Las Flores Crocheted Cowl

 -Fairmount Fibers, North American Distributor of Manos del Uruguay yarns provided me with the yarn for this project.-

I recently had the opportunity to get my hands on some yarn that I was really excited to be a able to work with, and today I am going to share what I made. The yarn is from Manos del Uruguay, and I was really excited when they offered me some yarn for review, I have wanted to try their yarn ever since I heard of them.

Uruguay has a very special place in my heart. I spent a year and a half serving a mission for my church in Uruguay and I grew to love the country and the people that I met there. Manos yarns are produced by coopertives of women throughout Uruguay and each skein purchased helps a woman in rural parts of Uruguay support her family. One thing that I thought was really neat is that each skein is signed by the artisan with their name and the town where it was made. Because I have lived there and spent time in different parts of the country, I thought it was kind of cool to see exactly where it was made.

The yarn I was sent is their Feliz yarn, a new blend of super wash merino and modal. It is a sport weight yarn that comes in a variety of hand dyed colors. I chose Provence, which has blues, purples, and grays. It was super soft and drapey.

I wanted to make something for myself with this yarn and I decided that I would make a scarf or a cowl. I tried out a few different stitch patterns before deciding on a variation of the blossom stitch. I loved the way the stitch worked with the colors in the yarn. I wanted something that had some nice texture but was still simple.

The name Las Flores Cowl has sort of a double meaning for me. Since the yarn was from Uruguay I wanted to give it a Spanish name. The stitch I used is a variation of  the blossom stitch and  las flores means the flowers. Flores is also the name of a department (like a state, but more similar in size to a county in the United States, since the whole country is the size of a state here) in Uruguay. It was one of my very favorite places I spent time in while I was in Uruguay so I thought it seemed appropriate.

The stitch is a pretty easy 2 row repeat using single crochet, double crochet, and chain stitches. It has a pretty texture and is a relatively solid fabric which is nice for the colder weather this time of year. I made mine a short cowl but the pattern could easily be turned into a longer circle or straight scarf, you can make it as long or short as you would like. I used only one skein of yarn and has a little left over so if you want it a lot longer than I made mine you may need 2 skeins of yarn.

How to Crochet the Las Flores Cowl

Finished size approx. 6 1/2" x 25" around

You will need:

• 1 skein Manos del Uruguay Feliz, Provence
• I crochet hook
• scissors
• yarn needle

Instructions:

Begin by ch 30 (to make your thicker or thinner add or subtract a multiple of 4)

Row 1: sc in the 2nd ch from hook, [skip 1, (dc, ch 1, dc) in the next stitch, skip 1, sc in next stitch] repeat to the end of the row (8 sc, 14 dc)

Row 2: ch 4 (counts as a dc, ch 1), turn, skip first dc, sc in ch space, [skip next dc, (dc, ch 1, dc) in next sc, skip dc, sc in ch space], repeat to the last ch sp, ch 1, dc in last sc (14 dc, 7 sc)

Row 3: ch 1, turn, sc in first dc, ([dc, ch 1, dc] in next ch sp, sc in next dc) repeat to the end of the row ending with a sc in the 3rd chain of the starting ch 4 of the previous row (8 sc, 14 dc)


Repeat rows 2 and 3 until you reach the desired length, I continued until my scarf was approximately 25 inches long.

Stitch the short ends of the scarf together

sc evenly around the long edges to give them a more finished look, I worked 1 sc in the side of each sc and 2 sc in the side of each dc

finish off and weave in all ends