Cables add wonderful texture and pattern to your knits. But mistakes in them can be obvious, and therefore, usually require fixing. But who wants to rip out rows and rows of work to fix one cable?
In this video, I use the Goat Whisperer’s Cabled Fingerless Gloves to show you how to fix a cable without ripping out all of your knitting.
How to Fix a Cable
Now, I know it can be unnerving to drop a bunch of stitches off your needle. Just remember to pinch the row below the live stitches with one hand while you use your other needle to pick up the live stitches. That will prevent the stitches from “running”.
The first few times you use this technique, your cable might look funky. You might run out of yarn or you might have extra yarn when you’re finished. These issues are usually the result of wonky tension – either you’re working your stitches too loosely and running out of yarn OR you’re working the stitches too tightly and have extra yarn at the end.
Both of those problems can often be remedied by using a needle to gently pick at the stitches to redistribute the yarn. If that doesn’t work, you can unknit the stitches and knit them again (your stitches are already crossed on your needle and you can leave them that way to reknit them without a cable needle).
Fixing a Left-Leaning Cable
I showed you how to fix a right-leaning cable in the video. To fix a left-leaning cable, you do the same thing, but hold your cable needle in the front instead of the rear.
How to Remember where to Hold the Cable Needle
The way I remember where to hold my cable needle is that both right and rear start with R. That means I hold my cable needle in the rear for a right-leaning cable. Logically, that means I hold the cable needle in front for a left leaning cable (it helps that the words front & left both include the letter F).
Have Courage!
Still nervous about purposely dropping stitches from your needle?
What’s the downside?
If you have trouble with this technique and need to rip out your work to fix it, won’t you be in the same predicament as if you didn’t try the technique?
The Goat Whisperers Cabled Fingerless Gloves is a great project to practice knitting (and, therefore, fixing) cables.
Purchase the pattern on Ravelry or join our Goat Whisperers Cabled Fingerless Gloves Knit Along, where we guide you through each step of the pattern with detailed online lessons. Check it out at http://www.knitalongclub.com.