This is seriously one of my most favourite FOs for a long time. 😀

This is the Duotone Cowl by Orange Flower Yarn. It is a fairly simple pattern but the ultimate beauty of it is the yarn. The precious, precious yarn. Voolenvine Yarns Smitten DK.

I’d had the two skeins of yarn in my stash for a while. They colourways are Jilted Rose (the soft burgundy/pink) and Black Pearl (the darker purple grey). The Smitten DK base is an 80/10/10 Merino, cashmere, nylon. So it’s super soft. 🙂 It’s my first time using a yarn with cashmere in it and now I know why people love it so much! I picked this pattern for the yarn pretty much straight away but I fiddle-faddled about it. I went from thinking it was the perfect pattern for the yarn to thinking it was too simple and not ‘good enough’ for the gorgeous Voolenvine Yarns. If you know anything about Voolenvine Yarns, you know that it’s super hard to get. Kristen is a one-woman show and dyes as much as she can every week but it will literally sell out in minutes. You can be cart-jacked (items you’ve added to your cart being sold before you can purchase) very easily. So I wanted to do justice to Kristen’s beautiful dye work. In the end, my need to cast on the Voolenvine was too much so I went ahead and cast on for this cowl. And I’m so glad I did. I ADORE this cowl. As I said on Instagram, I think I want to divorce my husband and marry this cowl, lol.

This pattern is free on Ravelry so I’m not giving away any secret sauce here. The cowl is knit as a tube with a suggested provisional cast on. Although I’m usually pretty good with a provisional cast on, I tried it twice for this cowl and it just wasn’t working, so I used a long tail cast on. My lack of success with the provisional cast quite possibly could have been due to a) my rushing the first time because I needed to catch a bus and b) the second time I was on the bus, lol. 😉 No matter, I’m very comfortable with grafting from a cast on edge so I just long tailed it. You can barely see where it’s joined and once the cowl is blocked it’ll likely disguise it even more. The only giveaway is you can feel a small ridge where the cast on is. But no one is going to SEE it. There are two different sections to the cowl as you can see by the above picture. Halfway you switch the colours that are working the thicker and thinner stripes. The pattern calls for 15 repeats (I think?) of each section but I did 18 because I had the yarn. Due to my gauge I’m glad I did because it’s quite a snug cowl. But it’s a perfect size. This project is perfect. I love it so!

Details: Knit on 5mm (US8) generic 17″ circulars. I used 210 yards of Black Pearl and 205 yards of Jilted Rose for a total of 415 yards. My Ravelry project page here.

I loved knitting this so much I want to use up all my DK and worsted yarn and make a ton of these. 😉 You might just find some crazy lady on a random Adelaide street corner handing out Duotone Cowls! lol

Have you been lucky enough to nab some Voolenvine Yarns? Do you struggle to find good enough projects for your precious yarn? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

J x