On knitting a breed-specific comforter - Part I

It seems I like to rabbit on about specific sheep breeds, so if I wait to the end of this project the post will be absolutely huge. That's why I decided to split it into two parts... and as I've already finished crafting the first part I thought I might as well start writing it up.

From various projects I had natural coloured skeins of yarn and I felt the need for a huge comforter blanket. So I sorted them by hue and got knitting. As I love rare breeds and as many of these skeins were from or for other projects, it's at the least a breed-specific blanket which contains several rare breeds (though four skeins are Merino which is not a rare breed).

Natural colour rainbow! Also look at the amazing bag my friend Sara gifted me.

Image shows just more than half the full width, unblocked

The pattern is pretty much randomly made up. I started out with a gauge sample in seed-stitch on my 4.5mm long-cable circular needle and then knit the width I want the final blanket to have (the bed it should cover is 160cm wide, so I want the blanket to be 180cm wide to cover the bed and all duvets. After a while I got bored with the seed-stitch, so I then started thinking about adding cables. As a result, I have the following stitch devision

1.  16 stitches seedstitch border
2. 54 stitches wide cable panel
3. 9 stitches seedestitch panel
4. 1 knit, 1 purl, 8 stitches narrow horseshoe panel, 1 purl, 1 knit
5. 9 stitches seedestitch panel
6. 28 stitches central cable pattern
7. same as 5.
8. same as 4.
9. same as 3.
10. same as 2.
11. same as 1.

Merino sheep, image taken from Wikipedia

Weißes Bergschaf, image taken from the Schafzuchtverband Niedersachsen (Association of sheep breeders in Niedersachsen).

• Merino is a breed of sheep very commonly used for wool products. It yields a lot (... or absurd amounts, if you loose your sheep) of fine grade wool, especially if the sheep is white. Commercial Merino wool ist often chemically treated to make it superwash (i.e. washmachine-proof) and to remove vegetable matter. I do not like the feel of the super-slick superwash Merino, to me it has lost the characteristics of wool. So instead I here use organically grown wool from Southern Germany, 300m/100g
  
• Weißes Bergschaf (white mountain sheep, sorry I could not find an English breed description) is a very hardy mountain sheep breed that is bred for the Alps. It has warm and water-resistant wool that spins up very strong, quite dense and somewhat toothy. As it's quite dense I have actually knit up 180m/100g yarn with the the same needle as the 300m Merino without much gauge trouble. The wool I knit up is sourced from the Kollektion der Vielfalt (Collection of variety), an association dedicated to the ongoing survival of rare breeds.
  
  
• Coburger Fuchsschaf (Coburg fox sheep) yields a slightly reddish beige wool because this breed has a standard non-white colouration. Actually, the adult animals are alle beige with lightbrown/ginger head and legs, while the lambs can be deep red-brown. They are one of the colours of sheep which I find the most intriguing. The wool of Coburger Fuchsschafs can be spun quite airily, making it even less dense than Merino. The wool used in this comforter also is from Kollektion der Vielfalt (300m/100g).
  

  

  Coburger Fuchsschaf, image taken from Wikipedia

  I'll do the formalities on the final post to keep the blather down. So that's the end, I'll keep you posted.