Although it’s been quiet around the blog, I have been knitting. I drew an actual sketch for what I’m calling Levi’s Baby Blanket and now I’m just trying to figure out how to make my giant scribble into an actual knitted thing.
So far, so good.
I’m thinking of using Knitpicks Swish Superwash in the bare (ie, undyed and natural) colorway, in either bulky or worsted weight. Of course, it stands to reason that I’d be swatching with DK weight, right? Yes, yes, I’ll eventually swatch with the actual yarn I plan to use. But in this case I’m making design swatches, see? It’s a whole other process!
Anyway, the concept or theme for the blanket is “three” — three being the number of people in a family when the first new baby arrives. (In the case of our friends, three also has other special significance.) Of course thrown into the mix is a dash of “new life” and soupson of “love” so I feel like I have plenty to work with.
Design-wise, I’ve started with the most basic three-part unit I know of: the braid.
I played around with it a bit once I’d worked a pattern repeat, but my favorite part of my swatch is still the traditional-looking braid at the right side of the photo above. I think the 4-stitch reverse stockinette border looks best. On the left side of the photo, you’ll notice that the reverse stockinette starts to look a little funny. Well, that was me trying something . . . a teeny tiny braided cable on the wrong side of my swatch.
A cool idea, right? But in practice a big mess. That’s why we swatch right?
My next step was to create a cable of my own design:
I am kind of not digging it. The cable looks kind of snake-like and pointy to me. I also don’t really like the way the bobble placement came out, but I struggled with it and I’m not sure how to correct the problem. Even with a smoother cable and better bobbles, I’m not sure if I’ll use this cable. It looks a little bit plain to me, especially next to the plain braid.
[…] Lindsay Frequent visitors to this space may recall that in the past six months I’ve been working on designing my first really original (ie, not from a pattern) project, with all the stops and starts that go […]
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