I have recently been knitting some cowls and I’ve had the idea that I would like to knit one top down with a short funnel neck and incorporating a completely top-down version of the shoulder shaping of Apple Blue, Sea Green (by Atelier Alfa) to create a seamless, fitted garment that stays in place over the shoulders. I want it to have very sparse decorative elements: an icord neck edging, an icord across each shoulder, a wide, split hem at the bottom. I don’t have enough left of the wild silk to make it entirely from that (even though I would love to), so I will do some sort of stripe combination b/w it and multiple strands of very fine Colourmart yarns held together (two of the silver silk and one of the pinkish alpaca). I hope it works!

I came up with a sort of variation on shawl shaping to start the neck with the icord edge. I used JMCO to cast on three stitches on each needle tip, then I cast on a single stitch using the backwards loop method b/f slipping all stitches onto the left needle tip. Make sure to have right side facing you, knit 3, cast on one via backward loop, k1, backward loop, k3
Turn, slip 3, backward loop, p3, backward loop, slip 3
There is a backward loop cast on stitch b/w the three icord stitches and the other stitches at each end on every row
Turn, k3, blco, k1, M1L, k1, M1L, k1, M1R, k1, M1R, k1, blco, k3
Turn, s3, blco, p11, blco, s3
Turn, k3, blco, k13, blco, k3
Turn, s3, blco, p

…
So, I was aiming for a funnel neck but that wasn’t what I ended up with - not to worry, though, b/c I like it anyway! The most important thing I learned from this was that this method of construction will definitely work, it just needs a few adjustments.

The most expedient way of creating the icord-edged top down funnel neck is probably to do the icord to the length that will go over your head and then knit straight down to the required length. If you really want to do the shawl-like start, then do only a few rows and then do sets of short rows to lengthen the icord to the correct length on one side and then the other side of the initial shawl part. I might try this at some point. I think funnel necks need to be reasonably firmly knit in order to stand up, too.

I need to figure out the best way of figuring out how many stitches are needed to be included in the back neck continuation into the body. It might be worth knitting these stitches tbl in order to provide some stabilisation to the neckline and shoulder shaping. In this particular project I didn’t twist the stitches and I also think I included too many stitches across the back of the neck. Must remember to do double incs at each end across the back shoulders. Also, around 3 lots of extra incs (over the first 6 rows) halfway b/w the edge and the midline seems to aid in the shoulders sitting nicely. The icord across the shoulder line should work well. I created it by adding a backward loop cast on stitch b/w the last two back neck stitches and then slipping the first and last three stitches every WS row of the back shoulder construction.

I had issues with the front shoulders and also with joining the new knitting to the already knit neck stitches.