FRB Cable with a Twist

.

Someone pointed out this cable discussion on Ravelry, where Wenchetta wanted to know about a cable swatch she saw. For those of you who don't have access to Ravelry (sign up, it's quick & easy!), this is the photo she posted in the Ravelry discussion:

Hmmm... looking at her photo, I thought it resembled the Four Rib Braid Cable which I used in my Four Rib Braid Cable Mitts. It really is very similar, except that some of the cable crossings are crossed over/under differently than in my cable mitts. Then I thought, surely the FRB cable could be tweaked so that the cable crossings matched the swatch Wenchetta saw.

So I grabbed some scratch paper and tried to draw the cables in the Four Rib Braid Cable. Sorry, I'm not good at drawing so it looks sloppy, but it shows how the cables cross over/under. Then I looked at Wenchetta's blue swatch and circled the cable crossings that needed to be changed to match.

Now I looked at the Four Rib Braid Cable pattern in my mitts and took a guess that Rows 6, 10 and 14 needed to be changed as follows:

Row 6: P3, CF4, P3, CF4, P3
Row 10: P2, K2, p2, TB5, P2, K2, P2
Row 14: P3, CF4, P3, CF4, P3

All the other cable rows remain the same, and of course you just knit the stitches as they present themselves on wrong side rows.

So I grabbed the closest yarn available (which turned out to be this hideous green worsted weight kitchen cotton yarn) and some needles and got to work making a swatch to test my theory.

This is what my swatch looks like:

I think it looks pretty close to the cable panel Wenchetta was inquiring about. If you ignore my uneven tension (I was in a hurry knitting that up), you can see that the cables cross over/under in the same way as in her swatch.

Well, this was an interesting exercise! :-)


Copyright © Smariek Knits 2005-2008. All full copyright rights are reserved by Smariek Knits.
.



.