I finally finished the comfort throw that I made for my daughter’s friend’s mom…the sweet lady who recently had surgery. She’ll be starting chemotherapy in a couple of weeks.
I started this last Saturday, while at a soccer tournament, and finished late last night (thanks, Lactosefree, for sticking with me in the chatroom while I finished!).
Meanwhile, I’m hoping that she will enjoy the warmth of this throw.
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I adapted this pattern from a cabled pillow pattern in this pamphlet, adding six garter rows at the top and bottom as well as a three stitch garter border on each side:
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The pattern calls for use of the Saxon Braid, which you can find on [COLOR=Green][B]this[/B][/COLOR] site. It looks difficult, but it really wasn’t. Oh, sure, the rows were intense, and you really had to pay attention to the right side rows, but you were rewarded by the easier wrong side rows.
The blanket measures approximately 27"x 29". When I sit with it on my lap, it covers my legs from hips to waist. I’m short petite. So is my friend, so I think this will be perfect…especially if she wants to carry it around the house.
I used, in total, about three skeins of I Love This Yarn, Dark Raspberry. I have to return the other four skeins, since I bought eight, not knowing how many it would take. I guess this yarn has a lot of yardage.
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I doubled the yarn, working from two skeins at a time, so I have about 1/2 of two skeins left over. I also used size 15 needles except for the cast on and bind off, in which I used size 17 needles. My original intent had been to use the 17’s throughout, but the sheer size of the needles left my hands unhappy after casting on, and I also thought that my cables wouldn’t “pop” out as much with the larger needles.
I never understood what people meant when they said that a pattern was intuitive. Well, now I know. Making these cables was, truly, intuitive. I knew instantly when I had made a mistake. The cable work just seemed to flow fairly easily. I knew when I was supposed to C4B or T4F.
I only had to make one major tink, and that was when I stayed up really late one night, trying desperately to keep to my self-imposed schedule of one pattern repeat per day. Row 15 ate me alive that night. It’s very difficult to tink back cable work, but I did it…all the way back to row 14, where I found my mistake on the wrong side. Go figure. I fixed it, muddled through row 15, and put the blanket to bed for the night. Other than that, it flew off of my needles.
Thanks for looking! 
