High Fidelity Cowl Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from crocheteverafter.com. Today I'm going to show you how to make the first couple rows of the High Fidelity Cowl and I'm going to walk you through the varying widths of these chevrons that I've designed here and also how you're going to change color when it's time to do so. So this is going to be a little, it's pretty detailed for that first row and then I'm going to show you how you can kind of go off pattern and just read what your stitches are so you You don't have to keep looking at your pattern. But we'll get to all of that right now. Okay, so to begin our scarf, we're going to go ahead and put a slipknot on our hook. You'll notice this yarn is a little thicker. This is worsted weight, and I'm using that just for the ease of seeing the stitches. So I'm not using the fingering weight that the actual cowl is in, but you can also make this a bigger kind of infinity scarf if you wanted to substitute with the medium worsted. You'll see how much bigger it is once I get through the first couple of rows. So to begin we're going to do 123 chains, and because this is a chevron pattern we can't do foundation double crochets, we have to actually do the chains. So as always you yarn over, back to front, turn your hook down so it pulls easily through your previous chain, and then push it to your shaft, yarn over, pull through, and push. We're going to do this 123 times. Okay, I finished my 123 chains, and I probably have like double the length, so this is an easy way to make a lengthwise chevron infinity scarf too, so that's kind of like a two for one. If you don't want to make the cowl, you can use worsted weight and make a nice big infinity scarf. So let's get started with the instructions. You'll see that they're kind of spaced a little differently than normal, and why I did that was to make it a little bit easier to be able to read them and do them because they're so specific for getting the varying width of chevrons. So it's a little bit easier to read when they're spaced out that way. So what it tells us first is to begin in the fourth chain from our hook. And the first three that we're going to skip, we don't count the loop on our hook. We have one, two, and three. Those are going to count as our first double crochet. So we're going to yarn over and put our hook into the fourth chain. I'm forgetting what everything's called. And what you can do is you can either work into the back loop or two loops, but what I recommend because this is not going to have an edging on it is to work in the bottom bump. So we have the front of our stitches, which are our Vs that I call them because it looks like a bunch of stacked Vs, and then on the back of our chains we have what's called the bottom bump Kind of the not technical name for it, but you can see it looks like a little hash mark on each stitch. And when we work into that, so you can count, either you can do your V's and get to four and turn it over and you'll see your hash mark, or you can count four hash marks. So we have one, two, three, and four. So if I go underneath that loop and do my double crochet, so I yarn over, pull up my loop Yarn over, pull through the first two, and yarn over, pull through the second two. What I'm going to get is I'm going to have those V's as the bottom of my border for my chevron scarf, or cowl. So working into the bottom bump takes a little bit of extra time because you have to get just under that loop, but you get a really nice finished edge. So as we're working, I'll show you how that edge looks so you can see how nice it looks so you can decide if you want to work into that bottom bump or not. Okay, so now for the actual pattern. When we look at the pattern itself, you'll see that it kind of gets small to big and then it goes big to small. So it's a little bit of a mirror. So we're going to go double crochet in our next two stitches. So we're going to yarn over, go under our bottom bump, split the yarn, pull back out and catch all of it. And do one more in our next stitch. Then we're going to start our chevron, or our peaks and valleys, you can call them as well. By doing a decrease. So a decrease is also the same as a DC three together. We're going to bring the next three stitches into one. So I'm going to yarn over. I'm going to go under that bottom bump. Pull up a loop. Yarn over and pull through the first two. Then I'm going to stop. And I'm going to yarn over and I'm going to start on my next stitch. Bottom bump. Yarn over. Pull through the first two. And stop. And then yarn over and work into that third stitch. So this is going to create our valley. So now that I've worked through all three, I'm going to yarn over and pull my hook through all the loops on my hook. So remember, point straight down at your stitches, and you'll be able to pull through those nice and easy without getting stuck on any of your loops. Now my instructions tell me to go ahead and double crochet in the next two stitches I come to. And since this is so varying, I'm going to go through the whole row with you, probably when I get to maybe the middle part where it's double crochet and ten stitches. I might break the video a little bit, but we're going to work this whole first and second row together so you can make sure