The YarnTotingBlog

I was hesitant to do this when I noticed the pattern was marked as requiring an “Experienced” level of skill but after reading some of the comments over at the Lion Brand Blog I was encouraged to jump in.

Initially I was thinking of knitting this up for my mother and her preference for fall colors dictated my choice. I ended up purchasing yarn from A.C.Moore since they had Wool-Ease for $2.49 - the cheapest I’d found at that point. They didn’t have much of a color selection considering I needed ten skeins and even from those with enough I would need to use two dye lots. I was partial towards the Sienna yet thinking maybe I should go with Sage but since there were only 7 skeins of Sage my decision was made for me. The Sienna was sitting vertically between the Violet and the Sage and it appeared as a gorgeous burnt orange. Taken off by itself however it has appeared as a variety of shades depending on the light it is in and that made me uncertain of whether my mother would care for it although I remain quite fond of it myself, appreciating it’s various personalities. I looked for input from mom but she informed me that whatever color I chose would be perfect which wasn’t reassuring enough for me so I have at this point determined to keep this, my first knitted afghan - in fact, my first ever large knit project - for my own home and make another for mom - maybe this same afghan, maybe another. Also, I found an awesome place online to buy from so I’m extremely excited about future yarn shopping.

Well, I’m not good at knitting gauge swatches but I did give it a go this time and I’ve learned a lot from that will save me a ridiculous amount of time in future (one small lesson being to do it properly the first time to save having to do it again, and again, in an attempt to verify if my half hearted effort has really given accurate feedback). Monday morning I cast on and it has not exactly been smooth sailing but I have not had to completely frog and start over. The worst thing that happened was during the first row of increases I read the first half of the pattern from the right row and the second half from another and didn’t realize it until I was a couple of rows further on. Frogging back and picking up all those stitches again was one thing but even more time consuming was fixing all the loops that were split in the process. Three rows up I was still finding them and having to drop stitches down to that first increase row to correct the split stitch so it didn’t drive me crazy.

Now I guess I’m about half way through the branches (about to start row 38, to be exact) and although it was quite a novelty at first to be doing cables for the first time, I have to say that I’m looking forward to the divider where I will be doing straight knit and purl rows at least for a short while.