mala

Needed some easy, comfort knitting after the wedding shawl and I came up with this circular scarf, or cowl, based on a mala (mantra beads) and the auspicious number 108. There are 108 beads in a mala, so everything in the cowl is a divisible of that number. You can read more about the significance of that number here.

This is knit flat in stockinette with the edges unabashedly curling in and grafted together at the ends. It can be double or triple wrapped around the neck. It rolled into itself heavily while I was knitting but relaxed a bit after blocking. I experimented with a crochet edge to get it to lay flat and even went so far as to buy a book called Around the Corner Crochet Borders and used the puff stitch in there. It's a very nice looking book but isn't for beginners, I haven't done much crochet so I had to do some recon to figure out the stitch. Ultimately, I thought the edge looked better without the crochet, so I ripped it out.

The yarns I used were Madelinetosh Vintage in Warm Maize and Ginger and Mad Color Fiber Arts Sweet in Pharaoh's Gold. This is an easy cowl, most knitters could figure out how to do it on their own but I wrote up the pattern to share in case anyone felt the urge to make it. If you want to get your knitting meditation groove on and feel peace settle over you in your knit and purl mantra, you can download the pattern here . Also available through Ravelry here. Peace.