Juniper Moon Farm Waves Cowl Knitting Pattern

Juniper Moon Farm Waves Cowl

Project Overview

The Juniper Moon Farm Waves Cowl is a lace knit cowl designed by Tabetha Hedrick, featuring an elegant wave stitch pattern. This downloadable knitting pattern produces a finished cowl measuring 11 inches in width and 40¼ inches in circumference, making it a versatile neckwear piece suitable for layering and everyday wear.

What Is Being Made

This project creates a tubular cowl—a seamless loop of fabric worn around the neck. The cowl is worked flat in a single rectangular piece before being grafted closed at the seams, resulting in a finished accessory with a smooth, continuous circumference of approximately 40¼ inches.

Techniques Used

The Waves Cowl employs several key knitting techniques:

• Lace knitting: The Wave Lace stitch creates an openwork pattern with intentional holes and decreases that form flowing, wave-like motifs across the fabric
• Worked flat: Rather than knitting in the round, this cowl is constructed flat on straight needles, allowing for easier stitch management and pattern work
• Seamed construction: The cast-on and bind-off edges are joined using the Kitchener stitch, a grafting technique that creates an invisible seam by weaving live stitches together
• Provisional cast-on: A temporary cast-on method is used to keep stitches live for later grafting, eliminating the need for a traditional bind-off edge
• Blocking: The finished cowl is blocked to measurements to even out the lace pattern and achieve the specified dimensions

Stitches Used

The Wave Lace stitch is the primary stitch pattern, worked over a 14-stitch repeat plus 2 edge stitches. The pattern repeats over 6 rows and incorporates the following fundamental stitches:

• Knit (k): The basic knit stitch forms the foundation of the fabric
• Purl (p): Used on wrong-side rows to create a smooth reverse stockinette background
• Yarn over (yo): Creates the decorative eyelets and openwork characteristic of lace knitting
• Knit 2 together (k2tog): A right-leaning decrease that pairs with yarn overs to form the wave pattern
• Slip, slip, knit (ssk): A left-leaning decrease that balances the k2tog decreases for symmetrical shaping
• Slip stitches (sl): Edge stitches are slipped with yarn in back on right-side rows and with yarn in front on wrong-side rows to create neat selvage edges

Materials

This pattern calls for Juniper Moon Farm Zooey Aran yarn in the colorway #1005 Cardamom, requiring 2 balls of 100 grams each (approximately 400 grams total). The Aran weight yarn is worked on US 7 (4.5mm) needles to achieve a gauge of 16 stitches and 22 rows over 4 inches in the Wave Lace stitch. Additional materials include a tapestry needle for weaving in ends and grafting the seam.

Pattern Specifications

The cowl is constructed by casting on 44 stitches using a provisional cast-on method. The Wave Lace stitch pattern (Rows 1–6) is repeated 37 times, creating a rectangular piece measuring approximately 40¼ inches in length. The pattern is then closed using the Kitchener stitch to graft the live stitches from the provisional cast-on to the final row, creating a seamless join. After grafting, all ends are woven in and the cowl is blocked to final measurements.