that you have all of it down. Now our next stitch is an increase, which is also the same as double crocheting three times in our next stitch. So the next bottom bump we come to, we're going to do three double crochets in two. That's going to create our peak. That's going to create our little top V of our chevron. So we can do the three all together, that's two and three. Then we're going to have some more double crochets in our next two stitches. And another decrease, bottom of this. As soon as I finish this decrease you can see how the edge of it's looking. So remember with the decrease you're using three stitches and turning them into one. So now you can see that we have that nice v-edge on our bottom of our cowl. So it's a lot better looking than maybe just one loop if you're working in two loops. But it's up to you, whatever you like best you can stick with. Okay, now we're increasing the width between our next chevron by doing double crochet in our next four stitches. We're just doing one double crochet in each of the next four stitches. You'll see there's no repeats on this pattern because they are all different widths for every chevron in between each increase and decrease. After our four, we're going to increase again. Once you do this once, you'll probably get the hang of it. You're just kind of repeating what's below you over and over again. The only difference is we're changing colors every once in a while to get the cool color changes. But we just did our increase, now we're going to double crochet two times in our next stitch. So you can see how it's getting a little bit wider on each upward slope right now. So now we're going to go two, and then decrease again. So that part's kind of the same until we get to the middle of the cowl, and then we're going to reverse it, and it'll be on the down. We just did our decrease, now we are on our uptick again, so we're doing double crochet in our next six stitches, so double crochet once in each of your six stitches. This is my sixth double crochet. And you can also kind of look at, if you're forgetting what's going to be next, you can look at what you just did. So we did a decrease and now we have to do an increase. So you didn't have to look at your pattern to see that the next thing we're doing is three double crochets in our next stitch. So it's not a difficult pattern repeat because I tried to make it in even, easy ascending and descending numbers. But the first row you kind of got to pay attention because you got to get everything placed correctly. So we did our increase, now we're going to double crochet in our next two stitches. See I kind of use my fingers to kind of push that bottom bump over my hook. It helps get just that bottom bump in the right spot. Okay then we're going to decrease again, probably increasing and decreasing by the end of this pattern. Okay, and then we just did six, so if you're having, if you're wondering how to count these, because I'll show you on the next row, it'll be a little bit easier to make sense, but when we're doing our chevrons, we have our increase, then we have what's in between, so if you forgot what part you're at, go to your increase and hold those three out of the way, and then go to your decrease, because those are all together, hold those out of the way, and then you can count the stitches in between, so you can see the nice. Big post, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, so we saw the six, next is eight, so we're going to double crochet in our next eight stitches. Number eight of the decrease, I'm sorry, of the double crochets, and then remember we did decrease, now we're doing an increase to the middle of the cowl. We've just got two more double crochets, or one crochet into our next two stitches, And we're going to decrease and we're going to be at the middle portion. of our cowl that's going to be the longest run of double crochets okay so this next portion is going to be 10 double crochets so we're going to double crochet in our next 10 stitches and then we're going to work back down okay here's number 10 so now we're at the peak of our cowl the center we have decreased we're going to increase and now what i mean by working down is we're kind of It's kind of working backwards, so now after our increase, we're going to do another 10 double crochets. So another double crochet in each of our next 10 stitches. So you'll see on the pattern that we're reversing the order of what we just did. We're in 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2. Stitch on the opposite side now. So you can see that was our center of the cowl and now we're going back down. So that was an increase and now we're decreasing. And now we're going to do our two double crochets. Come at the back end now. Gauge isn't important on this, this is the two double crochets, because it's just gonna, unless you're making it really tight, so if you're a really tight crocheter, then you might wanna go up a hook size, because I made the cowl about 22 inches around, so that way it goes, it's nice and tight around your neck, not tight around your neck, but it's just Just big enough to fit over your head. Because usually an adult female has a 20 inch head, I have probably a 21 inch, I have a pretty big nugget. But for, I'm going to do some increases now. But