Whenever I’ve mentioned that I haven’t knit cables before, people look at me in surprise and tell me “They’re easy!” I’ve just never had a reason to use them but the other week I decided to give cables a whirl to add them to my knitter’s repertoire for upcoming projects.
On a wave of socks, my first cable project was to make up a cable version of a standard sock pattern.
I chose a blue-green yarn because the person these are for loves all things blue. I picked up the Vuorelma Veto yarn (5 ply / sport, 85% wool 15% polyamide, 100g = 260m) in Finland on recommendation that it was a good sock yarn.
I used 2.5mm circular needles (knitting using the magic loop method) and double-pointed needles (for the heel and finishing up the toes).
The socks were knit from the top down. I cast on 56 stitches. The rib is k2 p2 for 7 rows.
The main part of the sock was knit as p4 C4F (put two stitches on the cable holder and hold it on the front of the work, knit two stitches from the left needle, then knit the two stitches from the cable holder), with four rows of p4 k4 in between each cable row.
For the heel flap I made sure that I made it on a section with four cables, whereas the top of the foot would have three cables bordered by purl stitches.
For the foot I continued the cables along the top and knit on the bottom of the foot.
Things I learned:
- Rib wonkiness – this combination of rib and cable pattern has made knit stitches in the rib bend towards the cables so rather than a vertical rib pattern, it’s almost “V” shaped.
- Boring toes are boring – Next time I’ll think about ways to make the toe section more fun.
- Cables are easy – oh yes, they are! And they make me want to experiment with shifting stitches in all sorts of directions to make fun patterns.
