Cable Crossings – In which I make a tutorial, and am deflated

Posted on | February 17, 2007 | 1 Comment

Here I am at the fifth repeat on the first Chuck’s Cabled Sock. Upon reaching needle #4, I realized that one row back, on the last cable crossing row, I had missed each crossing, on this needle only. I couldn’t bring myself to tink back and re-cross the row. I know, I know, it’s just one row. But I have a strong aversion to tinking cables, even using the cabling without a cable needle method and just working backward. I have fixed cables in the past by dropping the stitches and using a crochet hook to pick them back up in the correct order, and I’ll do it, but I’m not a big fan of this either. I know what you are thinking. It’s ONE row. Stop whining and tink the damn row already. Apparently, since I’ve become such a big fan of cabling without a cable needle, I have a problem with using needles, hooks or other implements other than the ones already in my hands. Here is a tutorial on the quick and dirty method that I used to fix the offending cables – not including the stoppage for picture taking, it took just a few short minutes (as opposed to the 10 it would have taken me to tink back – not a huge time savings, but the psychological benefits of not having to undo my work or use an extra needle were most definitely worth it in my book.) Disclaimer – You can see that I do use another needle to hold stitches for me while I worked, since this is working needle of the DPN set, I didn’t mind using it

Ok, here we are. Needle number 4 is on the left, needle 3 is on the right. I’ve already moved the one of the stitches to test my process and moved this portion of the cable to needle 3.

The goal here is to move that first brown stitch on needle 4 in the center of the picture to the left by 2 stitches, crossing in back of the blue stitches. Ultimately those 4 blue stitches on needle 4 should be divided in the middle by two brown ones, one from the right side and one from the left.

Move that first brown stitch from needle 4 to needle 3. We are going to sneak up under that blue strand in back of it to grab the stitch:

With the extra DPN, pick upthe two blue stitches and hold them in front of the work (this is a C2F):

With needle 4, sneak up under the blue strand in back of the brown stitch that we are going to move:

Grab the brown stitch:

Now both the brown stitch and the blue strand are on needle 4:
Using needle 3, pick up the blue strand from in back of the brown stitch:
Bring the blue strand up and over the brown stitch and….
Off the needle (drop the strand from needle 3 also in the process). The blue strand is now in front of the brown stitch and the brown stitch is on needle 4:
Move the two blue stitches from the extra needle to needle 4:
The brown stitch has been moved to it’s proper location after the two blue stitches:
Here’s the cable with both brown stitches moved to the correct location:
And the whole row after fixing all the cable crossings:

It all worked out very nicely, and really, I was quite pleased with myself. Until I realized that the missed cross was actually TWO rows back, not one. ***Blush*** Oh well, maybe someone else will find this helpful! Now I have to figure out how to fix it for real!

By the way – this was clearly a minor mishap; if you have had the same problem multiple rows back or (take a deep breath) on a finished or nearly finished project, my sincere sympathies and here are some sites to check out for help:

Yarn Harlot

Yarnpath

January One, who cites some other great references as well

I Need Orange

CastOff.net

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