Sunday, July 19, 2015

The Braid-y Bunch

I finished what I think will be the last installment of my knitted pillow project. If you've been following along at home, I was originally going to make three, but a gauge problem saw me buying an extra (smaller) square pillow form, so I just had to knit another. And the extra pillow ended being the Celtic Knit Aran Pillow, finished this afternoon.

I loosely used a pattern that appeared in Canadian Living that I saw on Ravelry -- with some modifications. The pattern says it makes a 16"x16" pillow. I had a 14"x14" form, so I went down a needle size (US 6, 4mm) and trusted that the worsted Cascade 220 I was using would be a bit thinner than the Aran weight called for in the original. And it worked. The original also called for a split back with buttons But I didn't like how all the examples gapped around the buttons in the back. This can be fixed with a bit of ribbon, but the whole thing was shaping up to be way more fiddley than I was in the mood for. Ain't nobody got time for that. I was mostly interested in the braided Celtic knot motif, anyway.

After getting 14" of the cable pattern finished, I continued knitting plain stockinette for another 14". After blocking (see right), I used an invisible horizontal seam to join the top and bottom. I don't know about you, but mine are always quite visible. Perhaps I tension the yarn too tightly? Then I just seamed up the sides. Just before sewing up the final side, I found a place on the back where I hadn't caught all of the yarn and it looked quite weak. To reinforce things, I darned a bit of yarn across this spot on the inside. That was close. It's a little noticeable when you rub your hands over it, but not too bad.

So what was originally meant to be a series of quick springtime projects dragged quite far into the summer. I'm overall pretty happy with how these turned out, even if I'm not so sure about the colors going together. I've never really trusted my color sense -- and it doesn't help that I'm drawn to grays and browns. But I think they'll do. In any case, Pona seems pleased. I hope he lets me enjoy looking at them for a while before he chews them up. I can almost see the wheels spinning in that tiny little head of his.

Next up -- yet another pair of socks.

 

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE this series, Steven! And this latest contribution is beautiful -- I think it is the Marcia of the set!

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  2. You know what Kaffe Fassett always says...

    Okay, I can't find the source, but this is a paraphrase: If you have 3 or 4 colors and you're not sure they go together, add 3 or 4 more and they absolutely will.

    I think your browns and greys coordinate perfectly. But don't be afraid to add more!

    That last photo looks like you went out and cast a dog just to go with the set. So good!

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