Fall Harvest Cowl

Hi everybody. I'm Brenda K.B. Anderson. Welcome to our live crochet event. And today I'm gonna be showing you guys how to work up the Fall Harvest Cowl. So you can download this free pattern, just check in the description or in the comments section, there's a link to get the Fall Harvest Cowl pattern. You can download that now, or you can do it later after you've watched this. And let me just go through the materials that you'll need first. You're gonna need about 280 yards of a worsted weight yarn. So I made one of my cows in a solid color and the other cowl that you can see that I'm wearing here, this one was made out of scraps. And we'll get into that later. But your 280 yards can come from scraps or it can be two different colors and you can stripe it, or it can be all in one solid color. So you'll need your worsted weight yarn and that has a, if you go to the store and look at the yarn label, it'll have a number on it. It'll say CYCA, which is Craft Yarn Council of America. And it has a number sign after that. So this should have a number four. So that's the number designator for a worsted weight yarn. That tells you how thick the yarn is. And so you will need that. You will need a crochet hook that gets you the correct gauge. And we'll talk about getting your gauge in just a minute. I used an A size eye hook, which is 5.5 millimeters. And you will need five inch piece of cardboard if you're planning to make the fringe on the cowl. You don't have to, that's optional, up to you. And you will need at least three stitch markers. They should be the locking kind of stitch markers. So they should be able to open. And it's helpful if you have them in at least two different colors, but it's not absolutely necessary. And that's okay. If you don't have any stitch markers, you can use safety pins or bobby pins or just something to designate, to mark your stitches. It helps you keep track that way you don't have to count 'cause this project is an awesome project for just watching a movie and sitting on the couch and just relaxing. It's very, very simple. Let's see. So let's get started. We'll talk about the construction of this cowl first. You're gonna be working back and forth in turn rows and you're gonna make a very long shape that looks kind of like a rectangle that's shorter on one end and longer on the other. So a long trapezoid shape, very simple. And then it will get seamed together. Here, let me show you here the seam is just right along here to form this kind of you know, cowl shape. It's got a little point at the bottom. It's somewhere between a cowl, a bandana, tiny little poncho for your neck. But I really like this shape 'cause I like that point at the bottom. I think it's kind of fun and it's really easy to wear. You just pop it on and you don't have to fuss with it. I love making shawls. Shawls are super fun to make, but I don't wear 'em very often to be honest because there's all this wrapping it around and making it stay in the right spot and having it look good all the time. So this is sort of my answer to that. The sort of no fuss, it's not a shawl, but it's a cowl that kind of looks like a shawl, like you're wearing a shawl. All right, so one other thing I wanted to mention was that I will be checking my computer to see if you have any questions or if you have any comments. You know, this is an interactive event, so please feel free to ask me comments, say hello, tell me where you're crocheting from, tell me what you're working on. You know, anything you wanna pop in and say, you're more than welcome to do that. I would love to hear from you. So I'll be monitoring that throughout the process here. All right, let's get started on this cowl. So I'm going to be, instead of making a cowl as long as you will be when you follow these directions, I'm just gonna make a small sample. So my sample is gonna be a lot shorter of a rectangle than what you will be making. So it won't look the same, but we're gonna be going through all the same stitches and the order that you're gonna do things and then I'll show you what it looks like on a larger sample that I've already crocheted up later. So you don't need to worry about that, but I just wanna mention that. So I'm making a super tiny version right here. So we'll begin with making a slip knot. So you'll curl your yarn around like this to make that little loop. You'll take the loop and flip it over onto the yarn that is connected to your ball. Here's my ball of yarn. And then you can put that on your hook and hold the two strands of yarn and you can pull on them till it's the right size. And you know, if you make your slip knot a different way, that's totally fine. You do not need to do it the way that I'm doing it. I'm just showing it in case you're very new to crochet because this project is very accessible for beginners. So then we're going to chain, you will chain 101 stitches. I'm going to chain just 30 here, two, three, four, five, six. To make the chain you just wrap it around and pull it through. Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. And then you're gonna add one extra stitch. So you chain 101 that includes your turning chain and I'm chaining 30 plus one, so 31, that includes my turning chain as well. So we're not going to be working into that very last chain that we made. One thing about chaining that extraordinary amount of stitches, if you are a more experienced crochet and you already know how to make a foundation single crochet stitch, you can just do you know, a 100 foundation single crochets and then do a chain at the end for your turning chain. If you have never heard of that, don't worry, you don't need to know how to do the foundation stitches. Those are just a little bit easier to make sure that you get the correct amount of stitches. But another thing I would recommend is just marking after you've done maybe 10 or 20 stitches, put a stitch marker in. So you know, 'cause I mean eventually you might lose track of how many you've done when you're doing a hundred, but if you put a stitch marker in every 20 then if you lose track, you only have to count back a few stitches to figure out where you're at. And another thing that I like to do, if I'm chaining and I'm like oh, did I do a hundred or did I do 99? I don't know. Then just add a couple extra chains at the end. It's not gonna hurt you to have extra chains because you can always undo those from the beginning. So you can work the you know, your chain to however long you want it to be, plus you can add a few more if you're just not sure. And then when you work your stitches all the way back, if you end up with some extras here, that's fine 'cause you can just undo those stitches. You can just pull 'em out at the end and then you won't need to worry about that and then you'll for sure have enough. All right, so I've done my 31 stitches, then we're going to begin working in the yarn over slip stitch pattern. Oh actually let me back up for a second and explain one thing about this pattern here. In the gauge section, so if you're new at crocheting and you've never made a gauge swatch, all that means is you are gonna make a little tiny sample of the stitch pattern and then you're gonna measure it to see if your stitches are about the size of my stitches with the same hook and the same yarn. If your gauge ends up being larger piece than mine, larger than four inches, then you're gonna wanna go down a hook size. And if your gauge swatch is bigger than mine, then you're gonna wanna go up a hook size until you can figure out about what size hook you should be using. For this project, I definitely recommend making a gauge watch because you are gonna be working back and forth in these super long rows. And if you've already done maybe 10 rows of this and then you realize that your gauge isn't right and your your cowl is ending up really small, it's not gonna be long enough. That's gonna be really frustrating. So it's better to just do a little tiny sample and figure out which hook to use to get the proper gauge so that you won't be disappointed after you've done 10 really long rows. 'Cause we're working in this the lengthwise way, so that makes every row take a lot longer. But of course you don't have as many rows to do so it's still quick, you don't have to worry about that. And one other thing I just wanna point out on this pattern here is right before we went live I realized that I needed to write this little abbreviation is for yarn over slip stitch, yarn over slip stitch, but it should have a BLP after it. It should say in yarn over slip stitch BLP blocked and BLP, that stands for back loop. So we're gonna be working the stitch pattern in the back loop and I'll get to that when I show it to you. But I just want you to just check your pattern and if it doesn't have a BLP there, just go ahead and write that in that space so that you know how to check your gauge. It's gonna be, you need to know your gauge as worked through the back loop. All right, so after you've worked your gauge swatch and you figured out your proper hook and then you chained on the appropriate amount of chains, which will be 101 for you, then we're gonna be working in the yarn over slip stitch pattern to begin with. And I like to begin working in the back of my chain or the bottom of my chain. So this can be a little confusing. You'll hear different terms used. Oftentimes there'll be different terms used for the same thing in crochet. It can be very confusing. But what I mean is I wanna work into, normally we work under these little Vs when we crochet. We put our hook underneath both of those Vs in the chain. But I flip my chain over so it's upside down like that and then I'll be working underneath these little dashes instead. And the reason I like to do that is 'cause it makes a super nice edge, it puts that little sort of braided V area on the edge of your piece and it looks nice and finished and it looks just like the ending, just like the last row that you will work to. So it has some nice symmetry there for your project. So we're gonna work into the bottom of the chain. We're skipping this first chain. We're gonna do a yarn over slip stitch, which is you'll yarn over your hook and then you're going to insert your hook underneath that second dash, yarn over, pull your loop through, and then you're gonna pull through two loops right away. Okay, we'll do that a few more times. So we'll yarn over, insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull through two. So we've done two yarn over slip stitches, yarn over, insert your hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, pull through two. There we have three. One, two, three. So we're gonna do seven more, for me. For you, you will be doing a total of 55 of the yarn over slip stitches. Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And actually I'm gonna be doing 20, not 10, I misspoke. There's a section in this cowl where it's all yarn over slip stitching and then it's all half double crochet at the other end. And in the middle it alternates between being a yarn over slip stitch and then a half double crochet. So that's what makes it gradiate from a a narrower piece to a slightly larger and then the largest here. So I'm gonna be working past that halfway point. That's why for you you're working 55 stitches, which is more than the halfway point of your 100 stitches. So remember we yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull up a loop, pull through two, yarn over, insert, yarn over, pull through two. So this is very similar to a half double crochet if you've done that before. But there's no extra yarn over when you pull up your loop, you just directly pull through those two. That's the difference