Wonderland Yarns Longma's Cowl Knitting Pattern

Longma's Cowl by Stephanie Shiman

What is Being Made

Longma's Cowl is a seamless, worked-in-the-round cowl named after the dragon-horse figure in Chinese mythology. The design features a lace stitch pattern inspired by dragon scales and horseshoes, creating a complex visual appearance that belies its straightforward construction. The finished cowl measures 28 inches around and 26 inches tall when blocked, making it ample enough to pull up into an elegant hood. The garment showcases graceful gradient ripples created by working with a mini skein pack of fingering weight yarn in multiple coordinating colors.

Techniques Used

This cowl is constructed using several key knitting techniques that work together to create its distinctive appearance:

• Bottom-up construction: The cowl is cast on and worked upward in rounds, building from the base to the top edge
• Seamless, worked-in-the-round: Using circular needles, the entire cowl is knitted continuously in rounds without seaming, creating a smooth, unified fabric
• Lace knitting: The Horseshoe Lace Pattern forms the primary design element, featuring yarn overs and strategic decreases that create openwork and delicate pointed edging through stacked increases and decreases
• Color work: The pattern incorporates gradient color changes by switching between mini skeins on odd-numbered rows, creating the rippling color effect

Stitches Used

The Longma's Cowl employs a limited but effective stitch vocabulary centered on the Horseshoe Lace Pattern, which repeats over a multiple of 10 stitches:

• Knit (K): The foundational stitch creating the base fabric
• Purl (P): Used strategically to create columns of purl bumps that serve as visual guides for maintaining pattern alignment throughout the rounds
• Yarn over (YO): Creates the openwork eyelets characteristic of lace knitting, increasing stitch count and forming decorative holes in the fabric
• Knit 2 together (K2tog): A right-leaning decrease that balances the yarn overs and creates the stacked decrease elements of the lace pattern
• Slip 1, knit 2 together, pass slipped stitch over (s2kp): A centered double decrease that forms the dramatic pointed elements of the lace pattern and is central to the horseshoe and dragon scale visual motifs

The pattern is described as fairly simple and easily memorized despite its complex appearance, with a rhythmic structure that makes it pleasant to work. Each pattern repeat ends with a purl stitch, creating the aforementioned purl bump columns that function as built-in stitch markers.

Materials

Yarn: Wonderland Yarns "Mary Ann" in fingering weight, composed of 85% superwash merino and 15% nylon. The pattern calls for one mini skein pack containing 5 individual 1-ounce skeins totaling 590 yards. The sample shown uses the "Down the Rabbit Hole" gradient series in the "Rocking-horse-fly" colorway, which creates the gradient ripple effect throughout the finished cowl.

Needles and Notions: US size 5 circular needles in either 16-inch or 24-inch length (or the size required to achieve proper gauge), plus a darning needle for finishing.

Gauge: 28 stitches equals 4 inches in pattern. The pattern notes that gauge can be approximate, allowing for some flexibility in achieving the finished measurements.