Flashback

This is a post I wrote slightly more than a year ago, then decided to delete temporarily because I didn't yet want to make the design totally public. I'm finally getting around to writing up the pattern, so now is a good time to re-visit what I wrote at that time. (Isabel's been wearing this jacket to death all winter, so if you hang around Queen's you've probably seen a lot of it.) If the horseshoe cable surrounded by seed stitch looks familiar, it's because I used it later in the Urban Rustic Socks.
                                                                           ........
Originally, when I started knitting my chunky, tweedy jacket (as yet unnamed) I thought I would knit the body from the bottom up (to have the fun of the double-knitted pockets), and the sleeves from the top down. However, after several experiments yesterday involving perpendicular shoulder straps, I've decided to knit the sleeves from the bottom up, just like the body. Then, I'll join them and, a la Elizabeth Zimmerman, knit a saddle-shoulder with the cable running smoothly all the way up the neck. So, I'm working on the first sleeve with its 12-stitch horseshoe cable. I chose a horseshoe cable because it's symmetrical (no need to mirror image anything) and because it's simple.

This is supposed to be an easy, quick knit and, really, there's enough going on with the tweedy seed stitch in the beautiful merino/cashmere/silk blend I'm using.

 

And don't horseshoes symbolize good luck--at least when the ends point up? (That's what I was always told, anyway).