Project Notebook: <3 Pillow

I have a new project over at Craft Bits that I wanted to share with you. It’s a fun one for Valentine’s Day or any time you want to bring a little love (and brightly colored yarn) to your home.

I call it the <3 Pillow because the heart design on the front was inspired by that symbol. But it you look at it the other way it just looks like a regular heart.

Because of the super bulky yarn used to knit this project, it really doesn’t take a lot of time, and the colorwork is pretty simple, too (though it’s almost like stranded intarsia, because the easiest way to do it is with two strands of the accent color and one of the background).

I also made my own pillow form for this one, with a bit of upcycling, out of an old towel and some quilt batting I had lying around.

My daughter loves it, mostly because it’s bright (I mean bright) pink. I hope you’ll love it, too.

What’s on your needles?

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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