for the cowl, if you crochet really tight, it might be a little small, might be a little snug to get over your head. So you might want to go up a hook size. Otherwise, don't worry too much about the gauge, as long as you can fit it over your head. If you're doing worsted weight, like this yarn, then you can go ahead and not even worry about it at all because it's going to be a scarf instead of a cowl. So we did the two, we did our increase, and now we're doing eight, because we just did ten, so now we're going to do double crochet in our next eight stitches. Double crochets, we just did an increase, and now we're back to our decrease. So you can kind of see the pattern, once you get going it makes a little bit more sense, In a sense, it might look a little... Difficult when you first read it, like, what is she doing? Why does she have all these different numbers? Hopefully it's making more sense now. We got our decrease, now we're doing two double crochets. So you'll see that everything is spaced with two double crochets. So the one side will increase, but you'll do two double crochets, and then the other side. So it's increasing from 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and then we're decreasing 10, 8, 6, 4, 2. But everything in between are two double crochets. So now we're gonna increase, and we just did eight double crochets. Remember, just count between your increase and decrease to find out how many posts. If you put your stuff down, you're like, I do not remember which one I was on. You'll see the eight posts, so now we're gonna do six. Number six, so I'm gonna do my decreasing. On the next row, I'm gonna show you more of how you can work the repeat without the pattern so you can easily figure out where you're at and just crochet without having to carry the pattern around with you rather than going straight by the pattern. So now we had our decrease, now we're doing two double crochets almost to the end. This is way too long for you guys but just in case a couple of you might need to get all the way through. So we got two, now we're ready for our increase. I'm gonna do four double crochets since we just We just did six. Go ahead and double crochet in your next four stitches. Okay, I just did four and I'm doing my decrease. You can see the end. We'll kind of catch the hang of this by the end of the next row. You'll see how you can work this without having to look at the pattern every two seconds. So we have our decrease. Now we're going to double crochet in our next two stitches. The line of our pattern. There we go. So now we're going to do two double crochets in each of the next stitches. Decrease. Okay, so we have three left. We're going to double crochet two times in our, or I keep saying two times, double crochet in our next two stitches. And we have one left, and we're doing a partial increase. We're just double crocheting twice in this last stitch. This is going to even out our stitch count. So if you are missing a chain, it's time to go back and figure out where it went. You might have to remake your foundation chain. Or at the very least, if you really don't mind, you could put three in this last stitch just to even it out because it'll be a little bit off at the end, but if you're not super particular, if you're making it for yourself, that can work to fix that mistake. So now let's move on to row two. Okay, so for row two, we'll go by the pattern for a few stitches, and then I'll show you how you can kind of wing it without having to read the pattern. So it tells us to chain three, and that's what you're going to do at the beginning of every row after this. The very first thing is a chain three, and a double crochet in the same stitch that chain three came out of, so the same ending stitch here. It's going to be kind of like our partial increase again. Then we're going to double crochet in our next two stitches, so we're going under both loops You can get fancy if you want and just do the back loop or the front loop only, you'll get different effects. So if you want to switch the pattern up, you can do that. We're just going to do two double crochets. Then we're going to decrease, and you'll see we're at a decrease. So we want to continue our decreases. So if we did an increase here, it would look really funny. We're going to go under both loops only for our decrease. We'll double crochet in our next two stitches. Right At the top of our previous increase, top of our three stitches, this was the first one, and now we're at the middle, so we're going to do three inside there, increase. Okay, so if you want to work this without the pattern, what you're looking for is you're just remembering that you have decreases and increases and then in between are double crochets. So you can kind of go off of the pattern to figure out how many you're supposed to be putting in between, but if you know that each stitch has its own top two loops, so your So your decrease is here, and it always goes to the left. It's always off to the side here for that stitch, so these three came together into this stitch right here. So we need three stitches for an increase. This is going to be our middle stitch, and then we have one here and one on the opposite side. So once you get used to seeing that decreased stitch, you'll see that how