she/her, 29 y/o 🖤🩶🤍💜 AO3: lucrow This is actually my main blog where I post fandom stuff, but by accident my secondary blog became somewhat popular, so if you are interested in some writing advice, check out: www.tumblr.com/dearwriters
Knitting finished as of last night! Still need to weave in a few ends, wash, and block.
Was aiming for 48” x 60”, came out 39” x 60” so far, but I’m hoping to be able to block it to a little wider and I’m ok losing a few inches of length for that
Thank you so much for all the nice things everyone has said about this blanket! Unfortunately, I do not have a pattern, so much as I have several patterns and some back-of-the-napkin style math notes that won’t make sense to anyone but me - but I do have a picture of this planning piece (since frogged to reuse the yarn in the blanket itself.)
As a few people in the notes pointed out, the dragon pattern is Tahesha the Dragoness by Ina Wendrock
Skill level: Advanced cable knit / Zopfmuster für Fortgeschrittene
But it's on a plain reverse stockinette background, and I wanted this as part of a complex cable afghan. It's going to be a wedding gift for two friends in my DnD group, so I knew I wanted it big enough that two people could reasonably share it while watching TV together on a couch, and for a dragon to still be visible when folded and draped over the back of a couch or chair, in case that's how they store it. So I knew I was committing myself to knitting 5 dragons (one in the center and one in each of the four corners), and figuring out myself how to plop the dragon in to a larger cable blanket pattern.
Back in November, I bought the dragon pattern and knit a test version of it so I could see how it worked and measure the dimensions. (You can see from the curled up edges that I did this before I found the part in the pattern notes where Ina Wendrock helpfully informs us that the dragon is knit over 45 initial stitches, to help us add it to our own projects, but ah well.) Then I started trying to figure out the other cables.
I knew I wanted some traditional cables so that it had an heirloom look to it (but with dragons), but I thought that the dragons would look too out of place if everything else looked copy-pasted from a classic fisherman’s sweater. Fortunately, there are a number of knitting designers right now doing cool things with trying to make cables that resemble Celtic knot motifs, so I went to the public library and borrowed a bunch of cable knitting books and started bookmarking what I liked. My favorite patterns were all coming from this book:
Mention the phrase ?cable knitting,? and most people?knitters and non-knitters alike?envision textured ropes, twists, and braids winding up
Which looks like it's out of print now, but wasn't in December and I was able to ask for and receive it for Christmas. (Designer Melissa Leapman's ravelry store is here in case anyone wants to check it out):
I narrowed my bookmarked cables down to patterns that had 1) an odd number of stitches; 2) a central "crossover" cable in multiple parts of the pattern so that I could "open" it up to create the medallions that the dragons would sit in; and 3) a stitchcount of less than 45, by enough that I'd have room to drop a traditional cable on either side. My favorite two would then be the center cables for the central dragon panel and the left & right dragon panels (when I wasn't doing the dragons), and then I decided on a very simple c4b twist between the panels and a tight 5-rib cable braid on the edges. I loved the first two patterns from the book that I tested and didn't have to try any of my runner-up bookmarks - but if you zoom in on the picture, you can see that for the traditional cables around the Melissa Leapman cable for the center panel, I tried and discarded a honeycomb cable and an Xs and Os variant before deciding on the one that I'm not actually sure of the name of that made it into the final pattern. For the side panels, I had thought it might be nice to incorporate a hearts cable since it was for a wedding blanket. I'm not sure how traditional these heart cables are, but I've seen them unattributed in more than one published pattern from different sources, and they're published in a number of cable pattern guides online. They worked next to the Melissa Leapman cable I wanted for the side panels, so they went in the pattern without me trying anything else.
