The Details:

I love the simple elegance of this poncho and its universality. There are 3 different cable types that are used in this pattern – two are traveling (purled) cables and there is also the standard knit cable.  Additionally, there are some nuances to how some of the knit cables get executed (with decreases and yarn overs) that make them a bit challenging. The traveling cables are a bit new to me, but I found that they are fairly straightforward to execute once I really took some time to understand them. The chart that is provided is useful. I initially started by cross-referencing it against the written directions, but I finally just took Patty Lyon’s Explorations in Cables class and learned how to read charts. That made an immense difference, and I now work almost exclusively off charts for my work.  One challenge I had in knitting this poncho is there is a yarn over that leads into an SSK that I somehow kept losing when knitting on the wrong side; reading from the chart really helped me correct this issue.

This poncho is definitely not a knit-over-tv pattern; there is enough variation row-to-row that I found I needed to minimize distractions in order to execute it well for the first three iterations or so. However, there is a large field of stockinette that gave me a good break between reading the chart and I think it really sets off the pattern well.

One thing that I am pretty rabid about is comparing my work to the pictures already up on Ravelry or included with the pattern, as an alternate check to make sure I’m doing things right. One of the images showed the chart reversed (which threw me into a minor panic), and I messaged Debbie Stone on Ravelry. I have to say, she was incredibly responsive and supportive. Her final advice to me was to just “trust the pattern,” and she was dead-on. Just follow the directions, and you will come out with a gorgeous poncho.