Cable heaven

It was love at first sight. The moment I laid eyes on the Burridge Lake aran afghan, I knew we had to be together. I had to make it. It was destiny.

See, I'd been imagining a blanket pattern just like that to make for my brother-in-law. I hadn't found one online, so I figured I would design it, but Ms. Dalvi read my mind and designed it for me.

Getting started on it, however, was no easy task. First, the yarn I ordered -- Caron Simply Soft off-white -- turned out to be actually yellow. I figured BIL wouldn't like that, so I shipped the yarn back and ordered the bone colorway, which is what you'll see below.

Secondly, getting started on such an intricate pattern is always slow. At first, you're juggling three charts: one for the placement of the pattern, one for the directions for each pattern, and one for the abbreviations. Besides that, you're reversing the cabling on one side to make it a mirror image of the other. The first cable repeat feels like you will never get the hang of it and surely you shall die, but eventually it clicks, and now I'm no longer even following a pattern.



(After 5 repeats of the center panel. I'm now on the ninth repeat.)

Finally, there were some mistakes in the pattern, most of which are corrected in Magknits, and the designer was kind enough to point them out to me. Of course, that didn't stop me from making some mistakes of my own. Here's a hint of where they are:


(No, I'm not correcting them. BIL will not notice.)