Monthly Archives: September 2013

I have been working away on a fun and interesting part of this sweater.  Everywhere I go, people comment on it.  They are intrigued by the design on this section.  And I have discovered a new knitting love, BOBBLES!  The cable section of this sweater has 5 bobbles per section repeat (90  in all!), which do slow knitting down a bit, but are so much fun.  I have never made bobbles before, but these have turned me into a bobble fan.  OJAI BOBBLES!

As mentioned previously, I did increase more on the front (effectively taking it up one additional size) than the back.  I just started the increases earlier and continued them longer on the front.  While all these increases were going on, I got to bobble.  And cable.  And purl.  Lots of purl, which made me discover that I might have some bad form with purling since it makes my thumb sore to do too much purling at once.  I don’t dislike it, it is just that the soreness makes me take more breaks than I like.  I will have to find someone to watch me purling to see what I might be doing wrong, if anything (not wrong stitch-wise, just finger-movements-wise).  If you have any purling tips for a continental knitter, please leave them in the comments below.

One thing I did do to help speed up the cable/bobble section was to use cabling without a cable needle.  It might be scary, since you do have to drop a stitch off the needle, but once you get the hang of it it makes cables fly.  I don’t use it for large cables, but the ones in this pattern are 2 stitches wide, so this technique is perfect.

To do this, you insert your right needle into the second stitch on the left needle and pull both stitches off the left needle.

The formerly first stitch is now hanging loose, pick it up with your left needle.

Now place the stitch you just moved to the right needle back onto the left.  You have just switched the positions of the first and second stitches and these can now be knit.  Where on the second stitch you insert your needle, depends on if your directions state to place the cable needle to the back or front of the work.  In the photos above, you would have likely seen directions* stating “place on cable needle in the front” so I placed my right needle in the back of the stitch so the crossover happened the right way.

*Note, these are made up directions for demonstration only and are not necessarily part of the specific pattern.

Now I have to go tackle the shoulders, sleeves and neckline of the sweater.

Jessica lives in the cesspool of sin (aka: Asheville, NC) with her husband and Superbaby.  She enjoys knitting, spinning, hiking and has recently become obsessed with Downton Abby and True Blood.  She continues her search for a way to keep work from cutting into her crafting time.