A while ago, when making plans for the next batch of gift knitting, Richard asked for an afghan. So I let him pick out the yarn he liked, and then I sat down and spent a few days hashing out a mix of likely candidates for patterns and designs. I cast on and ripped it out about five times before I finally got something I liked, and then spent about a month working on it (along with other knitting projects, of course, because one can never have only one thing on the needles).

I finally finished it this weekend, but didn't get around to weaving in all the ends and tossing it into the washing machine to soften it up and let it 'settle' into its final size. The pictures are a little grainy, but you get the gist of it. I think I did a pretty good job - cables only look difficult, but they're really just time consuming.

I suppose I shouldn't make light of the amount of work that was involved in this. After all, this did entail me having to keep track of about six pages of typed notes and instructions and charts, including having to reverse the trees cable pattern so that it would be identical on both ends of the completed project. Considering that none of the cable motifs I chose had the same number of rows, this meant that I had to keep track of where I was in up to five different patterns at a time. All things considered, the fact that I only made one mistake in wrapping the cables (and it's near the bottom so you can't really tell anyway unless you know exactly what to look for) is pretty amazing.

Anyway, here are some pictures. Every single one of these cable patterns is available for free online somewhere (more info on yarn and where I got the designs available in my cross-post to Knit One, Purr Too, here).

The full length shot

Close-up of the center cable pattern, and the 'filler' section of tile stitch for the middle.

Close-up of the Twining Trees motif