Add a twist to your knitting!

One of my favourite accessories to wear during the first cooler days of Autumn is a knitted cowl. They are quick to make and easy to wear, so are perfect for casual walks by a lake or an evening out.

However, there is one situation when they can be a problem – and that is when you want to wear one under a coat or jacket. Then you might find that they are trying to stick out from your body and refusing to fold neatly at the neckline. 

There is, fortunately, an easy solution to that but we need to go into the realms of mathematics to find it!

So think back to when you last wore a standard scarf under an overcoat. Did you cross one end over the other to form a neat 'V' shape? I don't suppose I am alone in doing that. It is just a perfect way to close up the gap at the top of your coat and also adds a double layer of knitted wonderment to keep cold drafts at bay.

And you can achieve that same neat fold in a looped cowl or scarf by simply adding a half-twist then joining the two ends together! It's such a simple technique but adds so much to the finished result. As you can see in the photo above, this forms a pleasing 'V' shape at the front while still allowing the scarf to curve smoothly around the back of your neck.

As an added bonus, this half-twist does not just make the cowl sit better, it also gives it a very special property – that it now only has one side! 

We have all done this experiment at school, haven't we – you take a strip of paper, give it a half-twist and fasten it together. Then you start tracing a line with your pencil and before you know it you are back at the beginning and, what's more, you're still on the same side... Amazing.

This is the Mœbius strip, named after one of the people who discovered it, August Ferdinand Möbius in 1858. About eighty years later some Mœbius designs were seen in the work of the fashion designer Madeleine Vionnet, then in the 1980's, Elizabeth Zimmermann realised that you could work this idea into knitting.

​The "Mœbius Scarf" was born.

To add this half-twist to your knitted cowl:

• Begin your work with a Provisional Cast-On,
• then knit to the length you want for the circumference of your cowl. 
• Carefully undo the Provisional Cast-On and capture the live stitches onto a needle. [See photo on left above]

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• Now take one end of the work and give it a half-twist. [See photo on right above]
• Position the two edges together and graft them together using Kitchener Stitch or seam them together using a three-needle bind off. [The latter method does leave a visible seam but it is an easy method and can give a good result if the knitted fabric is fairly flat.]

And there you have it – a Mœbius Cowl!

So far I have spoken about cowls, but the same half-twist can also be applied to longer scarves. We usually refer to these as Infinity Scarves but the names are fairly interchangeable. Like their shorter counterparts, an Infinity Scarf sits beautifully flat with an elegant drape when worn loosely like a long scarf, as in the photo above. In fact, the looped part of the scarf can act as a muffler to keep your hands warm!

However, they really come into their own when wrapped twice around your neck for extra warmth as in the photo at the top of the page. The Mœbius twist seems to make the fabric fold in a particularly appealing way, giving an intriguing shape and geometry to a simple scarf.

There is one other requirement for a Mœbius Scarf and that is that you need to use a reversible knitting stitch. This sounds slightly odd for a garment with only one mathematical side! However, by definition both "sides" of the knitting will be on view so you really need to select a reversible stitch for this.

It doesn't matter what the stitch is, so you can have fun delving through collections of knitting stitches such as our Reversible Knitting Stitches book for inspiration. For example, the cowl and infinity scarf I am featuring in this blogpost use Mistake Rib from the book and this gives a beautifully cozy ribbed neckwarmer.

I hope that has given you some inspiration for trying a Mœbius Cowl or Infinity Scarf for your next scarf project!

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For information about any of the patterns featured here or our
Reversible Knitting Stitches book, ​please click the Patterns tab above.

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