Category: Blather

So my family has a tradition. (When I say “my family” I mean me; when I say “a tradition” I mean “I decided it was going to be a tradition.” Just to be clear.) When each of my siblings got engaged I picked out a pattern and yarn and made an afghan as a wedding present. So when my cousin announced her engagement last summer I decided that I should include her in this tradition as well. (Then my brother got engaged at Christmas so that really put the knitting deadlines to the test! More on his afghan shortly…)

Alecia’s bridal shower was this weekend so I was able to present her with her Winter Cabin Throw, one of the most enjoyable projects I have made in a long time. And as you can see, she was very happy with it!

While browing patten options way back last fall when I was first starting to consider my options, the pattern for the Winter Cabin Throw immediately caught my eye and I decided right away that it was perfect. My cousin is a fan of classic and vintage designs and she loves a good cozy afternoon with book and a mug of our favorite tea. (We both share a deep love of Stash Tea’s Christmas Eve blend, which is a spearmint tea with warm spices and which I highly recommend to you if you are looking for a comforting decaffeinated option. I love it at bedtime.) This pattern calls for either worsted weight yarn held double or a bulky-weight held singly; I had already bought some Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick with this present in mind (I had a coupon!) so I was pleased to have my plan come together.

This pattern is clear and well written, with the pattern charted and written out. The cables are not terrible complex: columns of seed-stitch filled diamonds are bordered with slipped-stitch columns and fat happy twists. Since I love a good cable chart I only glanced at the written instructions and dove right in. Even better, Kalurah includes a fully charted and written swatch that includes all of the cables and ribbing used in the full project, and I was able to whip that out with no problems. So I was feeling extremely confident about this project.

Naturally, I hit a bit of a road block right away. The first row is worked on the wrong side, setting up the ribbed border, and I …had a very hard time working “backwards” off the chart. I ripped that row out four times before I finally got it to work. Then I got about six rows in, found a hideous mistake, and ended up ripping the whole thing back and casting on again. Third time ended up being the charm, and once I got the ribs completed and into the cable chart it was smooth sailing.

I made a few modifications, namely the bobbles. The pattern originally called for them to be 5 stitches. I tested both 5 and 3 stitch bobbles and decided I preferred the 3 stitch bobbles, so I worked them all a little smaller.

I also opted to knit this on US 13 circulars (9 mm) instead of the US 15 called for. I’m a pretty loose knitter so I usually go down a needle size in general but more prosaically, I put my hands on my US 13 interchangeable tips first when I went to cast on my swatch and I got gauge spot on so I just…kept going.

Finally, I ended up striping two yarns. The main color I went with was Fisherman, which is a perfect creamy-off white. But I had also found Starlight, which is the Fisherman color with an added gold tinsel wrap. (You can see it in the picture above.) I ended up alternating the yarns every other row, so the gold wrap was a little more subtle. It didn’t fight with the cable pattern at all and while it made for more ends to weave in the end result was so stunning that it was absolutely worth it.

I did run out of yarn; I was just shy of the 1100 yards that the pattern called for, for the bulky yarn, half for each of the two colors I was working with. The pattern said 1100 yards included the yarn used for the swatch so I assumed I would be fine, but then I ran out just as I was starting the last cable repeat. So things went on hold for a few weeks while I ordered another few skeins. (Cheers to Lion Brand’s website, which had them shipped and arriving very promptly!) It worked out just fine, aside from the frustration of reaching into my project bag for another ball to join and coming up empty. However, if you make this pattern using bulky I would suggest having some extra yarn on hand.

Despite that interruption, I loved this project so much that I’m considering making another one for myself, but of course with a modification: I want to try it with a single-strand worsted yarn, for a slightly lighter blanket, and with more repeats of the cable chart to make it wide enough to cover my bed with. But I’m going to hold off on that until the winter!

I’m so happy that Alecia is so pleased with her gift – her fiance also seemed happy with it, and when I left the shower they were discussing which room it should go in. I hope they enjoy many snuggly evenings together!

Winter Cabin Throw Project Data

Pattern Name & Designer	Winter Cabin Throw (Etsy Link) by Kalurah Hudson. Also available on Ravelry here (Rav link).
Type	Afghan/Throw
Size	One Size
Yarn	Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick in Fisherman (cream) and Starlight (cream with gold tinsel wrap)
Needles	US 13 (9 mm)
Date	March - May 2021

Hello internet!

It has been a long year and I have been very occupied by lots of things that are not the blog, and I’m sorry about that. I miss the blog so one of my goals for this new year is to give it more of my attention. Let me start by showing you a bit of my holidays!

I gave myself permission to relax this holiday season, and so my crafting was pretty limited. I made some infinity scarves out of bulky yarn for my sisters, which were quick and easy knits. I didn’t even bother with a pattern, just cast on 100 stitches and worked in seed stitch in the round until I felt like it was long enough. I think, now that the holidays are over, that I’d like to make one for myself too!

I also knit a little something for my nephew, who is now a year old and growing every day!

Since I got him toys for his birthday, I decided for Christmas I would get books. So I got a few old favorites, and a new-to-me story, “The Mitten,” about a little boy whose lost mitten shelters woodland creatures, and grows tremendous in the process. So it seemed obvious that I should knit him two mittens, a regular boy-sized one and a stretched out one.

Nephew found them fascinating, so I think I shall knit him a proper wearing pair out of wool, and not the acrylic I used for these toy ones.

(I also think I need to make a pair for my brother-in-law, who put on the stretched mitten, found it fit, and then didn’t want to take it off!)

I also made a set of tea towels for my sisters (with more to come for myself and my parents – see that whole bit about relaxing!) and I worked from a Spoonflower tutorial I’ve been meaning to try for a long time. We had a number of hand-written recipes from my grandmothers floating around, so I scanned some and worked up a design that I was able to submit to Spoonflower and order printed on their linen-cotton fabric. When it arrived, I cut it up (four towels to a yard) and seamed them using the wonderful sewing machine my parents gifted me with on my last birthday. They came out pretty cool:

Each sister got one recipe from each grandmother, and I’m going to give one of the other sets to my parents and keep one for myself. One of my sisters has already framed them up and hung them on the wall – she decided they were too precious to use, despite my promises that if they were ruined I could make her new ones. I’m happy she loves them so much she wants to see them every day. I think having a little bit of family around, even though they’ve been gone for a long time, is a big part of what makes the holidays special for us so I’m really please with how well these went over.

If you are looking for a unique (and showstopping!) gift I highly recommend the tutorial. I’m still very much a novice sewer and was able to handle this project without much difficulty at all. It was a very good learning project for me, actually, and I enjoyed the process immensely.

And now that the holidays are over I am off on a vacation. Maybe I will get some traveling sock pictures for the blog! I hope 2015 brings us all health and happiness and good things.

Hi there, internet. I’m posting which means I do, in fact, have power — unlike most of Long Island. Something like half of the households are still out following this weekend’s hurricane, so I’m feeling pretty fortunate. We had a lot of wind and rain, but now that the storm has passed it’s peaceful and everything smells fresh and clean.

We did have some pretty large trees go down in the storm:

like this big old one by the public library. The whole thing just came up out of the ground, roots and all. My yard got off pretty lightly in comparison:

We cleaned up everything today, so I decided to celebrate by having a winding party.

It was very strange to sit outside winding yarn in such fresh-smelling air, looking at the perfectly sunny, blue sky, when it was so stormy just a day before. I’m very glad my family & neighborhood got through OK, and my heart’s going out to Vermont and the shore communities in NC and NJ that have been so decimated.