Forgiveness

It's been rather a while since I've taken on a large project with lots of cables. Yeah, sure, I kicked around a couple of cast-ons for a Rogue Hoodie, but they ended up going nowhere. The two different yarns I swatched up for the Rogue ended up becoming the Stóra Dimun shawl and the 4-S.

The last adult-sized cabled sweater I knit was a Kepler back around Christmas of 2005. Given this rather largish gap in cable sweater production, I think I can be forgiven for a few things.

Things such as:

• Forgetting that working cables with really dark yarn requires patience.


Yes, I sort of failed to remember this little detail. Failure to remember this minor peccadillo of the dark yarns resulted in having to recross a cable on the fly two rows later last Friday. And a bit of language unbecoming a knitter.

Fortunately, I was alone here at chez trek at the time except for Little Feet and only the Almighty could have heard what I said.

I have since apologized to Him and I think we are okay on the foul, scatological language front at the moment. This is, of course, subject to change if the knitting goes south.

I need to work on that.


• Not realizing that since cabling without a cable needle is a more recently acquired technique, I should not take it for granted.


I have to periodically remind myself that I only recently started cabling without the assistance of the little bent aluminum twig called a cable needle. Sometimes, I get so impressed with my cabling without a safety net that a stitch threatens revolt.

So far, I've been able to nip this sort of stitch anarchy in the bud - but it's been close a time or two.


• Thinking that knitting a flat piece on circular needles is no different than on straight needles except for the fact that you can't accidentally drop an empty needle.


I really, really deserve some slack on this one. I'm knitting a flat, left front panel. No one in the entire universe will be able to tell that I am using a 32" circular needle instead of a couple of long straight needles.

But is just isn't the same.

When you are knitting on straights and a stitch (or four) tries to go AWOL during the Texas two-step which is cabling without a needle, you can just prop the needle on your knee and slide the stitches more firmly onto the needle.

Not so much with the circular needle.

Some additional care is required. And occasional forays into warping the space-time continuum. But that's another issue entirely. One with which I have had less than stellar success in manipulating.


• Over-thinking (or under-thinking?) the pattern directions.


There I was, having completed the first seven rows of the left front panel. The pattern then instructed me to "work 10 sts, [M1, work 5 sts] 6 times, work to end".

Silly me. I thought, "Gee, if I am working ribbing and I need to do these increases, I should do them as the stitches are presenting themselves. I should work M1 as purl when I've got a purl stitch and as knit when I've got myself a knit stitch."

I was very proud of myself for thinking of this.

Until this morning.

When I was nearly finished with the eleventh row on Charts A and B and I looked at the bases of the cables in Chart B. Something looked a wee bit, well, off.

I looked at the picture that came with the pattern. It looked a little different from mine. Perhaps I should have checked the charts before deciding which stitch should be made the purl way and which should be made the knit way? I quickly surfed over to Ravelry to inspect the pictures there. Yup. Same thing.

Looks like I shall be ripping
out 10¾ rows of cables today.

No, this really wasn't the kind of blog post I planned for today, however, we work our fodder as it presents itself.