there. All right, let me count my stitches here. Okay, I just have to do one more. And then the next stitch is going to be half double crochet. So we'll do yarn over, insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, and instead of just pulling through those two like we have been, we're gonna do another yarn over, and we'll pull through three like that. So in that very first yarn over stitch that you do in the first row, you're gonna put a stitch marker there. And this is gonna help you later so that you don't have to count. All the counting can be done after the first row and then you're gonna do half double crochets to the end. When I first made this pattern, I thought I didn't really have a plan on writing it up because it was so super simple. I thought oh maybe, I mean, I don't know, it was, seemed too easy for something that people would want a pattern for. And then I was like what are you thinking? Like people wanna do easy projects too. They don't just wanna be you know, sometimes even like experienced crochets wanna have something to do you know, to crochet something that looks really nice, but not have a lot of effort, right. And I thought, oh of course, there's people who are new to crocheting, like don't forget. So I thought this would be a really good project to demonstrate before the holidays when you wanna make some low stress gifts for people. All right, so at the end, sorry, I should have mentioned, let me back that up here. I've done my half double crochets across to the end. And then I'm gonna do, I like to do my turning chains before I turn my work, but you can turn your work first and do your turning chains if that's how you like to do it. So I'm gonna do two turning chains and on on this project, I do my turning chains a little bit tight and that keeps the edges of my work from stretching out. But I'm doing two chains for this half double crochet because I'm doing half double crochet on this end, I do two chains here and then I'm gonna turn my work and then now I'm going to work back in the opposite direction. And this time I'm gonna start with my half double crochets and then I'm gonna work past the halfway point and then I'm gonna switch to the yarn over slip stitch pattern. And from now on out you're just gonna be working through the back loop only. Oh, let me just take a look here. Looks like we might have some questions or comments. Oh, thank you Kay. She says can't wait. This scarf is so beautiful. Thank you for saying that. I'm glad you're excited. Could you extend this pattern to end up with a poncho? You absolutely could. Yes. You would have to just figure out, let's see, I think you would just have to figure out how much longer you need it to be. It might not be wide enough though. You might need to make it wider. I think, well I'll have to think about that a little bit more, maybe have a better answer towards the end of this video. But I think you would have to, if it was kind of a shorter poncho, I think it would work. But you know, it might not. I think you might have to make it longer, like you said, extend it. You'd have to make the strip longer but then also make more rows. You'd have to make it bigger altogether in order to have enough room to go around your shoulders. Oh, and somebody, Judy's asking if the scarf that I'm wearing is a crocheted one and did I make it? Yes. And actually this scarf is the exact same scarf that I'm making here. So we'll get to talking about the striping later 'cause I know you guys might have some questions about it, but this is exactly what I'm making. It's the same exact pattern. And Tammy is asking, what size does this pattern? 101 chain stitches make what size? Oh, like what I'm guessing you mean what length? What length of a piece does it make? It's in your pattern, let's see, I list the dimensions of the piece you'll end up with. Let's see here. Okay, so the finished measurements are right here. So the width of this very long piece is gonna be 26 and a half inches before we seam it together. I think that's what you're asking. If that was not what you were asking, then definitely jump back in here and let me know. All right, so back to this. I've done my two turning chains and we're gonna do half double crochets through the, just the back loop. So we'll do a half double crochet, which is a yarn over, we're gonna insert through the back loop. So that is normally we work underneath both of these loops here when we do our stitches. But we're working just under this back loop here and that's what creates the sort of stretchy corrugated looking ribbing texture. So we're gonna yarn over, insert our hook underneath that back loop, yarn over, pull up a loop and then we'll yarn over and pull through three. We'll do that again. Yarn over, insert your hook through just that back loop, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through three. Now we're gonna continue this across and you will be working 55 of these half double crochets worked through the back loop. And then you'll place another stitch marker. I'm just working 20 'cause I'm doing a tiny sample. Oops. And when you get to the stitch marker here that you placed, you're just gonna remove it just for a minute while you do the stitch in it, and place it right back. You're just ignoring, I mean you're not changing your stitch pattern. when you get to that first marker. You're gonna be paying more attention on the second marker. All right, let's see. Count my stitches in just a second, see if I've done enough. So, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. So for you, remember that you don't have to care about 20, you just have to care about 55. You're gonna be doing 55 of those stitches and then you're gonna switch to the yarn over slip stitch through the back loop. So yarn over, insert your hook through that back loop, yarn over, pull up a loop, and