Birthday Surprises from Cotton Clouds

Irene of Cotton Clouds Mail Order Yarns is celebrating her birthday this week and buyers will get the surprises. Now on her website there’s a range of gift packages available to choose from, ranging from a $50 value package going for $45 to a $1,000 value package now going for $550. (Despite the shop’s name, it does not sell only cotton yarns.)

You choose what craft you’ll be using the yarn for, whether you’d prefer skeins, cones or a mix and what color range you’d and Irene will do the rest. She’s also throwing in some free patterns and other goodies.

Have you ever ordered yarn grab-bag style? I’ve done it a few times and it’s an interesting challenge to try to use the yarn sometimes! But it’s also fun to have the surprise of not knot what you’re going to get.

Agree? Disagree? Spill it!

[Photo by Cotton Clouds.]

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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