in this tutorial, we're going to learn tomake the cowl that i am wearing right now. it's called tesserino cowl and the designis by marie chiba. and this tutorial is brought to us by louet, because this cowl was designedusing their gems worsted yarns. this is really nice yarn for a cowl like this. i'm prettysure you could grab any two colors of the colors they offer, and it would make a beautifulcowl since this uses two colors. its 100% morino wool. it is a dream to work with, it'smachine washable and the thing that makes it really good for knitting like this, whereyou're using two different colors, you want the colors to be clear and the colors to pop,and this yarn has really tightly twisted plies, so there is no kind of muddiness with thecolors. all the colors really pop and stand
out. anyway, again this is gems morino and i willof course give you a link in the video description field below. and you can also click the "i"in the upper right-hand corner. that will take you to my website where you can clickthrough to louet and take a look at all of the beautiful colors of the gems yarn. thisis also a free pattern and the link to get your free pattern to follow along in the video,will also be in those two places. the skill level for this is surprisingly easy. it lookslike a fair isle cowl, but it's actually not. it's call mosaic knitting and it's done usingslip stitches. you only have one color going per round at a time. it looks like you havetwo, but you don't. it's deceivingly simple.
so, if you can knit and purl and you're confidentwith those two things and your tension is nice, you can handle this. i'm going to showyou how to do the rest. you can impress all your friends with your knitting skills. anyway,go ahead and click through to my website and get your free pattern and your yarn, and wewill get started with the cast on next. if you have your yarn and your free pattern,we are ready to get started on this cowl. something i didn't mention in the last segmentis that this cowl if offered in two different sizes. the size that i was wearing in thefirst segment is the larger of the two sizes. and i was wearing it in a way so you couldreally see the pattern, but it's actually long enough to wrap twice around my neck,so that it's really warm and full and a nice
size. and the smaller of the two is abouthalf that size. i think it's about half that size, i'll have to check the cast on numbers.anyway, the yarn amounts for each size are really clear. again, just click the little"i" in the upper right-hand corner to go to my website for all of that information onthe louet yarn and the tesserino pattern. but we're going to get started with the caston and taking a look at how to work this pattern. but first i want to give you a close up ofthe cowl itself. so let's go ahead and take a look. here is the cowl pattern, i love theway this looks. and it looks hard to do and it's really not, and i'm excited to show youhow deceivingly simple this pattern is to work.
i chose kind of subdued colors. i'm guessingthat this is going to look really different and really very cool in brighter colors. i'mexcited to see how it all comes out. the two different colors you're using, one is namedthe main color, the other's named the contrasting color. whatever you choose for the main colorwill end up being your garter stitch border. but you can see both colors are equally prominentwhen it actually comes to the design. so picking your main color will really just set whichevercolor you want for the top and bottom border. but we are going to get started with the caston here. and i'm going to use much smaller needles and fewer stitches for demonstrationpurposes. you are going to want to use 24 inch circulars. and i'm just using 16 here,so it all fits nicely on camera. now you want
to cast on...you're going to have to caston a lot stitches, so i'm going to show you a couple of tricks that i always employ wheni need to cast on a lot of stitches. and the first one will help you make sure that youhave enough yarn for the long tail cast on. you don't want to cast on 90 stitches andrun out of yarn before you get to the number you need. so, this is how to make sure youhave enough. leave yourself about a six inch tail, and start wrapping the needle and counting.and usually what i will do, is count up to 25, mark that spot, and then hat's enoughyarn for casting on 25 stitches. so if i double it, that's enough yarn for 50, 75, 100, howevermuch you need for the cast on number and then mark that spot and put your slipknot there.