pull directly through those two. And then at that point, when you switch to your next stitch pattern right there, you're gonna mark that stitch. Okay, so we have two stitch markers in the middle of your work. You know, you'll have a very long space off to this side and you'll have a long space off to this side and then a little section in the middle where there's two stitch markers. And those are gonna help you keep track of where to change your stitch pattern. So from here on, from this marker on back to the end of the row, you're just gonna do a yarn over slip stitch through that back loop, to the very end. And this time, because we ended on the, this is the end of our piece that is the yarn over slip stitch pattern. So that end is going to be a little shorter because the stitch height is shorter. You can already see that's starting to happen a little bit here. This is a little taller, this is a little shorter. Just remember when you're at the shorter end, you're gonna do one turning chain and at the taller end you're gonna do two turning chains and work your turning chains tightly on this piece. So it doesn't have to be so tight, you have trouble getting your hook through, but maybe just tighten it up a little more than you normally would. So what that means for me is I pull on this before I do my turning chain, I just pull on this yarn to make sure my loop around the hook is pretty close to the hook and then I pull through. And that'll just help keep your piece from distorting. It actually isn't as super important on this end that it's tight because this is gonna be seamed, this is the end that's going to have the seam on it when you connect it into a circle. This end is a little bit more important because it just makes it look a little neater and tidier. You can, if you want to for half double crochets, some people norm will just normally do one turning chain, which is completely fine. If you'd like to do that at the end, that is completely fine. It'll make your turning chain a little bit shorter and kind of cinch up that end. But lately I've been enjoying doing two, but doing two tightly because I feel like it just makes the edge look a little bit tidier for some reason. So either way, doesn't matter, just just make sure that this isn't getting too stretched out here. So we'll do turning chain, turn our work, or you can turn your work and then do your turning chain. And then we're gonna continue working in this pattern back and forth. So because we started at the skinnier side, we're gonna be working the shorter yarn over slip stitches and we're gonna ignore this. We're just gonna take the stitch marker out, continue working your yarn over slip stitches all the way until you get to this stitch marker. And that will tell you to change to the other stitch pattern. So it's always gonna be paying attention to that second stitch marker. So I'm doing my yarn over slip stitches, oops, got a little tripped up there. And we're continuing to work in that back loop. And let me just show you, this can be a little confusing to look at because if you've never worked in the yarn over slip stitch pattern, this may surprise you. But there's a V right here on the front of your work that was actually on the back of your work when you were working it from the front side. But there's a V here, but then there's also a V here up on top. That is the V that I'm talking about where you work through the back loop. So don't get confused by this and work under this loop, just make sure you're actually looking at the top of your chain and if you're confused about where the top of your work is, if you're looking at this and you're like I don't know, is this the top of my work? Is this the top of my work? What's the top of my work? I don't know. If you can't figure it out, one thing that can help teach you is this V will always point to where you came from when you work that row. So when you worked this row, you were actually looking at your piece in this direction. See how the point of the V, it goes in this direction. That's because that's where you came from. If that helps. 'Cause I know sometimes that can be very confusing, especially with stitches you haven't done before. And with stitches that end up having something that looks very similar to that top V when it appears on the side of your stitch, it can be confusing. Like is that the top? Is that the side? I don't know what that is. All right, so I'm continuing my yarn over slip stitch pattern. Here we are. I just took the marker out so I could work in that stitch and you can try working into that stitch without removing the marker, but then you will have to take the marker out to replace it into the new stitch that you made. Sometimes I will do that just to make it a little easier. But just remember, move up your markers every time you work into 'em, just put 'em into the stitch you just made so that you don't lose track. All right, so here we are almost at that second marker and we're starting to see our ribbing pattern emerging a little bit here. Here's that second marker. So we're gonna take that out and that is to tell us to switch to the new pattern. Okay, so we're gonna do the half double crochet through that back loop and replace our stitch marker and continue to the end of the row. And remember at the taller end of the row, you're gonna do the taller turning chain. So you'll do two instead of one. There's our last stitch and we'll do two and then you would turn your work and continue. So every time you work across the row, you start with whatever stitch it looks like. So these are taller. So you're gonna know that those are half double crochets. You'll start with the half double crochet and you work all the way across to the second marker and switch to the other stitch pattern. So you always start with what you have and you don't switch until the second marker. So