Knitting

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An Awesome Wedding Present!

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While playing around on the internet, looking for knitting patterns, admit it, you do that too, otherwise why would you be here??. Anyway, I came across this really pretty afghan. Composed of a number of different cable patterns, I think it would be perfect for a wedding present. From the Knit One, Purr Too Blog, here:  http://www.jenipurr.com/knitpurr-gallery/blankets/twining_trees_cabled_afghan.html

This creation is an example of what you can do with a little imagination and a stitch library! There are other pictures too, stop by and see.

Comments

  1. I came across this Richard Cabled Afghan 7 months ago when i learned how to knit..I printed it and its my inspiration for my very own first ever knitted blanket for my hubby.

    One of the links that jennipurr provides for the cables for the saxon braid does not work on her blog & being new to knitting i didnt know the difference between the ring cable on far left and right of her blanket or the saxon cable thats paneled next to ring cables.I tried letting her know that link is broken so fyi for those who try to click on it.You can google search saxon braid & get tons of free patterns. but WORD to the wise.. the only ring cable pattern i found online free was by Maureen Egan Emlet from ravelry and her chart for her ring cable is wrong (2 test swatches and 2 months later my knitting guru fixed the chart for me and my ring cable knitted up beautifully.. Thank God cause my heart was so set on that beautiful ring cable with the braid that runs through the center. The ring cable chart thats provided is wrong on every website from here to timbuck2.
    now im halfway done with my first panel of the Ring cable and I hope jennipurr knows what an inspiration her blanket was for me..its been my favorite. Ive only been knitting about 7 months but fell in love with cables and I hope my blanket turns out as pretty as hers. i even bought the same yarn she used “redheart” aran fleck. the afghan looks sorta greyish in the picture but the yarn is actually not grey at all but creamish with little bitty flecks of blue and burgundy..
    just wanted to share about the broken links,incorrect pattern and how awesome i think jennipurr is.
    have a great day all
    carolyne

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]