New Year’s Day was when I started knitting this cowl. The yarn, a DK weight single ply alpaca/ silk blend that was hand spun, very soft and smooth begged for a stitch pattern to give it some texture. As my free form knitting progressed, I began to think about how I would rather wear a warm, cozy cowl in the winter as opposed to a bare necked holiday party frock. Those thoughts morphed into cowls as fashion accessories like jewelry, e.g. a cowl vs a string of pearls. And then I wondered whether one row in a contrasting color of bobbles linked by knitting might be a poor girl’s pearls. And so, the cowl evolved.