you'll work back and forth and back and forth. I think there's 28 rows, let's see, yeah, 28. But you know, you can make it longer or shorter. What that'll make, what that'll change is it'll change just the width of your piece. You know how tall your cowl ends up being. So just make sure if you add or subtract any rows that you're doing it in even numbers. So in sets of two. Then you will end up with a piece that looks like this rectangle. Okay, see how it's longer at this end, shorter at this end, like the width is different, but it's a very long rectangle. And let me put my hook back in here. And once you've done that, we are going to prep the edge of this. This is gonna get seamed. Let's see, you're going to be seaming your piece like this, that kind of a seam. But we're gonna do that with crochet instead of sewing. And this is a really nice way to make it look neat and tidy. Before I seam things together, if I'm seeming an edge that is the ends of rows like this, these are the edges of your rows, I will stitch into that to make a neat and tidy edge first and then I'll seam it together. So after you've gotten, this is my very last row that I worked. You don't need to turn, but you're just gonna rotate your work and then you're gonna work across this edge. So we'll chain one that doesn't count as anything, that's just kind of helping us get around the corner. And then we are going to do a single crochet stitch into each ridge and each valley, I like to call them. So you know, 'cause these are, the texture is all these sort of stripes of stacked up Vs. And then there's a little valley in between them. So you're going to be doing a stitch into this ridge, a stitch into the space between ridges. So this valley. A stitch in the next ridge, a stitch in the space between ridges. You're gonna do that all the way across. And we're doing single crochets. So we'll insert our hook right into that edge. We're putting it right in that ridge. And if you put your hook right here, then it will kind of blend in with these V stitches. I'll show you in a second when I do my stitch. We're just gonna place our hook right through there, yarn over and pull up a loop, yarn over, and pull through two. We'll do two more stitches and then we'll take a look at it. So we're gonna work into that valley. So we will insert our hook, yarn over, pull up a loop, yarn over, pull through two. And we're gonna insert our hook into that V right there. The last V we see. You can put it in here too, that's fine. So just pick one or the other. This one kind of curls around the back. So if you miss it and stitch into this one, it's fine. It's not gonna, no one will ever notice. Okay, so we insert our hook, yarn over, pull it through two. So we'll just take a look at these. See how, here's your column of Vs right here. When you made your single crochet, it just sort of extended it. It made it one extra V right here and then a nice loop across the top. And that's gonna give us an easy way to seam this to the opposite edge. So we're just gonna continue working one single crochet. Oh, and let me explain. When you're working into the edges of your stitches, it's really easy to see a big hole and think I'm gonna fill that hole in. That's gonna take up some space, and it'll make it look better. But what I like to do is find a space that's where it's a little harder to get my hook through and it makes it a little bit tighter. And that way when you make the stitch, it doesn't stretch out and make a larger hole, which is what can happen sometimes. So I'm just working into those Vs, into those ridges, and into the space between the ridges. One single crochet into each. So this is a technique I like to use when I'm seaming other things together. Like if you make a sweater and you have to sew one piece to another piece and you have to sew one of the edges or two of the edges is these ends of rows. It can be a little bit messy looking and hard to figure out where to put your needle when you're sewing it. So, or if you're doing, if you're crocheting them together, making a crocheted seam, it can be a little tricky. So I would, oftentimes I will make one little, like a little border like this, a little single crochet border to sort of help make a tidy edge. And so then I have all these stitches to sew to, or crochet into. All right, we're nearing the edge. Just a couple more stitches here. One more in the valley and one more in the ridge. Okay, we've made it all the way across this edge and it's okay, see how this is just stretching on my edge just a little tiny bit here. That's okay. If you, if you were doing this and you wanted to sew it to something and you didn't wanna stretch out your edge at all, then you can use a smaller hook to do this. If you're finding that it's you know, pulling, flaring out just a little bit like, here, let me move this out of the way so you can see a little better. It's not flaring out that much, but just a little bit. You can definitely use a smaller hook and make those stitches a little smaller. But for the purpose of this, I left it because we're going to be seeming it to something else where it's spaced about the same. This does need to flare out just a little bit to match up with the other stitches. So it's working in our favor this time. All right, so when you have worked your very first row, in the pattern it says to put a stitch marker in the bottom of your foundation chain. I forgot to mark that in my sample here, but there should already be a stitch marker here if you followed the pattern. That was in the very first row that you like, the bottom of the very first row that you ever worked to show you where, so that you know how to wrap this edge around and seam it together. Let's see. Oops. Oh, I think I may have worked one fewer row here. Let me just check 'cause I'm ending up on the opposite side. I should have