Blackberry Bramble is a cozy cowl that allows you to pair up some colors and have fun with simple stranded colorwork. It’s a great intro piece to working motifs in the round.

The design chosen is from MaryJane Mucklestone’s directory of 150 Scandinavian Motifs, which is a great resource for anybody who wants to play with color (As are all of her books! Get them and play.)

This design reminded me of Moorish tile, and I love how it’s both geometric and rounded at the same time. It’s a simple design with just a couple of tweaks for fun. I worked the cowl in panels, keeping the length of the sections off kilter, so they don’t line up exactly when worn - and I alternated colors on the solid sections to add a little more contrast. Plus, there’s a little pop of color in there for an additional surprise.

The soft fiber and nice weight of the Primo makes for a super cozy and substantial cowl when worked as a tube. If subbing, you want something you like against your skin, and a solid or semi solid will show the colorwork off best.

It’s very easy to adjust this pattern for either length or width, and the gauge in a cowl is very forgiving, so feel free to sub other Plucky bases and weights of yarn if you have them in stash.

• I had to pick one weight, so went with worsted, since my gauge is a worsted gauge at 5/7 per 1”. If there was a way to choose Worsted and/or Aran, I would have. As stated above, you can use either and do not need to hit exact dimensions given.

The model in the pics is the lovely Sonia Ruyts, who owns Stash - a fabulous yarn shop in Corvallis, OR. We shot these at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood while on the Lantern Moon Retreat. So. Much. Fun. :)