kind of melting those little synthetic fibers and then letting them un-melt, whatever that is, in the shape that you want them to be in. So if you take a look at this newer cowl, this is the one we were just stitching up. This one has not been blocked. And, let's see, I'll try and show it in a way that you guys can tell. This one has been blocked. You can see that the holes have opened up a little bit more on this one. And if I pull this back and forth, maybe this will help you be able to understand what this feels like. I wish you could just reach out and feel these cowls through your screen, but unfortunately they haven't invented that technology yet. But if you just can kind of see what I'm doing, this is the blocked cowl and this is the unblocked cowl. So it doesn't have as much drape, it's not, when I pull here on the corner, let's do it at the same time. When I pull here on the corner, see how this one gets all sort of stretchy and kind of wiggles to that side. And this one's just a little more solid. It's, this one has been blocked, and it's all the holes are opened up, and it just really hangs so nicely. You know, I like it when you put a cowl on and you can just wrap it around your neck and then not worry about like adjusting it just so to make it hang, just so- and that extra little step of just using your iron to block it really helped. So when you're blocking it, if you wanna block it with steam, like I did. If you have an ironing board, you can just lay this over your ironing board in the loop and then you're going to put water in your iron and put it at a high heat so that you get a lot of steam, but you do not actually touch the iron to your fabric. You're not ironing the fabric like that, you're just steaming it a little bit above your fabric. And when you do that, you can kind of steam, steam, steam, pull the iron away for a minute, and then just pat it with your hand to kind of spread those holes out just a little bit and flatten it, you can shape it with your hand. Just be careful if you steam a lot, you know, you could actually burn your hand if you don't move the iron away and give it a second. So, you know, just be careful when you're first learning how to do this so that you understand how hot it is, you know, with the heat setting that you have and the steam you have. I just don't want anyone to burn themselves. but you're not actually touching your fabric with your iron, you are just hovering it above and sort of coating it with steam and letting the steam heat it and, you know, you're shaping it with your hand and sort of pulling it, stretching it out just a little bit. So that will help, definitely help with the drapes situation and I'll make it look super neat and tidy. All right, I'm just gonna double check and see if I answered everything. Can you put the completed cowl on so we can see what it looks like? Oh, okay, I could do that. I wanna just make sure that I'm not messing with my microphone here or the rest of this will be all miming. All right, so I'm just gonna wrap it twice, and then you just put it on. See and it looks good. It looks good. Just any- you know, you can make it a little shorter. You could actually wrap it twice, like three times around your neck if you wanted to, to make it closer to your neck. I'm just worried I'm gonna knock my microphone off, so I'm not gonna do that. But, you know, it hangs down to about here and it has a really nice drape, and then the colors all kind of hang nicely. Because of where the colors repeat, it's just, you know, you don't end up with when you wrap it around, you don't end up with all purple all the way across. You get a nice mixture of the colors next to each other when you just wrap it twice like that. So yes. And Linda was commenting that she likes the drape that I got from blocking. Yes, maybe there are gonna be more converts out there to the blocking thing. All right, I think I answered everybody's questions. I just wanted to say that I love doing these to tutorials and I'll have another one coming up in a couple of weeks, so watch for that. And please, you know, if you're ever watching one of my tutorials and you're like, I have a question, but I don't know, it might be dumb, maybe I won't ask it, just please ask me. Because in my opinion, there's no dumb questions, and somebody else out there is probably having the same question that you're having. So never be afraid to ask me questions on these things or just to say hi. And I just wanna say that I really appreciate you guys being here, and I look forward to our next tutorial together. So thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next time. Bye.