While practicing the dragon cable, I had noticed that many of the cables started with an increase, so on the back of one of my chart print-outs, I graphed a rough plan for what I had decided to put where in terms of the traditional and Leapman cables that would go around the dragons, and numbered out the stitches if I worked the first cables in each pattern as increases instead of cables to mimic the start of the dragons. Then I added up the total number of stitches and cast on, and it worked surprisingly well! After completing one repeat of the side-panel central cables, I started "opening" up the circles where the dragon would be through improvisation (the left and right panels that were parallel always matched each other because I was doing the same thing in each row - other than that, I wound up doing it slightly differently every time, and that was ok. They look the same enough.)
I had planned to either leave it un-bordered or add the full mitered border that Ina Wendrock (who designed the dragon pattern) has on her store depending on how it worked up, but after I'd knit enough to see what it looked like, I decided that the mitered border was overkill, but it did need something, so when I finally got to the end I did an I-chord bind-off and then went back and picked up stitches along the cast-on to do an I-chord bind-off there too. If I had it to do over again, I might have done a folded hem on each side instead, but we'll see how the I-chord blocks.
So, that's how you make the dragon blanket. Either get the patterns I mentioned and try to duplicate, or just buy the dragon and add your favorite cables for the rest!
[Sorry I'm not more help, but I cannot stress enough - I did not write any of this down as I went.]
[[For the patterns that were from the Continuous Cables book, I used panel 10 from page 136 for the center and panel 27 from page 146 for the sides]]
buffy ending the season running away from sunnydale, even with all her friends and family alive and safe and waiting for her, because she can't just go back to normal, and in her own eyes she doesn't get to be weak and broken and needing around them. that's her curse; her cross to bear as the slayer: these aren't people she gets to lean on, they're people she protects. they're her duty. and when she's hurting, the truth of the mantle settles all the more heavily on her shoulders: she is alone. do you know how lonely it is? she and she alone can bear the weight.
she'll be back when it's time to be a protector again.
Chapter 2: just one look and I can hear a bell ring
Rating: M
Chapter Length: 6k
Relationships: Edwin Payne/Charles Rowland
Characters: Charles Rowland, Edwin Payne
Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, 1990s, Sharing a Bed, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Blood and Injury, Supernatural Elements, Magic, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Eventual Smut, Hurt/Comfort, testing the limits of codependence, part-time inkeeper and part-time detective charles and edwin
The toast popped up, and Edwin was just sliding sunny side up eggs onto their plates when the front door creaked open. A moment later, he was greeted by the bright pink of Charles’ ears and nose, even though Edwin had very clearly instructed him to wear a hat. Charles shrugged off a dark red puffer jacket and went straight to the sink to wash up. His hands were covered in some kind of white, chalky powder.
Edwin felt his heart catch in his throat as Charles brushed past him, their arms just barely making contact. This was a new and increasingly distracting development in these past months. It kept happening whenever Charles returned from an errand, or simply walked into a room. It was becoming quite irritating. Edwin redirected his attention to setting their plates at the table and fixing up Charles’ tea. Why was it so hard to remember something as simple as two sugars and a splash of milk all of a sudden?
Without the hustle and bustle of the inn to fill his mind lately, Edwin couldn’t seem to stop his thoughts from drifting to the gradual ways Charles had changed since that fateful day in the attic. He was taller now, though they’d both grown over the years. In fact, Charles had made them each stand against the door frame and mark each other’s height when they were nineteen to prove he really was taller than Edwin. Edwin begrudged him the measly two centimetres, though he tended to compensate for it with his posture.
Love Charles and Edwin cause it’s like. They’ve been in a situationship for thirty years. They’re just friends. They’re married. They’ve only ever shared two hugs. Charles was the only person Edwin would let touch him at first. They know everything about each other. They don’t tell each other anything. They’re in constant disagreement. They’re perfectly in sync. They’ve both made moves on other people. They keep finding parts of each other in their respective dates. They’re hopelessly in love. They have no idea what they feel towards one another. They want to kiss each other so badly it aches. The thought has literally never occurred to them. Their relationship isn’t romantic. It definitely isn’t platonic either. They blur the line between romantic and platonic to the point of indistinction on a daily basis.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
kianamaiart
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germansingergirl
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jacobvanloon
izzy806
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