I wanted to try some of the patterns that have been donated to Woolsack, and this is one from Artesano Yarns. I don’t have much Aran weight British wool lurking in my stash, so was delighted to be able to buy 600g of pot-luck British wool Aran weight for £22 from Blacker Yarns.

What I quickly realised is that this pattern lends itself beautifully to using more than one colour or ‘breed’ of Aran wool - so the front centre panel is knitted in the lighter Shetland and the 4 mitred panels are in the darker North Ronaldsay. It would have been very easy to introduce 1 or 2 more colours/breeds into the front if I’d needed to in order to use up any bits left over from other projects.

I didn’t manage to get the exact tension needed to knit the cushion pattern as written to the exact size needed - 40 cm sq, but it was very easy to modify it as I went.

The centre panel was knitted exactly as in the pattern and I picked up 31 stitches from each edge as per pattern. Knitted as per pattern into the twisted rib stitch section but I continued there until only 46 stitches on the needle (pattern said 52).
Then following the pattern to cast off meant I had 54 stitches on the needle to cast off (pattern said 60)
That worked well for the tension I was getting

The really exciting bit was that I decided to use my new crochet skills to join the mitred edges together and I think the result works very well.

With it being such a thick yarn I wet blocked, but once the wool was damp it went into the correct size of square extremely easily indeed.

I’m planning to knit the back in plain stocking stitch, and to use 5mm needles since I think that’s a more ‘natural’ size for this yarn and my tension. I will certainly use less yarn on the back - even if I go into a 3rd ball of yarn for the back that would still be less than 6 balls of yarn and a total cost of less than £10.

ETA - For the back I cast on 54 stitches on 5mm needles and knitted to 40 cm length. It took just under 2 balls of the North Ronaldsay, so plenty left over to crochet the back and front together and very pleased with the final result. The pattern works very well with the ‘robust’ North Ronaldsay.