Cabled Afghans

This is a the tale of a process knitter and this blog post was written during the process.  Hopefully, it makes a good story of woe:

First Pattern

Original cable pattern (chart) was found on a Russian website.  I translated it into English and wrote the chart out in long form.  The English pattern can be found here.

My afghan was knit with Simple Soft (off white) on size 11 circular needles.  The cable pattern was set on a bed of 25 stitches, and I placed panels of 25 stitch moss stitch between the cabling.  The blanket had 7 stitches of moss stitch for border stitches (14 total) plus five panels of cabling (125 stitches) plus four panels of moss stitch (100 stitches).  There were 239 stitches.  I don't know why I didn't notice there were way too many stitches.

Here's what I've learned-

Statistics
AKA- why this afghan is priceless

Yarn- 30 oz (6 oz to a skein)
Time Per Row- 25 minutes per row
Number of Rows- (264)
Total Time- 110 hours!

And then I completely abandoned it when I realized that I had accidentally made it 10 feet wide!  If I ever want to make a bedspread, now I know how to do it.

Looking back over the numbers, I should have figured it out from the beginning, but I've been a bit distracted lately.  Oh well, knitting a blanket twice is the best way to stretch your yarn dollars.

Second Pattern

Violet's Cable

This pattern was much simpler to work and very satisfying to finish.  I did nine cabled ropes over six stitches each, with six stitches of reverse stocking stitch in between.  The borders are seven stitches of seed stitch.  I knit the yarn from the failed blanket, unraveling as I worked.  It is the same amount of yarn minus a bit (so about 5 skeins worth).  Very simple, soft and elegant.

Third Pattern

I had a second request for a cabled afghan, so I made another one.  This one has 3 sections with 5-strand braids and a simple rope cable in between.  When I make another afghan (cause I'm sure I will), I'm going to try putting cables on both sides of the blanket.  The 5-strand braid makes a nice ribbed pattern on the reverse side, which I think will work nicely as the divider between cables.  I think the reverse stocking stitch boarders are a tad large and boring on this one.  No more blankets for a while, though.