Beginner’s Brioche Cowl

One of my challenges this year was to learn new techniques. Brioche has been at the top of my list for a long time. There are so many lovely patterns out there. I even have a fair few in my ravelry library. A large number of those are by my favourite designer Stephen West. Yet I have knit a total of zero. I mentioned in my last post that I was inspired by Fruity Knitting’s latest podcast and interview with Nancy Marchant. I had hoped to join the lace brioche knit along but I’m realistic enough to realise that’s not going to happen. It did encourage me though to finally give brioche a try.

I picked out a pattern called Brioche for Beginners by Emma Galati which is a free to download on ravelry. I had lots of leftover yarn from my hat and my sister’s socks. Both Hedgehog Fibres sock yarn. I thought they would go well together although I assumed I would have nowhere near enough to do a full cowl. Thankfully I was wrong and my sister now has a new cowl. The pattern is very easy to follow and the instructions are very clear. I didn’t have to go to YouTube to understand what I was doing. So if you want to learn Brioche and are looking for a very simple pattern I highly recommend this. You can even do what I did and use up your scraps.

I actually had to start again a few times with this pattern. Nothing to do with the design. The first time my yarn loving cat had managed to open my zipped knitting bag and she created a pull in it so large there was no way I could fix it. Unusually the yarn was left undamaged as she found a leftover ball of yarn to play with so the cowl was left largely ignored after that (I’m assuming). My second cast on was actually a lot neater so she did me a favour, I suppose. I then got halfway back to where I had been when a stitched dropped off the end of one of my DPN’s. Normally I would be able to fix this but not with something this new to me. So I switched to a circular needle which was one size bigger than the pattern stated. It meant that my stitches were looser and the cowl is a little untidy looking. I’m not sure blocking would fix it. I’m not bothered by it though as I did it purely to learn and getting a full cowl out of my leftover yarn was a bonus. I hadn’t expected.

Overall I am pleased with the he result. Next step is to try some of the more complicated patterns I have purchased over the last few years. There are a lot more brioche stitches out there that I need to learn.