I picked up the Relaxing Ripple Throw from the Red Heart website and immediately loved the look of it. The chevrons make for a crisp design and the transitions between colors smooth. Yesterday we talked about the general benefits of Soft Essentials yarn but today we’ll see how it really lets this pattern shine and I’m not just talking about the beautiful sheen of the yarn.
The Relaxing Ripple Throw pattern photo.
First of all, the chevrons are lined up with either a center double decrease or a M1, K1, M1 pattern. This adds vertical lines throughout the blanket as well as the horizontal chevrons. The combination of those two just makes the OCD part of my brain light up. Perfectly straight vertical lines with the perfect horizontal chevrons is so aesthetically pleasing it makes my heart sing. I especially love how much the center double decrease stands up. The yarn weight gives the stitch a little extra oomph and extra definition.
I didn’t realize I was knitting my swatch in the same colors as the pattern. Looks like the designer has my color palette.
The Relaxing Ripple Throw pattern is very easy to memorize. When I started knitting it, I was a little concerned. I was just getting over the flu that had been going around and didn’t feel like I was on-the-ball enough to knit a pattern like this. Luckily for me, the pattern was much easier than it looked.
There are only increases and decreases on one side and you purl all the way back. Just after I cast on, I was determined not to mess this pattern up so I started putting in a bunch of stitch markers. As I went through the pattern I ended up taking them out because they were more of a nuisance than just looking to see the stitches coming up in the row below. I was also counting every stitch instead of watching the row below. After I stopped counting and took out all the stitch markers I was able to just knit. I did have to ‘tink’ back a couple times because I went too far, but the time it took me to do that was much less than it would have been had I just kept going with my process.
This blanket looks really classy, without a whole lot of work. The best projects are always those that look complicated but are easy to memorize.
As we all know, I’m a huge fan of patterns that look like a lot of work while continuing to be very easy. The Relaxing Ripple Throw fits firmly into this category. The pattern is stunning and really set off by Soft Essentials yarn. There is a shiny sheen to the yarn that gives this throw an unreal perfect look that will make you want to touch it to see if it’s really there.
This is part 2 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 1: The essential yarn for knitting soft garments
Go to part 3: The definition of using stitch definition when knitting
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