Knit capelet and bandana neckwarmer

Well, another edition of the biggest Italian handmade arts fair, Abilmente, has come and gone. Alas, I was unable to make it to Vicenza, in northern Italy, for this edition but I figured that perhaps it was about time to show you my project from Abilmente in Rome last November.

I’d signed up for a workshop in the knitting/crochet atelier on how to knit short rows, taught by Miriam of All You Knit is Love. We used this technique to make a sweet little knit capelet (which you can find here on Ravelry). I used Rainbow yarn by Morefil, which I bought there at the fair.

Basically, with short rows, you stop knitting partway down the needle and turn before finishing that row. In doing so, you can shape a garment without increases, decreases or sewing pieces together. In the picture above, you can see how one end of the work is considerably wider than the other. (If you want to learn this technique, why not check out this FREE short rows knitting class on Craftsy*?)

And doing this over and over creates a great fan shape. Cool, huh? You can sew the two sides together to make a shaped tube that you slip over your head, or knit buttonholes and sew on buttons, as I did. This was my first time knitting buttonholes, which is why they’re far from perfect.

Remember these buttons? I bought them at Abilmente. I got the wooden toggle button for my maxi cardigan (which I’d just finished refashioning a day or two before the fair) and the coconut buttons to match the yarn I’d picked for this capelet.

And there we have it! I tend to get cold in my shoulders and the base of my neck, so this is great for warming up those parts. (Although if I were to knit another of these, I’d make it a little longer.)

And you can even wear it under a coat or jacket and just go without a scarf! (Pictures taken in the Botanical Gardens in Portici, a place we love visiting.)

Here are the details of this project in my Ravelry notebook. If you like this style of capelet, but prefer crochet, my friend Ilaria has a pattern for a very similar crocheted capelet. You can find it on her website (in English, too!) here on Ravelry.

I’d bought five skeins of this yarn and used just three for the capelet, so I used the remaining yarn to knit up another friend’s pattern for a knit bandana-style neckwarmer, “Mani in Alto.” This was super easy and quick to knit up. It’s a rectangle, not a square, with a loop in one corner and a button in the opposite corner.

You fold the rectangle in half diagonally and button it closed behind your neck. (I took these pictures before showing it in person to Maria, my friend who came up with this pattern, and she corrected my way of folding it. It should be folded in half with the button inside the fold, not on the outside like you can see above, and it does stay closed better like that.)

I love that you can position the button so size it perfectly for you, so that it’s nice and snug. I love the bandana look, reminiscent of a Western, and I am very happy with how the colors of the yarn worked out, more so than with the capelet.

And it’s also great for layering! (Even though my choice of clothing in this case was perhaps not the best, but hey, I guess it kind of went along with that dirty, messy hair. Ew….) Here are the details of this project in my Ravelry notebook.

I’ve actually been doing a decent amount of knitting and crocheting this winter, so I have a bunch of other projects coming up to share, including my very first crochet pattern that I came up with myself! It’s nothing all that complex, but I’m still pretty proud of myself all the same!

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Question of the day: Do you knit, crochet, or sew? Which do you prefer? Why? (sorry, that’s three questions!)

If you’ve read my blog for very long, you’ll know that I do all three of these, but sewing is definitely my strong point. I love sewing because it’s generally faster and I feel that it has a lot more possibilities than working in yarn. Also, in school I always excelled at geometry and I still am pretty good at imagining the shapes in my mind, so I love the piecing together of the fabric pieces and imagining how it all goes together in the right way. I also love logical puzzles, and I feel that pattern making is similar to those, in that you know what you want the finished item to look like and you have to figure out how to get that. That’s the sort of challenge that I love!

But knitting and crocheting are very calming for me. I feel like I can relax because I’m forced to go slowly. They’re also sort of magic to me because I don’t understand them enough to know how to create a specific effect or look. This is even more so with knitting because I find less intuitive than crochet. So when I’m working on a project, like with the capelet above, I don’t really understand what I’m doing, but just follow the instructions and somehow it comes out! I find it amazing that you can turn yarn into infinite possible shapes, often without any sewing at all!

*This post contains one or more affiliate links, however the opinions expressed are fully mine.