I’m making the single-loop cowl, with modifications inspired by Knapknits, to allow for a wider bottom edge. I started from the bottom, though, and made decreases, so the “swags” would look like smiles. I cast on 148 stitches using the cable cast-on.

Following Knapknits’ process in reverse, I :

• worked bottom edge in garter stitch
• worked rounds 11-19 of pattern, starting with color B (Teal, Too)
• decreased 12 at row 20 with color A (136 stitches)
• decreased 12 at row 10 of next (2nd) pattern repeat (124 stitches)
• decreased 12 at row 20 of 2nd pattern repeat (112 stitches)
• decreased 8 at row 10 of 3rd pattern repeat (104 stitches)
• decreased 8 at row 20 of 3rd pattern repeat (96 stitches)
• continued with 4th, 5th and 6th pattern repeats
• worked garter stitch top edge in color A

This should produce the same-shaped cowl.

Bind-Off. I used a standard knit bind-off to finish the top.

Design Decisions. The dark teal and light green in the Strata colorway were close to the teal in the Baby Bee Sweet Delight, but had enough contrast to let the frieze pattern show through most of the time (except when the dark teal was the swag color).

More problematic were the exceptionally long color runs in the DK Colors skein. The dark teal lasted through three full repetitions of the 20-row pattern. The cowl is still pretty. It just doesn’t have the variety of colors it would have had had the color runs been shorter.

I chose to cut the DK Colors yarn just before the top edge and finish it in the same camel color as the bottom edge. This meant skipping over the very end of the light green, the cream and the light tan.