so you know you have enough yarn, and youcan start casting on. and the other trick i do when i'm casting on a bunch of stitches,is to count in my head. and usually if i'm listening to an audio book or a podcast, iwill pause it while i count. and i'll usually count up to 50, double-check to make sureit's 50, and then take a stitch marker and pop it on the needle and never count thosestitches again. and then go to the next 50. double-check to make sure it's 50, put a stitchmarker on there, never count those again and keep going. and that keeps you from havingto start all the way over at the beginning, to count all the stitches each time when you'restarting to get close to your target number. anyway, i have a piece with the cast on alreadyfinished here. and so i want to talk to you
about joining in the round. just in case that'ssomething you haven't done before. again, my cast on is far fewer stitches than youwill need for this cowl, but it's good for demonstration. the first thing you want togo is set it out on a table and take a look, because you want to straighten everythingout. and what i'm going to do is line it up so that all the knots, the knots from thecast on, are on the inside. and that requires some untwisting here. so when i look at this now, i can see theknots are all on the inside of the circulars here. and that means it's not twisted andi'm ready to join in the round. then scoot everything closer to the tips of the needles.i have my working yarn over here, on the right
side. i'll pick this up, put a stitch markeron the right needle, and then just start knitting. and there are things you can do to join inthe round to make sure you have an even join. and i have a video called three ways to joinin the round, and i'll give you a link to that here on-screen. really, i like to just start knitting. inthe last segment, i'll show you how to use this tail end to make a really even join.my preferred method is to not use any of those techniques and just start knitting. you cancertainly do those techniques to join in the round. so we're joined in the round and we'reready to go, and we're working a garter stitch border, and because we're knitting in a tube,because we're knitting in the round, garter
stitch is knit a row, purl a row. if thishas never occurred to you before, i know it blows a lot of peoples' minds, but garterstitch when you're knitting a flat piece, is knit every row. but it's knit a round,purl a round when you're working in the round like this. your pattern will be very clear about whatyou have to do. the next piece here i'm going to show you how to work the slip stitch pattern.i have the garter stitch border finished and i have a little bit of the pattern finishedhere. i'm going to jump right in the middle of the pattern because most of the rows arethe same. so i'm going to give you an example of what most of the rows are like and thenwhat i think 5, 6, 11, 12 are a little bit
different, so i want to show you how thoseare. i'm set up here to work round four. i keep saying row, these are actually rounds. round four is knit two, slip one, knit five,slip one, knit one. and it's in the main color, which is my border color, so it's the lightercolor. i've already knit one stitch to keep my stitch marker in place. so i'm going toknit two, the next bit is slip one. so i'm going to put my needle in as if to purl andslide that stitch from the left needle to the right. knit five, slip one, knit one. so with main color, and there's an asterisk,knit two, slip one, knit five, slip one, knit one. repeat from the asterisk to the end.so we just keep repeating this little bit
all the way around. so knit two, slip one,knit five, slip one, knit 1. i'm actually going to go all the way around so i can showyou the next row as well. knit two, slip one, knit five, slip one, knit one. something else you'll notice in the pattern,we have rounds one and two, three and four, five and six. so every round there are pairsof rounds here, which makes it easier to remember what you're doing. knit two, slip one, knitfive, slip one, knit one, knit two, knit five, slip one, knit one. i'm going kind of fastbecause i do want to get to the end of this round without boring you too much. the mainthing here is to keep the pattern in your head and always slip as if to purl.
okay, i finished that round because i'm backto my stitch marker. and now i'm going to switch to cc, the contrasting color, on rowfive. it's a really good idea to use a row counter with this to either do tally marksor use a row counter so you know what row you're on. slip two, knit seven, slip one.and that's the entire pattern repeat right there. so switching to the other color...and alli've done is i have both colors going here. the other color was just hanging out therein the back. i'm just going to grab it and start using it now. in this pattern, you don'thave to do anything special with wrapping the yarns in the back of the work or anything,you can just leave it hanging there because
it never has to travel very far, because it'sonly two rows each color. so where am i? slip two, so i'm going to put my needle throughtwo stitches as if to purl and slide them over. knit seven, slip one and then slip two. this is the technique i want to show you.because on the last row, we were only slipping one stitch at a time. so we had the yarn overhere, we were only slipping one stitch. the float, behind the work, the distance thatthis yarn had to go was only one stitch. but now since we have three stitches slipped,this is a longer distance for that to go. this is actually a fair isle technique thati'm showing you here, because i'm ready to knit seven, and i want to be careful withthe tension here.
