Samhainn, finished

Wow, this was such a fun project! As soon as I got my second skein of whiskey barrel wound up I finished this in a flash. The center garter stitch section only took me a couple evenings (and an hour in the lovely garden by Memorial Church on campus on lunch break) to whip up. Mom helped me pick out the color combination and I really like the way it turned out. Despite the fact that California doesn't have much of an autumn in my neck of the woods I'm starting to feel it looking at this! I've got some acorn earrings that will pair so nicely with this, too. 

The yarn, madeline tosh dk, is my new favorite. I have been using so much of her single ply fingering weight yarn because that's what I'd been able to find in my local yarn shops, but it looks like Nine Rubies will be carrying this multi-ply dk weight yarn now. It's dense and squishy and absolutely lovely to work with. In true madtosh form all of the colors are stunning. It also works up very quickly compared to lighter weight yarns. It took me no time at all to get all those inches of cables off the needles. 

Speaking of cables, I learned a lot on this one. Cable patterns have seemed like something I would never be great at being able to do without referring to the pattern every step, but a few inches into this one and something finally clicked and I can cross stitches pretty intuitively now. The other thing that was so handy, and which I think contributed to the aforementioned click, was learning how to cable without a cable needle. Being able to just rearrange the stitches and keep on knitting really sped things up and made it so much simpler. Of course it's best when there aren't many stitches involved, these are all 2x2 crosses. The blanket I'm working on has small cables, too, and since finishing this I've found myself able to work through those charts much better.

This will need some light blocking to even out some puckers in the middle, but even without it drapes nicely and is plenty 'neat' enough to wear right away. I *really* like the cable border -- the texture, the color, the pattern, everything. Also the way the border joins with the center section looks quite professional and a testament to the detail Ysolda puts into her patterns. It looks like a running chain all along the edge, but was accomplished with some simple slipped selvedges that flipped over like magic after picking up the center stitches. I'll update the dimensions once the blocking is done, but for now the specifics:

Pattern: Hediye by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Madeline Tosh DK in 'Terra' and 'Whiskey Barrel'
Needle: Size 7
Dimensions: 56" x 22"