Sweet & Spicy

by Kimber Baldwin July 30, 2023

Recently, during a trip up to my parents' place in Maine, I had a bit of time to think about and design this 'Spiced Honeycomb Cowl' as a little thank-you gift for knitters stopping into the shop during the Heartland Yarn Adventure (taking place the next 10 days). If you would like to knit along with us, you can find the pattern (for free) on ravelry here.

I had in mind certain criteria for this design:

1. It should be something that relatively new knitters would be able to tackle since I wanted to include everyone and I wanted something that everyone with basic knitting skills should be able to knit.

2. It should be something that didn't require a huge amount of focus and could be worked up as part of a 'conversational knitting' project. Afterall, it's a yarn crawl with friends, and we all want to be able to knit and focus on our yarnie-besties, right?). This second criteria kind of goes hand-in-hand with the first one, so meeting one meant that I could probably 'kill two birds with one stone'...poor birds!

3. It should be something unique. A cowl is pretty basic so that meant the stitch technique had to be novel in order to keep the project 'fresh'. There are so so many stitches available but finding one that hasn't been used extensively is a little more of a challenge.

4. It should be an accessory that can be worn multiple ways. This is just something that appeals to me - if I'm going to spend the time making something, it always seems like a bonus if you can wear it multiple ways.

With all of these qualities in mind, I settled on a stitch called 'honeycomb brioche'. The vast majority of samples on the internet worked in this stitch used a single color and worked the stitch as a flat piece, in rows back and forth. I adapted it to use two colors and be knit seamlessly in the round with a nearly-invisible beginning of the round so there is nothing to distract from the the pattern continuity.

Honeycomb Brioche is an easily memorized four round repeat, alternating rounds between a color carried in the foreground (creating the honeycomb outline) and a color carried in the background (creating the color inside the middle of each honeycomb). The front of the pattern created features a honeycomb motif, hence the stitch name, shown below:

In the closeup image above, the pale oatmeal colored yarn is the foreground yarn and the burgundy colored yarn is the background yarn. Although I chose the lighter color as the foreground yarn, if I were to select colors again, I would make the lighter color the background yarn since it tends to be cast in shadow since it is recessed behind the foreground yarn. Darker colors used as the background yarn tend to be much more difficult to discern.

The reverse side of the two-color honeycomb brioche fabric is, in my opinion, even more lovely than the front side, creating an elegant bird's eye motif:

When a gradient is selected for the background yarn, the effect is truly elegant (see the banner at the top of this blog post). Because of the reversibility of the stitch pattern, an I-cord edge (provided by and I-cord cast on and an I-cord cast off) frames the cowl at both the lower and upper edges.

The pattern provides basic instructions for both the I-cord cast on and I-cord bind off but there are also numerous you tube videos showing these techniques as well. For a clear I-cord cast on video check out Very Pink Knits' video here. I particularly like the I-cord bind off video provided here by Stephen West.

While this design is perfect for using a couple of single skeins of sport weight yarn that you might find in your stash, we have also put together some kits, available online, that coordinate a gradient (background color) with a solid (foreground color) shown below: