Knitting Tips: Cables

1. Decreases in Cables
2. Decreases in a Cable Pattern
3. Cable Repair

Joan Schrouder 1/20/03

It's usually easiest to simply stop doing the twist at the point at which the dec interrupts it, and just K the remaining st plain. Same thing with cables.

However, (you might guess there'd be a "however" <g>), I take it as a personal challenge to keep the patts going as long as possible as I rarely take the "easy" way out, plus I don't prefer the "plain" parts.

For the T-2, I would probably rearrange the order of the two sts to be twisted *before* I did the dec which eats up one of them. With larger cables, say a 6 st (3 over 3) cable, I'd still keep cabling 3 over 2, then 3 over 1 while the dec's gradually nibbled away at one edge.

BUT I'd also have to factor in how to accomplish this on the other side being dec'd. Sometimes you can do this fine when the dec's are eating into the right edge of the cable, but it doesn't work as well if they're eating into the left edge, for instance. This is mainly a problem if you only have one type of crossings in your cables, eg they're all right crosses.

If the crossings are mirror-image on either side of your V-Neck, then it's much easier to do and looks good.

That's why, if doing things in pieces, I would prefer to have both the fronts on the ndls at the same time. Then I could try what I thought was a good idea at one edge, then immediately do its symmetrical counterpart on the other edge and compare. If the first attempt didn't work well, then it's easy to undo and try again.

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Joan Schrouder 2/12/03

When decreasing as for the raglan of an Aran sweater and you are into a cable twist and have less stitches than needed for the cable, do you make the twist with the stitches available or do you disregard the twist and just do knit? I have done it both ways and just wondered what others do.

I like the look better when the cable is kept working as long as possible. Sometimes I have to experiment just what to do and how often to do it to see what looks the best to me, but that's part of the fun. You can just swatch this part of it, to practice. That way if you're not satisfied with your inital results, you don't have to rip back the whole piece (or in my case, the whole sweater, as I almost always work circularly) to try a different tack.

OTOH, if a cabled patt is very complex, and it becomes very difficult to figure out a compromise cable, then I could see the practicality of converting to plain stockinette. I usually try to plan ahead, tho' since I'd rather figure an alternate mode for combining patt sts and shaping as the integration of the two is a key issue with me.

I once designed a raglan cardigan with narrow lace and cable panels. I had great fun, when working the raglan dec's, figuring out how to incorporate the next vertical panels of sts into the cabling. It ended up looking like a French braid, when the intersecting panels become interwoven into the "main" braid. I never got around to writing it down; if I should ever do another one, I'd be challenged to reinvent the process all over again.

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Joan Schrouder 2/12/03

A shortcut I learned in one of the Maggie Righetti books - you only have to drop down half of the cable. It doesn't even matter if it's the right half or the left half! Just run it back to the point of the infraction, bring it forward or poke it to the back (whichever fixes the problem), then ladder it back up. Half the work.

I was intrigued with a recent post of a fixing method I'd not run across before - sorry, I've forgotten the poster. Her suggestion was to clip the thread between two sts of the part that ended up on top (that wasn't supposed to). Unweave the 2 ends a st, reach thru the gap, pull out the "under" part of the cable that you want to have on top, then take the two ends of yarn to the back side and tie back tog. under the cable. All neat and tidy! Elizabeth Zimmermann advised snipping a st above the misplaced cable, unweaving the cut ends to explose live sts of the cable, re twist, then graft back together with a new piece of yarn. But the NEW way is even simpler, and almost downright sneaky, and I love that!

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