A Cowl Cap Pattern Project
with Erin Boyle and Rose Pearlman
Rose and Erin in their design. Cap at left transforms into the cowl at right.
At the start of this year, we reached out to Erin Boyle and Rose Pearlman to collaborate. They are both unique and distinctive creative minds. Erin is a writer and photographer who crafts her work into stories on her beloved blog, Reading My Tea Leaves and her 2016 book Simple Matters. Rose is an artist, teacher, and textile designer, and author of Modern Rug Hooking. They’re also buds.
Together, we wanted to bring you a knitting project that was inventive, thoughtful, and accessible. The result? A beautifully considered Cowl Cap pattern designed by Rose and knit and documented by Erin. This project is a great entry point for new knitters, returning knitters, a wonderful teaching project for kids, and results in a very versatile piece of knitwear.
We spoke with Erin about the process.
Tell us about your experience level with knitting.
My mom gave me a copy of Debbie Stoller’s Stitch and Bitch for Christmas when I was a sophomore in college. I didn’t grow up knitting or even being around people who knit, but I taught myself the very basics using that book. For a long time, and even still, I described myself as a rectangular knitter. I got very good at churning out a lot of basic stitches in long rectangular swatches, but I’ve felt like I needed in-person guidance to be confident in tackling even simple patterns. Rose Pearlman is my dear friend, collaborator, and fellow DIY enthusiast and it was a particular treat to be able to work side by side with her on this project.
Do you ever involve your kids in knitting projects?
Despite showing lots of interest, my kids are still at the ages (or maybe just of the general disposition) when they aren’t quite ready to sit patiently with little needles, so we’ve been doing more of a learning through osmosis instead. They sit next to me and watch me knit, they help me wind the balls of yarn, when they want to try their hand at a few stitches, they do, and then they go back to cartwheels and knocking down block towers and whatever else satisfies their gross motor urges. Still, I think like learning a language, there’s real work being done in the background here. Even if they don’t have the patience to sit with the over/under specificity of knitting right now, they’re still absorbing some of the art, the pace, and the rhythm. I think this kind of witnessing guides us so much in what we ultimately value in terms of the finished product, sure, but also the process, how we spend our time, and what it looks like to make something. By the time I finished my first cowl, they were more excited than I was.
What do you find distinctive about the creative process of knitting?
I really value working with my hands and seeing the physical manifestation of progress. Being able to take a break from the more tedious work of writing (or rewriting!) and having a tangible project to focus on keeps me feeling grounded. I think for my kids, it’s nice for them to see that good things take time. Even a simple knitting project still takes hours to complete and I think there’s value in watching a project progress with care and attention.
How do you find knitting compared to other artistic mediums?
I really appreciate the socially anti-social aspect of knitting. It’s something that I can do while talking to a friend, or watching a movie with my family, or generally being at least partially present to something else. At the same time, I like that knitting requires at least part of my attention. When I’m solo and working on other repair or household projects, sometimes the work is so monotonous that my mind starts to spin. I think knitting hits the sweet spot of needing some of my attention but not all of it. It’s meditative in that way.
As a small urban apartment dweller, I also really appreciate that knitting requires such simple supplies and takes up relatively little space. I’ve been teaching myself to sew on a sewing machine this year and while I deeply appreciate the opportunity, I’m less enthralled with dragging the machine in and out of the closet and the constant fiddling with the machine. Knitting needles are so simple and unassuming—like extensions of fingers with muscle memory! I love that I can put a knitting project down and come back to it in fits and starts over the course of a few weeks (or months!). I also learned a new word this week: frogging! Undoing stitches, ripping a project out and starting again with the same yarn and same simple tools has such a note of optimism in it. It can be brutal to mess up and need to begin again, but…it’s also possible! I love that!
You knit primarily with Dune and Peach Dusk. Tell us a bit about your yarn color choices.
These colors remind me of early spring and the blossoms that will be on trees when there is still a chill in the air, and the insides of shells washed up onto off-season beaches. I’m getting impatient with the idea that these are neutral colors. Who could deny the magnolia bud her brush with fuschia? The inside of whelk her pink? The slipper shell her mauve? I have a few skeins of the deeper, more vibrant colors, too, but my real soft spot is for the skeins that just brush up against a color.