ended up on the, it should be going like this, like this and I should have ended up over here. So let me think for a second. Let me just take a look at the pattern, figure that out. Let's see, place stitch marker in the first half double crochet and then we work 28. Let's count our rows. And actually this will be good for teaching you guys how to count the rows if you haven't done that already. Let's see. So this would be the first row, the second row is a groove. So here's the first row, second row. So we'll count Two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28. All right. So that's correct. And maybe we needed to place our marker right here. Okay. Let's see. Okay. Sorry, apologies for that. All right, so if you ended up working until, let's see, all right, we should have put a stitch marker right here in the first stitch of that last row. So when, let me see, let me back this up. So this was our last row that we worked up at the top here. We started here and we worked across to here and then we turned and worked across to here. So back here, this is where we needed to put our stitch marker. So I'll correct that on the pattern if it isn't correct. I will look at this again afterwards and make sure that it's in the correct place. But just know that on the very last row that you're working, you're gonna put a stitch marker right here. So that's gonna help you match up your piece. After you've worked across your edge, you're gonna match it up to that, where that stitch marker is here. Okay. So you're going to place the seam, or you're gonna be working across in this direction. So you're gonna put the very, the stitch marker right in front of where you had just worked. And we're going to slip stitch these two layers together and we're gonna work through the front loop of the layer in front and then the back loop of the layer in back. So that way we're only working under two loops. Let's see, we'll do one chain, that doesn't count as anything. That's just gonna give us a little extra height and make it easier to get our hook where we want it to go. So this, like I was saying on the front row here, you're gonna work through the front loop that's right here. And then on the back row, which is where you just ended up, your decorative edge, you're gonna work through the back loop here. So that way we're only only working through two loops. It won't get super bulky. They're the loops that are furthest away from each other. Okay, so we'll insert our hook here, insert our hook here, yarn over, pull your loop through those two and the loop on your stitch. And we're gonna continue that across to seam it. So front loop, back loop, yarn over, pull through, pull through. Front loop, back loop, pull through, pull through. Front loop, back loop, pull through, pull through to create this nice slip stitch edge here. And if you prefer to seam this, you can seam it, you can just fasten off with a very long tail and you could do a whip stitch seam or another kind you know, a mattress stitch or some other, another kind of stitch across here. But I like how it looks with this little extra rated edge. It just makes us look really neat and tidy. So that's why I wanted to prep that edge and seam these two together with my crochet hook. Plus I just enjoy crocheting and I do enjoy sewing too, but I know some people would really rather not sew anything on their crocheted pieces. So, I try to avoid that in some projects so that way people can just crochet it all and not have to sew if they don't want to. All right, we are almost there. Just a few more stitches and then I'm gonna show you how I like to reinforce the very edge of my seam while I weave in my end. Because this, where it seamed together, it can get a little bit of stress on the very top of that seam. You know, 'cause you're pulling it on and off over your head and you know, if you might be careful with the things that you crochet, but if you make this for a gift for someone else, they're not gonna be, probably not going to be delicately pulling it on and off their heads. I just imagine my children and the things I crochet for them and no, they're not gonna be careful. So we're gonna reinforce that just a little so it doesn't get stretched out. All right, so now you can take a look at that seam that we just did. It looks so nice and you can just fasten off. You don't need a lot of, you don't need a very long yarn tail, maybe you know, six or 10 inches or so. And then we will just, I will show you how to whoops, I forgot to fasten off, I just cut my yarn. Okay, so to fasten enough you're just gonna yarn over and pull right through. And see how you know, where this is seamed, it can get, it can pull a little here and then it makes that one little strand and a little hole and it just, I don't know, it just kind of bothered me a little bit when I saw how it was pulling on those. So what I did to make it a little sturdier is I went with my needle. I'll put this against the white. I just went back and forth a little bit between the two fabrics underneath that edge. So you don't wanna necessarily, I mean I guess actually that doesn't look too bad to go over the top, but I was seeming underneath this, the thickness of the seam, just sliding my needle through there and then grabbed a little part of the stitch underneath the post a bit I guess, and came up into the next stitch over here underneath that seam that we just did. Just back and forth a couple of times like that. And see now when you pull on it, it doesn't make that little loop space there. It's nice and solid. It's not gonna stretch out. And then to weave your ending, you can just flip your piece over. And then I like to go back and forth at least in two directions, just kind of weave your needle along one ridge for a little ways and then come back along another ridge at least in two or three directions