DIY: Simple Brioche by Lavanya Patricella

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This simple brioche cowl is my first brioche knitting project. It is based on the lovely Beginners Brioche Cowl by Lavanya Patricella. I adjusted her pattern slightly because I used a different weight wool than the pattern called for. This means I also changed the number of stitches cast on and the number of rows to create the same shape as Lavanya’s cowl.

How is brioche knitting different?

Brioche knitting is different than regular knitting in multiple ways, but I’ve narrowed it down to three main ones. Firstly, each row is knit twice so the result is a thick, sturdy, and warm fabric. It is a great structure for a thick winter accessory like a cowl.

Secondly, it is easier to knit brioche in two colours, rather than a single colour. That’s the main reason I wanted to learn the new technique. I don’t enjoy holding two colours in my hand in multi-stranded regular knitting. With brioche, however, each row is knit twice: once in the first colour and then again in the second colour. You only have to hold onto one colour at a time. It is also easier to read your stitches when there are two colours.

Lastly, brioche knitting uses more yardage than regular knitting since you knit each row twice. This creates the thick fabric, but means that you will need more yarn for a similar sized project than with regular knitting.

Adjustments to the pattern

Lavanya’s pattern calls for bulky wool, which is a smart weight to use for a beginners project. Sadly, I didn’t have the bulky wool that her pattern called for, so I substituted in two DK weight yarns. The first is a beautiful skein of DK 3 Ply from Twin Oaks Fibre, which I purchased at the Upper Canada’s Fibreshed event called Landmade earlier this year.

The second yarn used is a dark teal wool that Meinhilde purchased on a huge cone at a yard sale. We are not sure exactly where it’s from, just that it is 100% wool.

As I mentioned, this was my introduction to brioche knitting. I wanted to start on an easy project. This was definitely the right project for this. However, since it was my first attempt at brioche, I didn’t know how to read the pattern and didn’t try very hard at first. I decided to start watching a few online videos, but they didn’t help at all because they were all too fast. I couldn’t see what was happening with each stitch. Honestly, I spent hours trying to learn that first brioche stitch. I finally went back to Lavanya’s written pattern and found it much easier to understand than the videos. I highly recommend following her written pattern only and not watching any videos- I wish I’d done that.

Since the original pattern calls for a heavier weight wool, I adjusted the number of stitches to maintain a similar sized cowl pictured in Lavanya’s photos. I cast on 140 stitches and knit 58 rows with 3.75mm/ size 5 circular needles.

The final size of this simple brioche cowl is 33cm/ 13in wide and 25cm/ 10in tall. It sits loosely around my neck but since the brioche fabric is thick, it can stand up and cover my neck and chin. There is no wrong side in brioche knitting- one side is more white, while the other side is more teal.

Crochet brioche

This is the first knit brioche project featured on Kiku Corner, but we have three other brioche crochet patterns here. This includes our crochet Marrakech Hat, which was published by Yarn People earlier this year.