Shawl + cardigan = blanket

You know the saying swirling around the internet?

Knitting is like sex. If I like you and

you appreciate it, its free. 

Other than that, you can't pay me enough.

That is so true. I mostly knit for myself but sometimes I come across something that looks like a fun knit and it's screaming the name of someone I know. If that lucky someone appreciates my little knitted gifts with some appropriate whooping, they might just be in for more knitted gifts.

What: Morvach / Lucy Hague

How: Circular needle 4.0 mm

From: Drops Baby Merino, 227 g

I've long been admiring the intricate cables on Lucy Hagues Morvarch shawl - except that it's not a shawl I would use. Instead, I know someone who loves all thing celtic and any fantasy inspired stuff. When I heard, this person was expecting a baby, I came up with a plan.

Yes, Morvarch is indeed a shawl pattern designed for lace weight yarn. But there's miles and miles of boring stockinette stitch in the shawl and actually everything interesting happens right in the beginning in the center of the shawl. I figured, using heavier yarn, this shawl pattern could be turned into a baby blanket by knitting just the center square of the shawl. And I wasn't wrong.

Few years back I bought beige Drops Baby Merino from the clearence sale of my LYS. The color didn't speak to me so it was headed for the dye pot. My lovely dyeing guru friend insists that I dyed this yarn - though in my memories, I mainly stood by the pot and said green would be great.

The shawl - or in this case, the blanket - starts at the center. It begins with some garter stitch with magical cables on top of it. Once the first cables are done, the rest of the square is shaped with short rows. That way the direction of knitting can be altered and the corners are knitted with stockinette stitch with more magic cables. After this, I threw the rest of the pattern out.

By this time, the blanket wasn't big enough so I decided on a garter stitch edge. At this point I remembered seeing a blanket with garter stitch edging and cables in the corners that would be a perfect fit for this baby blanket as well. Annoyingly, you couldn't by just the blanket pattern but had to purchase an entire e-book to get it. I didn't feel like spending so much on the mere blanket corners. Luckily, I remembered that I actually own one pattern from the e-book that uses similar cables and figured, I could probably just modify that chart to work with my project.

Turning the shawl pattern to a blanket was easy. All I had to do, was stop at the right time. Instead, modifying a baby cardigan yoke chart to work with the corners of my garter stitch edge, wasn't all that painless. I kept saying to myself how good it is I'm knitting the entire edge all at once so I won't have to remember how I worked the corners. I made the corner cables approximately as in the yoke chart. On every other round I increased one stitch on each side of the cable to make the corners corner shaped.

Once I had finished the cables, I bound off the edge like this: *k2tog tbl, move the st back onto the left needle*, repeat *-*. This way the bind off edge was elastic enough for easy blocking.

I almost forgot the most important bit! The magic cables. From the shawl pattern, I learned an easy yet incredible trick to make cables that start from nothing and end nowhere. Or can you tell where the cables starter and ended? I thought so! Once I learned the trick, I used it in the corner cables as well. I also picked up a trick for making almost horizontal cables without them putting a strain on the garment. I would say the designer has been sharpening her technique for quite some time. Wow. Just wow.

But perhaps next something a bit more relaxed knitting? Yeah right...