Double knitting produces such a delightful, squishy fabric, and being reversible, it’s great for colourwork cowls since you can often see both sides of the piece. I love that there are no floats!

This cozy, checkered cowl, Double Draughts, is worked using two contrasting colours; for each colour, fingering weight yarn is held together with a strand of a matching fuzzy mohair silk yarn to make a warm fabric that will definitely keep the cold wind at bay! I’ve designed two sizes: the small will be snug around the neck for ultimate warmth, while the large will drape more and show off the reversible checkerboard.

There are a few different ways to achieve double-knit fabric. The double pass technique used here is a mellow introduction to double knitting. You’ll only need to work with one colour at a time, but this means you’ll work the outside of the cowl on the first pass and the inside on the second pass, which does result in the project growing fairly slowly! (This is not the project for a quick, last-minute gift.)

Pattern has been test knit. Testers enjoyed the pattern. Some testers found the setup a bit tricky and recommended stitch markers and ‘trusting the pattern’ for the first few rounds.

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS
Circumference: 48.5 62 cm (19 24.5 inches)
Height: 18 18 cm (7.25 7.25 inches)

The small size sample project used ~30g of each sock yarn and ~12g of each ball of mohair/silk.

Suggested yarns:
A fingering/sock yarn, 100% wool or wool/nylon blend, 210 m per 50g skein; 11 skeins
held together with
laceweight mohair/silk blend of a similar colour, 210 m per 25g skein; 1 1 skeins

B fingering/sock yarn, 100% wool or wool/nylon blend, 210 m per 50g skein; 11 skeins
held together with
laceweight mohair/silk blend of a similar colour, 210 m per 25g skein; 1 1 skeins

Suggested needles:
4 mm circular needle, 40cm (16”) (large size could use a 60cm (24” needle if desired)
4mm crochet hook (optional, for chain cast on)

Thank you to my testers and to the Yarnpond team. Yarnpond is a well-designed platform that links designers and testers.