because that makes it a little bit less likely that it's gonna unravel on you or that the tail's gonna pop out. So I'll go through this one one more time. And I just wanna show you, if you are not planning on adding the fringe, or even if you are, this is a pretty reversible cowl. So we just made that seam and look at how this is the inside. This is what I call the wrong side 'cause I just like the other side just a little bit better, but it really looks nice on the inside or the outside. It's kind of nice that way so you don't have to worry. It doesn't need to be a fussy piece that you know, you can pull it on and off your head and not worry about which way it's facing. One thing I forgot to mention is before you do this seam, when it is a long trapezoid shape, it's the best time to block it really because then you don't have to worry about there being folds when you're blocking it. So blocking it just means you can get it wet, squeeze out the water, lay it on a towel, and let it dry. Just sort of shape it with your hands, or this is mostly acrylic, the yarn that I chose. I prefer to block my acrylic things just with steam. So you just fill up an iron with some steam and just sort of hold it over your project and shoot a little steam onto it to kind of relax the fibers. And the purpose of blocking, it just makes things look a little bit neater and tidier. If you're happy with how this looks as is, I feel like this piece you could probably get away without blocking if you like how it looks. You don't need to, you don't have, it's not like mandatory. I'm not gonna come to your house and check to see if you blocked your cowl. I will never know. So that's up to you. Then the last thing I wanted to show you before we talk about the variation that I'm wearing is how to make the fringe. Let me just check and see if there's any, doesn't look like we have any extra comments. Okay. So the fringe is just little strands of yarn that we tie along the edges. And on this version, I made the fringe go all the way around the whole thing, even on the back. But the version that I'm wearing here, I just put the fringe along the edge, that was the my half double crochet edge here, let me show you on this piece so it makes more sense. But here on the half double, this is your half double crochet section right here. And here's the edge that I put the fringe on. I just put it on in that area 'cause I thought it looked kind of good either way and I couldn't decide which way I liked better. So I did one way, one, one way and one the other way. So you can have two examples and see what you like. But I'll just be demonstrating putting the fringe on and I'll talk about how to do it all the way around the whole thing so that you know how to do that if you want your fringe to go all the way around. So to make your fringe, you're just gonna take your yarn and you're gonna wrap it around this cardboard a whole bunch of times. If you're doing it all the way around your whole cowl, I think it's like 132 times I say. In the pattern it's written down. But if you're not putting fringe around the whole thing, it'll be considerably less. So we're just gonna, I just wrapped it a few times so that I can show you. So, and you can put, you know, as many strands or as few as you want. If you're running out of yarn or you don't want fringe as thick as mine, you can do fewer than three. But in my, in this the mustard version here, I did three strands of yarn and it looks like six here because you see both ends of the fringe. So I'll show you how to do that. I'm just gonna show you with, here's three strands of yarn and I wrapped it around my cardboard. That is, the cardboard is five inches wide. That's also written in your pattern. But if you wanted longer fringe you can use a wider cardboard or if you want narrower fringe you can use a narrower cardboard. But the location where the fringe comes out, I put my fringe right here at the end of each half double crochet row where those little Vs are. So I just inserted my hook through there. You can go from back to front or front to back. It doesn't make a difference. And then you'll just lay the center of your three pieces of fringe across your hook and you might need to kind of pull back on these to keep 'em from sliding off your hook, make 'em nice and tight against your hook and then pull it through. And once you get a loop you can put your fingers in the loop and only pull through three ends. So you have here, this is a little confusing 'cause that's my beginning yarn tail. So just ignore the beginning yarn tail, but actually you can include your beginning yarn tail into your fringe, so you don't even have to weave that in, but we're not gonna put it, we're not gonna put it on this piece of fringe. We'll put it on the next piece of fringe, which will be down here in the corner. So then you'll match up your edges, make sure they're about the same. If you have one that's like extra long like this one, that's okay, you can trim it off, you can do it now or later, doesn't matter. But if everything else is close to the same amount in length, you'll just make a knot like this And tuck all those in. And then gently just hold that knot in place while you pull it down and straighten it out. So you'll be putting one of those pieces of fringe along each ridge in your half double crochet. And then after you've worked across and done your fringe all the way across here, if you wanna do fringe around the whole thing, then you will start here on the very corner. Let's see here, we've got three more pieces of fringe. So we'll do another one right here in the corner. So we'll insert our hook, pull through the yarn, and just hold onto one side, pull the other side through, even out your ends. And then this time I'm going to include that extra yarn tail so that I don't have to weave it in. Some people might call