Tree of Life

My other main project in May was also a present, for two friends who were getting married over Memorial Day weekend. They are both lifelong fantasy/sci-fi nerds (like me, and most of the people I hang out with), and were having a Middle Earth-themed wedding. I thought something knitted with a cabled Tree of Life motif would be a perfect gift for them.

I picked Nicky Epstein's Tree of Life Afghan, which is a free pattern available through Lion Brand. Rather than doing a whole blanket, I wanted to use just one tree motif on a pillow. Many other people have done the same, and I used some of their projects as inspiration, especially Karen1959 and franconia.

I first mentioned this project back back in March, when I started making a prototype so that I would know what I was doing. I'm not really a fan of that kind of preliminary work, but at that point, I had never knitted cables or a pillow so I decided the practice was worth it. I didn't actually go through making an entire practice pillow, which I should have done - in hindsight, I could have left a little more selvage for sewing together the front and back panels. I'm very happy with how it turned out, though!

I used Berroco Comfort again for this project, so that the pillow would be easy to clean (they have a couple of messy kitties). The front panel is the tree motif surrounded by a two-inch border of seed stitch, and the back panels are plain seed stitch, overlapping in the middle - more notes on my Ravelry project page if you're interested.