Bergere de France Cable Blanket

I previously mentioned this blanket as a two year old UFO, and managed to finish it a week after that post. Yay!

When I first thought about this blanket, it was meant to replace the bed blanket we used in the winter, for no other reason than because I wanted a change. I had gone through several lofty ideas of arm-knitting, but the yarns needed for that were a bit outside what I was prepared to pay for it to fit a queen bed, and I couldn’t pass up this very pretty looking cable pattern.

I spotted this on Ravelry and the pattern can be purchased from a few places including Love Knitting or by googling for "Bergere de France wrap 312.07". I had to adjust it to queen bed dimensions rather than just a wrap. Length-wise it was fine, so the adjustments only involved tweaking the width and number of repetitions of some of the pattern sections to achieve the desired dimensions. For the yarn, I opted for Wool of the Andes Bulky in Bare from KnitPicks, and triple the yardage of the original yarn to be safe. The resulting product used just over 27 skeins, but this will vary based on your tension. I also couldn’t have done it without my Knit Denise interchangeable needles to handle the width of the work.

The yarn knits up nicely, and felts well for joining (I prefer to felt joins where I can because I’m too lazy to do it cleanly any other way). It doesn’t have an incredibly soft hand knitted up, but it’s not scratchy and definitely soft and cosy enough as a blanket. If you’re not allergic to wool, it’d make a lovely sweater as well, and I intend to use the leftover yarn to knit up some wool soakers for overnight nappying later down the track.

If you haven’t knitted a blanket before, especially in these dimensions, this is not a project for the faint of heart. The cable components aren’t difficult, but the pattern does get tedious after a time. And if you’re just an occasional or evening knitter (or just slow), it’s going to be at least a few months work. Time-wise, two rows for me was about 30-40 minutes. For the original wrap, it’ll be far more manageable, but still the work of several weeks. It is satisfying watching it grow, but as it gets longer, the length makes it a little more cumbersome from the weight. And if you don’t catch an error in time (I’ve spotted a couple) I’ve just found it easier to just love them as unique features rather than frogging or performing stitch surgery.

I love this new blanket am looking forward to using it, but it’ll be a while before I’ll have the motivation to try something like this again. And based on the time investment, I'd probably be better off springing for an arm-knitting yarn and pattern. If you do want to knit a blanket though, try a lap blanket or a pattern with a little more openwork for a faster knit.