sleeping beauty

Hearing the soft snoring of two snotty noses through the baby monitor just reminded me of the picture I took of my daughter last weekend with the intention to post something about cushions.  After an exhausting day playing with the visiting grandparents she just fell asleep on one of my knitted cushions. This particular one is really soft, I had used Sirdar Snuggly Stripes with 80% bamboo and 20% wool. When I took the picture I thought about “Sleeping like a baby” as a title for a cushion related post but it might be a bit cheesy.

So how about my mother’s comment when she saw me working on a cushion cover and in fact the pattern for it: “Do people really like that kind of cushion?

flowers

Well, yes some do indeed. But I guess tastes are different. And to be fair, it seems to be a bit of a cultural thing as well and I am  often  overwhelmed by the amount of cushions in some B&B’s or when watching some of those home improvement shows. Can you really increase the value of the house simply by adding cushions? Well, I hope mine have this magic 🙂 I guess I shouldn’t be making fun of cushion obsessed people as after five years in the UK I’ve got apparently infected and I have created a few cushion covers for our couch in the living room as well as for the children’s cosy corner.

I think knitted cushions are actually quite nice gifts as they will most likely really stand out from the cushion crowd and be very special. So a cushion will be very personal but still relatively simple in contrast to a knitted piece of clothing

So far I have been unable to actually produce one with two alike sides. I just like the idea of contrasting sides and being able to turn the cushion depending on my mood.

The first few I made where really simple and it was the self striping yarn which did the trick. But I have to say, as I only used very soft and stretchy garter stitch pieces sewn together, they actually lost shape very quickly. Now I prefer much more to use pieces of contrasting cotton underneath the knitted coat and as back of the cushion. That keeps not only the shape much better, it also enhances the contrast of both sides.

waves of dropped stitches

strong contrasts

I’ve seen a similar cushion in a magazine once and I really liked the contrasting colours. This one is knitted from top to bottom rather than starting in one corner which I started doing with the next ones.  It is just easier to adjust the pattern to whatever yarn you want to use and to whatever cushion size you want to knit.

Ok, now I have been talking so much about  cushions, I will have to start knitting another one.