I’m trying SO HARD not to get sucked down the log-cabin rabbithole just yet. Honestly — in addition to how much time I could easily spend just dreaming up ideas for the Log Cabin Make-along — I’m afraid if I decide on a course of action too soon, I won’t be able to resist casting on before New Year’s. However, I ran across this Misha & Puff pattern and nearly fell off my stool, and had to share it right away. They call it simply the Heirloom Blanket, and the palette is exquisite, but I am so wowed by the deft incorporation of speckles and stripes here. This one is entirely made of mitered squares seamed together (which is all fine and dandy) but could also be done with the ninepatch log cabin technique found in MDK’s Log Cabin primer.
I can imagine making this beauty at wrap size and never not wearing it.
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the color combo and stripes are definitely what caught my eye. it really makes it a strong contender for the KAL.
Ok, so this may cause me to join my first KAL!
This is fabulous and I am looking for a great project for the new year…
Amazing pattern. Thank you. May be a perfect quilt for my daughters college dorm.
ACH! Yes, indeed! Another road now calling so alluringly. Yikes. I spent enough of my morning yesterday looking at Log Cabin designs. (My favorite quilt pattern if I ever get to it.) ANTICIPATION.
OMG – that blanket is delicious!!!
This could be knitted with the techniques in Vivian Hoxbro’s book, “Domino Knitting”. It is definitely SLOW fashion. However, her ideas are good but I don’t see how you can do the mitered pieces as oblong rectangles. I need to think on this, but maybe will not.
What is the Domino Knitting approach?
It is knitting very pretty mitered squares and picking up stitches along one side of each square. There is a book (paperback). Actually, she has written two of the books. The technique is very pretty but slow to knit. You can graph out anything you want to knit and use this technique. It is not log cabin bur related
Wowwww!!! This is a wonderful blanket!!!
I love Misha & Puff. I’m longing for their women’s bobble sweater.
Do it!
Oooooooh!!!!
agree…the colors are sooooo appealing.
Like everybody else, the colors in that blanket make me drool. But it is *so* pitch perfect for the current moment (even down to using the speckled yarns that are so hot right now) that it kinda makes me nervous. The gold/aged brass, the “millennial pink”, the use of black to give a modern edge to all the dusty, hazy, nostalgic colors — I’m looking at 5 clothing and shelter catalogs that came in the mail yesterday that all have some version of this palette on their covers. In 15 years, I suspect this is going to scream “so 2010s”. But will that be a good thing or a bad thing? Someday, some very different look will have risen up to seem just as swoonworthy. Will this one age into a timeless classic, or an avocado refrigerator? (I apologize to anybody who’s still Team Avocado Refrigerator!).
I adore these very colors and look right now, but if I’m being honest, I adored something quite different 15 years ago… as the deeper cuts in my yarn stash will attest (I love Karen’s wonderful insight into how she’s basically liked the same color palette forever, which spurred me to note that my affections have been nowhere near as constant).
This is the thing I struggle with most in trying to be intentional and think long-term with the things I make.
This comment really resonated with me! I’m a little closer to the Karen camp–I like what I like over time–but just like everyone else I end up being swayed by whatever the prevailing aesthetic is. These colors aren’t what I would choose but I don’t think they will end up looking truly dated or making the blanket look like a historical artifact. They are lovely in and of themselves. But you raise such a thought-provoking point.
I think it’s a fairly timeless for a kids’ palette, but definitely right on trend outside the nursery.
A couple of decades ago (pre-internet), Carol Anderson of Cottage Creations had booklets for both a log cabin blanket and a mitred square blanket and jacket. I made all of these back in the 90s when my kids were small and Carol’s bookletsk, illustrated by her daughter (Carol was at that time already a grandmother) were available in yarn shops across the US. If you ever come across one of her pattern booklets, grap it.
I love the ombré effect in the first example on this one: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/rambling-rows-jacket
I have that booklet!
This one took my breath away. Thank you for sharing.
Such a lovely blanket! I can’t quite see it as a wrap, but I am sure you could make it look fabulous. One thing I enjoy about your blog posts is scrolling through the comments to look at the links and pattern suggestions you inspire your readers to post. Here’s one: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cynthias-afghan It’s log cabin, it’s Sally Melville, it’s project pages offer interesting variations.
That is one of the many traditional ways of lining up log cabin blocks for quilts. One of my favorite things about these blocks (like half-square triangles) is all the different things you can do just by how you match them up. Can’t wait to do some googling …
“This one is entirely made of mitered squares seamed together (which is all fine and dandy) but could also be done with the ninepatch log cabin technique found in MDK’s Log Cabin primer.”
wouldn’t it, like basting the “seams” in a top down sweater, hold up more nicely over time if it was seamed???
Probably? I mean, blankets aren’t subject to a lot of gravitational pull like a sweater, but they are subject to feet and elbows kicking around under them. I’ve never had or made a seamed blanket, but it seems like there would be pros and cons — like that too many seams (if you were working with small-scale blocks) could make it a bit dense/stiff. But I really don’t know. With log cabin technique, you’re picking up stitches for each new color, so there’s still a bit of a join at each color change, you just don’t have all of the seaming to do.
But again, pros and cons. If you make the blocks separately they’re portable, but you have to seam them. If you knit it modularly, there’s no seaming (and you can knit in the ends and not to have weave them) but you lose portability as it grows.
Why? How could you? I was so glad to knit only my wips and do just a little planning for a few Christmas gifts. And now you’re destroying my plans right away with this foto. I need this blanket, it is just gorgeous! I don’t know if I can wait till January.
I’m sorry! ;)
Oh WOW ! Simply awesome, I totally understand the sudden passion. Thanks for sharing !
I agree that this blanket’s very pretty, but does anyone else feel that a pattern for something so simple and traditional is in a way odd? It’s just the sort of thing our grandmothers and their grandmothers have always made to use up scraps, improvising stripes etc as they went. I get that thi is a carefully planned version, but it feels a little bit like commodifying (or at least monetising) something that’s been kind of “public property” for generations. Of course, that common knowledge got lost to a lot of people in the last generation, when the skills weren’t handed down – but it’s now freely available online. I don’t know, it’s such a pretty version of a mitred square blanket but a $ pattern for such a basic and traditional thing makes me a bit uncomfortable somehow.
Can’t wait! Took a mitered knitting & design course years ago at my LYS. Hoping some of it will come back to me. It was challenging, creative and fun. I think this will be the same!
I have so much left to do for Christmas giving, i am glad January 1 is the start date. Although the wheels are turning…..
Karen, have you heard of Horst Schultz or Barbara Kerr? Modular, mitered knitting. They are from the past but interesting in light of this KAL.
Spelling – Schulz….
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