My newest issue of Simply Knitting magazine has arrived!
The free gift this month is a pattern counting device, which is perfectly timed, as I keep losing track of my cables.
I spent much of yesterday afternoon knitting, and swearing. I don’t know what it is about this particular cardigan, but swearing seems to have accompanied its entire construction so far.
(The back and sleeves are complete, and I’m working on the left front.)
First I was annoyed that the edge cable and the point cables don’t twist on the same rows.
Then I was annoyed that my tension changed when the cabled points stopped, and now my edge cables are getting smaller and smaller! Either that or I’ve lost count, and am cabling on the wrong rows.
Either way, this cardigan is very annoying.
(Why would all the cables not twist on the same row? Why?!)
Looking at the photograph, you can see very clearly that it’s definitely my tension that’s mucking up the edge cabling. You can see that the knitting between the two short cables is much looser than the knitting immediately above them.
Do I unravel an afternoon’s work and start again, or can I live with wonky cables that might even themselves out in the wash? I’m feeling quite inclined to live with it at the moment.
Speaking of cables, for weeks I walked past this jumper in my local Marks & Spencer.
Every time I saw it I thought, “I could knit one of those”.
If I’m not heartily sick of cables when I’m finished with this cardigan, I might give it a go. The one change I would make is to mirror the cables on either side of the central section. It annoys me (another thing!) about the Nicky Epstein cardigan that all the cables face the same way, so I don’t really want to knit a second annoying cabled garment!
I did learn something extremely useful while I was knitting this cardigan. I learned that if you expect all the cables to be twisting on the same row, and don’t read the pattern properly, and then discover that you should have cabled the front band two rows ago… it is perfectly possible to carefully drop the six stitches you’re working on for those two rows, twist them round to make the cable, and then pick those two rows back up again.
This is not something I’d like to make a habit of doing, but I’m pleased to find out that it works!