Celtic Cables

This tired, old, little pillow was perfect for supporting my lower back when lounging on the 'tryptophan'* sofa but was looking too nasty to have on display.

So I decided to knit a little cover for it. What inspired me was seeing a lovely, knitted  cover on a pillow when I was at The Purple Purl a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to do Celtic cables and at the same time do a bit of a swatch for a cardigan I'm designing. I looked through various stitch pattern books and three of Barbara Walker's treasuries but couldn't find cables in the widths I wanted that consistently went over and under.

I then realized that there were a couple of good cable patterns in the Great American Aran Afghan that I had knit a while back.

Dana Hurt's square had the centre cable I was looking for.

I found almost exactly what I was looking for in the square by Barbara McIntire

except the narrower Celtic cables went over, over, under, under instead of over, under, over, under.

I had to figure out how to correct it. I realized that if I changed it so all the outer cables crossed to the right and the centre cable crossed to the left, it solved the problem. Trace one of the 'ropes' to see the over, under, over, under path.

Voilà!

Ta-da!

Here it is with its inspiration...

For the back, I just knit two stocking stitch pieces with 2x2 ribbing with buttonholes. I found the buttons in my stash and stitched them on with the rounded side up so they wouldn't snag as easily on things. I mattress-stitched the pieces together all around, overlapping the two back pieces.

I'm pretty happy with how it looks. With the other pillows, the GAAAfghan and the sofa.

Now to finish designing the cardigan.... I bought the yarn for it today but will save revealing it 'til tomorrow.

*we call it the 'tryptophan' sofa because it has recliners at each end and when one is reclining the effect is like tryptophan, the amino acid claimed to be a sleep aid and is present in turkey meat - hence the desire to have a nap after eating a big turkey dinner.