it's not a difficult technique, but it's somethingyou definitely want to keep in mind. if i just knit the next stitch, you can see thefloat on the back of the work is jamming those stitches together. and my work is going tojust look tight. so instead, what i'm going to do, is i'm going to take these stitcheson the right-hand needle and stretch them out, so that this yarn has a further distanceto travel to knit that stitch. and so i can be sure that float is long enough and it'snot going to scrunch those stitches together. so i knit seven, and i slip one and then two,which is essentially slipping three. and again, i just did the technique. it's so automaticfor me. i'm ready to knit this next stitch and i've slipped three, so i'm going to stretchout the stitches on the right-hand needle,
and then knit my seven, to make sure thati leave myself a nice long float in the back. okay, the last thing i want to show you, becauseit's the same thing over and over again, the thing you want to be the most careful withis keeping track of your rounds and that's easy to do. but there's one trick here, oneother trick here i want to show you. and that is working lifelines. i'm going to grab a yarn in a different colorhere and my tapestry needle. this is a proactive lifeline is what i like to call them. i'mtaking a lighter weight of yarn, and this is something i'm going to put into my work.and usually i'll want to do it after row 12, just so i know where i am, so that if i messup, i can take my needles out and unravel
to this spot. what i'm going to do is justmove my work to the cord, and take my tapestry needle and this lighter weight yarn, and justpull it through all the stitches as they are on the needle, or on the cord. it's easierto string the tapestry needle through the stitches on the cord. so i do that all the way around, and thenjust continue working as i was, leaving this in place. then if you mess up, you can takeyour needles out and unravel, and all your stitches will be safely held here. you'llsee even if you take the needle out, those stitches can't unravel because this yarn isholding them in place. just a little trick you might want to do if you're nervous aboutstarting a pattern that you can move forward
confidently once you put a lifeline in, becauseyou know if you mess up, it's only going to be that far. and you can string a lifelineas often as you like, every 12 rounds if you like. anyway, you're going to keep knittingthe pattern like this, as many repeats as a pattern tells you, or as you'd like to work.and then your going to work the garter stitch border. next up, we're going to talk aboutsome finishing work and blocking. once you've finished knitting the entire cowl,we're ready to do some finishing work, well, sort of finishing work. the first thing iusually like to do, is to block it before i weave in the ends, just to make sure thatit has reached it's maximum size before i weave in the ends. either way, you can doeither one. the gems worsted yarn is actually
machine washable, but right after you finishworking on something, i usually want to hand wash it. so, let it soak in the sink withsome wool soap and then i put mine in the dryer on spin cycle to spin out the accesswater, and set it out flat to dry. and you'll find that even though we were careful withthe floats on the back of the work, you do want to stretch it out a little bit. you're going to get a little more length tothe cowl than you had when you were knitting it. and that's one of the nice things aboutalways sticking with wool when you're doing stranded knitting like this, is because thewool's going to be really forgiving. and then set it out to dry, because it's double sided,you might want to flip it half way through
and let the other side dry. and then the verylast thing i want to show you is a little trick for tidying up the jog that was createdwhen we joined in the round. you can do this little trick on both the cast on row and thebind off row. round, i keep saying row. we're actually knitting in the round. so, let'sgo ahead and take a look. we're going back to this sample, where i leftmy lifeline in from the last segment. this is the cast on row. the jog here isn't bad,but i can make that look better when i go to weave in this end. and this is somethingthat i do. this is how i weave in the end every time. i weave in the end when i'm knittingin the round. it's just a technique that i always use to make it look really good andsmooth on the cast on and bind off edges.
so i put the tail on a tapestry needle. i'mgoing to go through...i usually end up trying it a couple times. i'm going to go through,yeah, the stitch here, right here at the slipknot. and then go back down to the same place icame out of essentially, sort of right there. that looks really good. the slipknot's kindof sticking out. let me try that again. even though i've done this 8,000 times in my life,i usually end up trying it a couple different times to see which one i like better. i'mgoing to go behind the slipknot this time. you see there's two legs with a v right there?see if i can get the slipknot to kind of squish down. go back in the same place i came outof. no, this might not work, this might be too far. nope that doesn't...well, i got ridof the slipknot, but i don't like the way
the work looks like right there. i'm goingto go back to the way it was. honestly people, this is exactly the way ialways do it. i always do it two or three times to make sure i like how it looks. iliked it better when i went right here at the slipknot. and then once that's finished,you have...usually my slipknot isn't sticking out quite that much, but once that's finished,you have a nice clean edge and you can just weave in this end in the back of the workfor an inch or so. and then cut the yarn short. this'll also smooth out a bit with blocking.i can make sure to straighten out the rows. oh, that also reminds me. i know there's goingto be a question that didn't really come up in the sample i was knitting, but people aregoing to ask, "should we do the color change
jog correction?" and if you don't know whatthat is, don't worry about it. just follow the pattern. but people are going to ask,"should we do the color change jog correction when we're changing colors between the rounds?"and the answer is no. i actually tried it both ways to see how it would look. and thereason it doesn't really work in this pattern is because of the slip stitches. so there'sno need to. it's because we have slip stitches right out front in the row sometimes. thattechnique it not going to work. if you're curious about what that techniqueis, i'll give you a link here on-screen to take you to that. the technique is very cooland works with most patterns. okay, i'm glad i remembered that, just looking at the workhere reminded me. anyway, many thanks to marey
cheba for letting us use her pattern in thistutorial. and many thanks to louet and their gems worsted yarn for being the perfect yarnfor marey's pattern and sponsoring this video. i can't wait to see what color combinationsyou all put together for this. good luck.