Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated read time: 4 minutes

Sometimes you just want a look for the season. A theme, if you will. A way to say to the world, “I seriously do not need your fast fashion nonsense. I have struck out on my own and will be setting my own fashion trends now! Even if it is just me, it’s my micro trend, and I will embrace it to the fullest extent that I can.”

Enter Adia’s lizard cowl era. 

My children have always more or less set their own style. Adia wore long dresses that I sewed because she couldn’t find the sort of acid trip fairy dresses she desired in the stores. These dresses were a lesson in patience and perseverance and a demonstration of why I absolutely hate sewing. I only make top down sweaters now. That’s how much I hate sewing. It’s not the creation of two identical pieces in crochet that kills me, either. I can do that. No. It’s the very act of attaching one bit of a thing to another bit of a thing with a needle and thread. I just hate it. 

Hannah, meanwhile, sews at 13 plus stitches to the inch because of course she does. I take this as a sign that it is possible to sew well if one tries hard and works at it. I will do neither.

So when Adia brought me a pile of yarn and asked for lizard cowls, I was not surprised. This is how my children go with clothing, from childhood into adulthood. The first cowl has not been recorded for the blog and I would have to remake it to explain it because there was some sort of bizarre magic to the increase. It worked but I feel like it should not have and if we look too closely the entire cowl will dissolve. I have been taking notes on the rest of them. 

This newest cowl is not as elaborate as the others I’ve made. Instead of the frilled look, this time I went with more of a resting lizard look. It’s just a relaxed tube with a bumpy stitch, but I think it gives that sort of too much skin look that some lizards have around their necks. The stitch pattern is loosely based on my misinterpretation of the Pebble Lace stitch in Crochet Stitches Visual Encyclopedia. 

It’s really simple to work because there is no shaping. You make a nice row of foundation double crochets to start and then just work the rest of the cowl in repeating turned and joined rounds until you want to stop and attach the two rounds of border to the top. Even that is not complex. I just made the top look like the bottom. The complex bit of the top border is the set up row, and that is just working a single crochet into a chain 4 space and then chaining 4 before you do it again. This is an easy project. 

If you want to give it a try, I used a hank of rambouillet, fingering weight yarn and a 4.25 mm hook, but you are welcome to adjust the pattern to your personal favorites. (Yarn note: This yarn was plied and spun a bit tighter than many other yarns that I work with. A smaller hook was yielding a stiff fabric, even with the open quality to this stitch pattern, thus I used a bigger hook than I might have selected otherwise.)  I made my cowl about twenty-four inches around so it can go over one’s head without mussing one’s hair but still be warm and cozy around the neck. I used up almost the whole hank, so I didn’t even add appreciably to my remnants jar. A happy and easy project!

My notes are included with this post. If you try it out, drop me a picture. I would love to see what you create. If you have a question, let me know.