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Well, I finally did it, I learned to do cables without a cable needle.  It is so easy, I’m shocked that they even make cable needles!  I’m working on the Celtic Cable Cap, using a cable needle.  Once I get going, I go pretty quickly.  However, everyone on Ravelry (if you aren’t on yet, go get on the waiting list!) keeps raving about how easy it is to cable without a needle, and how the needle only slows you down.  Well, except for the few people who love their U shaped aluminum needles, and say that they are afraid of dropping stitches.

So, given how everyone says it easy and faster, and the fact that there are some who are afraid to do it, I had to try it myself.  I mean, I don’t want to be left behind while “all the cool kids are doing it”.  At the same time, I like a challenge, so if some people are saying it’s hard, or scary, then I’ve got to try it myself, just to see if I can do it.

Guess what…

It is super easy.

I love my Brittnay Birch Cable Needles, and I doubt I’ll be tossing them with my old metal needles and acrylic yarn, but I doubt I’ll be reaching for them unless I get into some crazy hard cabling.

So for all the nay-sayers who are saying, “Nay!”  Here is a great articleon how to cable without a needle.  I saw some other articles explaining it, but they tend to do the complete cross, then knit the whole mess.  That seems complicated, and tight.  Grumperina’s method has you slip the first half that would normally go on the cable needle, then knit (or purl) the second half.  Then you do the cross, and knit (or purl) the rest.  It’s easier to do than describe.  Go have a look at the pictures, you’ll get it.

We were sitting at home last night, daughter in bed, nothing to do.  I didn’t have anything on needles, so I decided to fix my new hat.  It was just too short.  I frogged down to the start of the increases, and added an inch to it.  I was able to get it finished up before bed last night.  I wore it out today, and it’s great.  It probably only needed 3/4 of an inch, but I like a big hat that I can really pull down over my ears.  I’m much happier with it now.

My MIL finished her hat today, just a few minutes ago, while I was casting on the Celtic Cable Cap  I’m quite proud of her.  She spent a lot of time on this hat, and it looks great.  She made a few mistakes.  I frogged it back for her once, I tinked back a row or so twice, then she asked me how to go back herself, so I showed her.  While she was at my sister-in-law’s house, she frogged out about 10 rows on her own.  She did it exactly right, and you can’t tell where any of the issues were.  The entire last part of the hat, she did without any issues.  She even made the transition from circular to DPN without any laddering or other issues.

This is strange, and totally off topic.

We had crazy strong winds yesterday.  One time, I looked out the window, and there was a fresh-cut Christmas tree on my front lawn.  I watched it blow around a bit (yes the winds were that strong). I had to move it off my driveway when we left to do some shopping.  It was still there today when we got up.  The owner never came to fetch it.  So, in helping it fulfill it’s destiny, I decided to put it up and decorate it.  The Griswold’s it is not, but a string of lights, some crepe paper, and viola a happy Christmas tree.

I completed the crochet border on Reid this evening.  I also finished weaving in the 10,000 yarn ends that I had been fighting with.  It’s crazy how many strands of yarn this project generated.

I’m really happy with the results.  I had originally purchased a pink yarn to use as the border.  However the more I knitted in green the more I disliked the combination with pink.  I went back and got a ball of purple and used it instead.  I think it works much better.

Here is the finished product:

I finally got some test yarn for my latest project, FLAK(Follow the Leader Aran Knitting).  I knit the gauge swatch for the filler stitch last night.  I washed and blocked the swatch, can you believe it?  I chose a moss stitch for the filler, instead of the suggested seed stitch.  I got the suggestion from someone’s project on Ravelry, and I like the look of it better.

I’ve decided on Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, in Forest Heater.  I ordered two balls of the yarn, to make sure I liked the color.  I also purchased Claret Heather, but it is way more red than it looks online. 

My gauge is dead on with size 6 (4.0 mm) needles.  I’ve got a little more edging to do on my Reid, which it turns out I should be able to finish as a Christmas gift for my daughter.  So, I won’t be doing much work on the sweater before Christmas.  I might pop into my favorite LYS tomorrow (since they’ll be open) and get one of those fancy rosewood circular needles to work the sweater on.  I’ve been saying all along, that when I do this sweater, I’m going to treat myself to a good set of needles.

It isn’t much yet, but here is my gauge swatch:

I’m thinking of changing out the center cable on the FLAK with something more like this.

I’ll probably have to add a cable on either side, maybe some chevrons.  I’ll keep hunting.  I’m also considering adding a Triquetra to the back, in the middle, between the shoulder blades.  Since the sweater is knit top down, I’ll have to experiment with flipping the chart  over.  I’ll post more on that later.

It’s been a few days since I’ve had a chance to post.  My in-laws are in town from their Florida “estate” (it’s a camper trailer on a lot, with a shed).  We’ve been Christmas shopping.  I’m one of those people, who likes to wait until the week before to go shopping.  My mom is already done shopping, for next year.  Not me, I’ve still got at least one stop to make for this year.

Reid is off the blocks, and being assembled.  I’m really happy with how the blocking worked on the lace.  It all laid down nicely and the stitches evened out well.  If I were to make this sweater again, I would add a knit stitch to either end (and do the increases inside this stitch), and add another RS row of all knit stitches to the tops of the sleeves, just to make assembly easier.  The places where there are two knits together are really easy to mattress, but the places with increases, decreases, and YOs make assembly difficult.  It’s going well though, and I’ll have it assembled soon.  I can only work on it after my daughter goes to bed, since it is a surprise for her.

