The Dance Like No One’s Watching cowl is inspired by my lifelong love of the ballet. Knit in the round using simple lace techniques, the cowl features delicate motifs inspired by the fluid movements and graceful lines of prima ballerinas past and present. Named for the stars who get lost in their dance because sometimes, we all need to get lost in the beauty of the moment…

I have designed the cowl in sections to make it a versatile project which is easy to adapt to your own taste and colour palette. It would be a perfect mini skein/scrappy project but also works beautifully when knit using a single skein of yarn. Notes on suggested ways to use colour are included in the pattern.

The cowl has been designed to be knit using a fingering weight yarn held together with a strand of Suri Silk Cloud lace weight yarn as this gives a delicate halo effect which adds to the overall theme of the design.

For the sample I used 4 mini skeins from West Green Loft Yarns in the colourways Chintz, Serendipity, Margot and Ballet Shoes. I used a total of 56g of fingering weight yarn (75% superwash merino/25% nylon) and 35g of Suri Silk Cloud (74% baby suri alpaca/26% mulberry silk).

It is also possible to knit the cowl in a single strand of DK weight yarn. Testers used 87g of DK weight yarn.

I have tried to give clear and simple instructions to help less confident knitters tackle the lace patterns within the design. Stitch markers are used to keep track of stitch counts at various points throughout.

Written instructions for the pattern are set out in table form with instructions being given for each row (even where they may be a repeat of an earlier row). Charted instructions are also given should you prefer to use these.