This is a repost of a knitting pattern I created in 2009 because the blog it was on is gone.

Standard

It’s done! Read on to see the pattern alteration I came up with for the expansion.

This started off based on the Old Shale Smoke Ring pattern. I cast on 144 stitches in the blue, which is 8 repeats of the feather & fan pattern. After a short bit of garter stitch for a border, knit one repeat* in the blue and switch to the white. Then 5 repeats in white before alternating blue, white, blue, white, blue. The middle sections was 7 repeats in white, blue, 7 repeats in white. Then I finished it off almost completely symmetrical to the beginning (blue, white, blue, white, blue, 5 white, blue), except I ran out of blue close to the end so the bottom border ended up white.

As you can see, the expansion starts with the last set of blue stripes. I hadn’t bothered with any stitch markers except for the row start before this, but I highly recommend a stitch marker between every repeat of the pattern once you start expanding. I started off the expansion gradually at first, only going up every other repeat. Here’s the pattern rows–

1 (blue): k2tog x 2, k2, (yo, k1) x 6, k2tog x 3 [this gets you 19 sts per repeat]
2 (white): k2tog x 3, k1, (yo, k1) x 6, k2tog x 3 [still 19 sts]
3 (blue): k2tog x 2, k3, (yo, k1) x 6, k2, k2tog x 2 [21 sts]
4 (white): k2tog x 3, k2, (yo, k1) x 6, k, k2tog x 3 [still 21 sts]
5 (blue): k2tog x 3, k1, (yo, k1) x 8, k2tog x 3 [23 sts]
6 (white): k2tog x 3, k2, (yo, k1) x 8, k1, k2tog x 3 [25 sts]
7 (white): k2tog x 4, (yo, k1) x 9, yo, k2tog x 4 [27 sts]
8 (white): k2tog x 4, k1, (yo, k1) x 10, k2tog x 4 [29 sts]
9 (white): k2tog x 4, k2, (yo, k1) x 10, k1, k2tog x 4 [31 sts]
10 (white): k2tog x 5, (yo, k1) x 11, yo, k2tog x 5 [33 sts]
11 (blue): k2tog x 5, k1, (yo, k1) x 12, k2tog x 5 [35 sts]

I’m not 100% happy with the pattern. If I make one again, I’m going to actually take in the pattern a bit in the middle so there’s not quite so much extra right underneath my chin making all those annoying folds.

It’s super comfy and warm folded down like this, and it’ll stand up on its own with the fold to cover my mouth. Always a plus!

Ravelry link: https://ravel.me/expanding-feather–fan-cowl
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* The variant of f&f being used is stockinette, so one repeat is:
Row 1: knit
Row 2: knit
Row 3: k2tog x 3, (yo, k1) x 6, k2tog x3  repeated
Row 4: knit