Monsters, cables, and FOs, oh, my!

Fini!

The shrug I've been working on is finally complete. Well, more or less. After putting it on I think the ribbing around the opening should be an inch wider. The chunky-looking Terra yarn from The Fibre Company seems to call for more than the 3 inches of ribbing that the original pattern said to use.

The shrug began as a free simple shrug pattern from Caron yarns. I added a Celtic cable (also called the Saxon braid) from Super Stitches Knitting, flanked by two 4 by 4 cables twisting in opposite directions.

Here's a detail of the cable pattern:

And no sooner had I finished the shrug (which I wore to school the Friday before Halloween over a black cotton top and a long woolen black skirt, with black boots, to be sort of Celtic and cable-y and y'know, mysterious and all), than I took up the needles and some Lion Brand Organic cotton and started work on two mini-versions of Penelope the Empathetic Monster from Danger Crafts. One of my colleagues lost a sister to a long, terminal disease, and another just lost his mother quite suddenly. I thought they both needed some empathy, in small, desk-sized versions. By Monday evening I had two mini-Penelopes:

One in green and pink:
And one in blue and green:
They appeared like magic on the desks of their recipients this morning and were much appreciated.