Several years ago, I saw the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket and the Moderne Baby Blanket in the book Mason-Dixon Knitting. I loved that the designs featured clean blocks of color, without being a simple checkerboard or something (boring) like that.
Knitting this type of blanket would be like making a quilt, but without having to, well, quilt. And unlike many blankets made up of knitted blocks, there was no sewing involved (YES--I like sewing and I like knitting, but I hate sewing knitted pieces together, remember?).
The blocks build upon each other by the use of picked up stitches. That sounded simple, yet not too tedious.
Making a blanket, though--that did sound tedious. It sounded huge, expensive, and time-consuming.
Hmmm, I thought, what could I make that would be like a blanket without being a gigantic project? Some kind of small rectangular thing, something like...
...placemats! So that's how this project came to be. I knit these mostly while working at the yarn shop. One by one, each completed mat became part of our window display at work until I finished all of them, and now they're living at my house. I picked the colors to go with the kitchen here at Boogaloo Acres.
While I was knitting these at the shop, a lot of people complimented them as being a great idea for a nice "practical" project. It's adorable that anyone would think that! But we're a household that loves coffee, red wine, chocolate, and tomato-based sauces--these poor mats will probably be stained by the end of this photo shoot. Any kind of placemat seems pretty pointless, actually, when we have an easily-wipeable formica table. Whatever. These are still cute and colorful, and I finally got that "urge to log cabin" out of my system and can get on with my life.
Thank you, Jenny! It's really easy to make a bunch of these.
Posted by: Stacy | Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 11:24
SO wonderful! was hoping I could adapt it to make placemats, donating these to an area shelter, making some striped, some log cabin as pictured, and some who knows what yet! Want to make three or four sets :)
Posted by: Jenny | Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 20:43
Megan, yes, this would be a great way to de-stash. Of course, none of this yarn was from my stash, though. :)
Greta, you need to post more knitting pics!
Posted by: Stacy | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 15:27
I made a long cabin baby blanket out of scraps of 220 Superwash. It took a long time to build up complementary colors, but it looked good.....
Posted by: Greta | Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 14:22
And they say knitting is too mainstream!
There are things in this life that are simple but makes us delighted.
Posted by: plumbing supplies | Saturday, June 09, 2012 at 21:51
so cute! that looks like a good de-stashing project.
Posted by: megan | Friday, June 08, 2012 at 13:28