I started, and finished a new hat for myself, I need to try blocking it on a balloon.  It’s a bit too short, just a bit.  I’m hoping I can get a half inch or so out of blocking.  If not, then it will go in the “gift knitting” box, and I’ll make another.

My mother-in-law admitted that she hasn’t been knitting because she’s afraid of patterns.  Well, I’m not having that.  She also said she’s never been to a yarn store, unless you count Walmart (we don’t).  So we went to an LYS yesterday.  Not my favorite in the area, but we were heading that direction anyway for dinner and a look at “The Big Bright Light Display“.  She picked out a hank of Malabrigo worsted.  We balled it up, and she decided on making the Seaman’s cap that I had been working on.  I gave her the pattern, some needles, and I made her do a gauge swatch.  Good thing too, she was a size too small from what I just used to knit the same hat.  She’s now on her third cast on, and going around the headband.  The first cast-on didn’t have a long enough tail to finish, the second was twisted when she joined.  I blame my wife for that, as she helped her join.  For some reason my wife thinks my joining method is too complicated, so I let her show her mother.

While my MIL was knitting her gauge swatch, I picked up some yarn, gauged, and cast-on Pro-Bono, with some Malabrigo I’ve been intending on using as a hat.  This one is destined for the gift box.

I washed and blocked Reid today.  Maybe I just suck at blocking, but this thing was a major pain in the …

 Probably doesn’t help that this the first thing I’ve really ever blocked.  The pattern calls for the back to be 15 inches wide by 11 inches tall.  After washing, it was about 13 wide and 13 tall.  It easily stretched to 15 wide, but I couldn’t get it to lay flat any shorter than 12 inches tall.  Luckily, the front was the same way, so it’s going to be an inch taller than the pattern calls for.

The sleeves were not a big deal, they went pretty much right into shape. 

The front was another story all together.  Since the pattern didn’t have dimensions for blocking the front, I had to guess.  I laid them on top of the back, and pinned them together.  I stretched them as wide as I thought I could get away with, making sure the lace looked right.

I think it will come out just fine…

 Now, I have nothing on needles at all.  I’m going to cast on a seaman’s cap for myself, and I’m getting some yarn for FLAK.

…The needles that is.

 My Triquetra fingerless gloves are done.  What started out as a pair of fingerless gloves turned into a bit of a fiasco.  I started knitting these based on a pattern and gauge of what I thought was a similar yarn.  Well I learned that lesson, with an Andre the Giant sized glove.

Frog time.

I got the gauge right, with two sizes smaller needles.  I re-knit the right glove, added the finger stubs, cast off, and…  I didnt’ like them.  This yarn is way bulkier than I expected. The gloves are so heavy and think, that I couldn’t use them for typing like I was planning.  After putting them away for a few days, I decided to just make them into full-on gloves.  I set the right one down, and knit the left.

The left glove came out so good, I decided to frog the finger stubs on the right and start them over.  I was originally going to just join the yarn and finish the stubs.  However, there were holes and loose spots where I picked up the stitches, so I frogged them out.

Now that I’ve got them both done, I really like them.  I’m very happy with how they came out.  I love the yarn (Queensland Collection Kathmandu Aran) but this stuff is way bulkier than it looks.

I’ve finished knitting REID for my daughter Gwen.  I started a month or so ago.  It wasn’t too challenging, if you’re new to lacy patterns, don’t be afraid.  It’s really not that bad.  The basic patter repeats over 16 rows.  Once you do it a few times, you don’t need the chart at all.  And the same rows repeat exactly the same across all the pieces.  The only difference is the start and end of the rows.  This was a fun project, but I’m glad to be moving on to other things.

 I knit both sleeves at the same time.  I’ve never done that before, and it was a bit challenging at first.  I kept getting the yarn tangled.  Once I got going, it was definitely easier.  Especially since you repeat the same patter row twice.  It made for fast knitting, not to mention I know both are identical.  It did, however, make the end of the sleeves seem to go slowly, since each ended up with 63 stitches, I was knitting 126 stitches on each row.

One word of advice on this one, after every pattern row, count your stitches.  Don’t skip this, as this is a difficult pattern to pull out.  Tinking is about the only options.  I can’t imagine trying to frog several rows when about 40% of the stitches are yarn-overs and 40% are decreases.  If you make a mistake, you really, really want to catch it before you move on to the next row.  The majority of mistakes I made were skipping a yarn-over, or forgetting to pass a slipped stitch over.  Luckily, these can be remedied on the next row very easily, without going back.

Unlike my usual self, I followed the patter exactly.  I didn’t make any modifications.  If I were to knit this again I would try one alteration.  The center of each diamond is: YO, Pass one knit-wise, K2tog, PSSO, YO.  This center reduction is not really centered well.  It tends toward a “left slant” as the right stitch (which is passed over) is on top, so it looks kind of like a big chunky SSK.  I think I would try substituting a double reduction that looks more centered: YO; insert needle as if to K2tog, but slip the stitches instead of knitting, K1, Pass both slipped stitches over the K1; YO.  I didn’t try it, so I don’t know if it will work right, but I’ve seen that reduction on other pieces, and I really like the way it looks.  The original center stitch ends up on top, in the center, so the whole thing has a nice symmetrical look that the original doesn’t have.  Also, it makes a raised “rib”, which seems to fit well in the lacy patter of this sweater.

 I’ll be blocking this weekend, and I should be assembling soon.  Keep a lookout for updates.