Sunday, March 25, 2007

Baby's first cable

I am off and knitting on my first piece of clothing--a cabled shrug (i.e. a cardigan without all that cardigan to worry about) for which I bought yarn last weekend. I have swatched, gone down a needle size, and swatched again. And look!



I decided that getting hopelessly, irreparably tangled up in a swatch was better than having to rip out part of a sweater, so I pulled out my new cable needle, followed the directions in the pattern, and voila! A perfectly good cable, right down the middle. It's amazing how that works. New skill: check!

1 comment:

Liz said...

Well, hi, ramarks! Fancy meeting you here!

A cable needle is a little short knitting needle (three inches long, maybe?) that you use to hold stitches when you're making a cable. Basically, you're knitting along, and you get to the point where you want to make the cable, so you slip a few stitches off of your regular needle and onto the cable needle. Then you keep knitting on your regular needle for a few stitches. THEN you knit the stitches from your cable needle, which puts them out of order, but it makes for a nice twisty cable.