that lazy, but I call that using your resources. And so then we will just pull on that gently keep the knot up here. Okay, you don't have to make the knot super tight, you know, but you do want it tight enough that if you throw it in the wash, if you're gonna wash this or if you hand wash it, it's not gonna undo itself. So then we'll just trim off that beginning yarn tail right there. So after you've worked a piece of fringe in each one of these, as you're working around, you're going to skip two stitches along the edge and then in the third one, that's where you'll insert your hook and put your next little tassel of fringe right there. And then you can just continue that all the way around. You'll end up over here and you know, if you end up with one here and then there's four stitches, you can decide if you wanna put an extra piece of fringe in there or not. You know, just use your own judgment of the fringiness right there next to your seam 'cause it may get a little bit hard to see with those stitches on the end. So that is what you need to know to be able to make the mustard cowl. So just really quickly, we're gonna talk about what to do for the variation that I'm wearing because I know when I worked on the, when I did the live demo for the Bijou headband, there were a lot of questions later about how to join your yarn for doing the stripes. 'Cause I don't know if you've been watching my other videos, you may know already that how much I love using up scraps. I love using my scraps up and I like making multicolored things and just the feeling of, you know, taking something that you know, you may have thrown away if you were somebody else, but you saved it and you can make something really awesome out of it. So oftentimes I like to make scrappy projects, but I wanted to let you know that there is you know, basically have the tools on how to add your own yarns to it. So for this piece, the piece that I'm wearing, I switched off my color every two rows. So what I did, let's see, we'll start with this sample here. Imagine you just worked your, you did your chain and then you worked your very first row in the same color as your chain. Then at that point you've ended at the half double crochet section, then you would fasten off. And when you fasten off, make sure you make your strand long enough so that you can incorporate it into the fringe. So you'll just cut your yarn. Here, let me get rid of the stitch marker here. So you can just yarn over, pull through to fasten off just like that. And then when you start your next color, if you're going to stripe like I did and do two rows, that makes the fringe very efficient. So you will flip your piece over and then you're gonna pull up a loop in that. Remember we're just working through that back loop. Leave your yarn strand long enough to be incorporated into the fringe and you'll pull up a loop and then you'll do your turning chain one, two, and then you'll continue working in your stitch pattern. So we're gonna do half double crochets across through that back loop. Always through the back loop. And then here I'll work a few more. So this will be a little easier to see. So you would continue working your you know, your new color all the way across the whole edge of your scarf. And you'll turn around and then you'll do your yarn over slip stitch pattern and come all the way back. So just imagine that I did that here. So I'm just gonna turn and show you what it would look like as you were on your way back. So you've already worked your stripe all the way down here, and then you get back to your half double crochet section, like that. And then you can just fasten off and make sure when you fasten off that your yarn tail again, is long enough to incorporate into the fringe. Let's see. So well fasten off. So I know this looks a little strange here because I didn't go all the way down and come back, but I know you can imagine that part. So basically the point that I'm trying to make is if you do every two rows, in each color, then you end up with all your yarn tails where the fringe is instead of at this end. Because if it's at this end, this is the end that you have to seem to something else and then you'll have to weave in all those ends, which is fine. So if you wanted to do, if you wanted to change every single time, every single row, that's fine, you can do that. But just know that you're going to have to weave in all of those ends. But if you leave them, if you only change your yarn at the beginning of the half double crochet and ending at the half double crochet end, then you can incorporate that into your fringe. You just add your fringe onto the end, remember to grab that when you're making the knot, and then you don't have to weave in all those extra ends. And it makes it super easy, and it's really fun to have a scrappy project. It's like a little remembrance of a whole bunch of projects that you have made before. So it's another reason I like those. Oh, looks like we might have a couple questions or comments. Barbie says looks like a lot of fun to make. Thank you, Barbie. It is super fun. This is actually my third one. All the versions are so pretty says Jen. Thank you very much. And Nancy says she's gonna try this one tonight. Thank you for being such a good teacher and sharing so many tips. Thank you, Nancy. That means a lot to me. That was very kind of you to say. All right, and Kim says beautiful, love the one you're wearing. Thank you Kim. All right, well I'm so happy that you guys could join me today. I'm excited to see what you guys make. So please post pictures on social media. I really love seeing the stuff that you guys can come up with, especially variations on things that I design. That's really exciting to me. So good luck on your cowls and have a really awesome Thanksgiving if you're in the US. And thank you so much for joining me. Bye.