many stitches you have in between. So we have two here, so we can just do our two double crochets. If you're not used to looking at stitches and kind of able to easily see where they're at, don't worry about this. This is more for the people that can spot the stitches very easily. You'll pick it up as you go, but for those, you can just stick with the pattern and it'll help you out. But this kind of helps to see if you get lost or if you put your work down and you're not sure where you're at, how to find where you're at. So now we have our three stitches that we're going to decrease through. The decrease is a little bit harder because you have to kind of spot that middle stitch for your decrease, which can be a little difficult if you don't remember if you're supposed to go to the left or to the right, but just remember we have even number of stitches between our increase and decrease. So if you only have one stitch, you know you're supposed to be going to the left. So if there's only one double crochet between where you think your decrease should be, you know you're off. The increases are a lot easier because you have three easy-to-see stitches, and you have one, two, and three. So that third, or that, I'm sorry, the middle stitch of the three is where you're going to make your next increase. So you can see I have one, two, three, four. And if you read the pattern, you'll see that it says to double crochet in your next four stitches. One, and now I'm at the top. And also, it will help you to remember. That this side will increase going upwards, so the other side will always be those two double crochets. So once you do your increase, now you know you just have to do two double crochets and you should be at your decrease. So as you work through, if it's not making much sense as you keep going, it'll probably Make a little bit more sense, hopefully. our decrease. You see we have that middle stitch. So what you can do if you're not used to looking at the stitches, just take your time when you're doing the decrease and look and go, okay, that's that stitch over to the left. I can see where it's forming. And also when you make your decrease stitch, look at how you make that top loop. So watch when we pull through all of our loops. Our top loop is made with that very first one. And you can see that when we pull it, it's over here. Off to the thing, and then once we do our stitch, you can see how it's pulling to the left. It kind of wants to pull to the right at first, but once you get going, then you see it's right here, right above it. As we keep going, it'll kind of go more that way again. So now we're at six stitches, and now we're at the top of our increase, our next increase. So you can see we're just repeating what we did from the row before. Okay I just did my increase and now we're on the two double crochets again. So you can see it's pretty much just a single row repeat that we're doing because everything kind of lines up the same, or it does line up the same, not kind of, but we do our decrease like it says in the pattern and then we're going upwards again. You can see if you forget where you're at remember to count those double crochets in between. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So I know that I'm doing 8 double crochets here. So you're just copying what you did the row below. Just going over and over again. The only difference is that we're changing color at the end of some of the rows. So what you're going to see is that it says, fasten off CA, whatever color you're on, and join, or it's going to say join first. It'll say join CB, fasten off CA. So what we're going to do, I'm going to pretend this is the last stitch of my row. Actually, yeah, because there's always two double crochets in the last stitch, so I'll do one, and then I'll do two. So I'm going to go to that first step kind of like as if I was going to do a decrease. I have two loops on my hook. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my new color. So let's pretend this super cool weird purple is my color that I'm going to change to. It's the first thing I grab and I'm going to lay it on my hook. So I have the two loops on my hook, I'm laying this new one on, I'm going to pull it through, and now I'm ready for my next row. And because you're going to be whip stitching at the end of this pattern, you can go ahead and double knot. I love double knotting. So if you want to secure it, I'm not going to double knot this because I want to be able to undo it, but you can double knot it to kind of secure it to each other for the next row. And then you're just going to take your new color And you're going to go ahead and start chaining. One, two, and three. And then double crochet in that first stitch again. So you have a nice color change right at the end. And then when you whip stitch it all together, you won't see the knots. If you need help with the whip stitching, I have tutorials on that. So you can watch the tutorial to see how to whip stitch this together. But that's basically it for this pattern. If you have any questions... If the extra row is not quite making sense or any other comments or questions, go ahead and contact me or you can leave a comment at the bottom of this video and I'll get back to you as soon as I can, but thank you for watching!