cables uncrossed

The old adage that a woman will eventually turn into her mother is coming true for me. Not , necessarily, a bad thing. My mom’s pretty cool, as mothers go. My current cardigan project has thrown this likeness into stark relief.

The first time my mom came to visit after the Hubbs and I got married she wanted to set up the coffee maker to start coffee before she got up. Our coffee maker had that capability but, since it required some sort of programming or setting a clock or whatever we never used it. Hubbs and I would just start the thing ourselves when we got up. We have dogs to feed so the coffee is always ready by the time we’re finished with that anyway.

Not my mom. Presented with an un-programmed, programmable coffee pot she was determined to set it up to do her biding. I know my mom. I know she will stay up all night figuring this thing out if that’s what it takes, so I went to bed.

Hubbs, on the other hand, is bred of pure southern gentility and just could not leave my mother alone in the kitchen to fiddle with the coffee pot so he stayed up with her. For hours.

I can’t remember how the coffee maker incident ended but the whole thing came back to me the other day when I was presented with this:

This is a picture of the cardigan I’m just finishing up and, wouldn’t you know it, there on the left side is a mis-crossed cable. I didn’t notice this mistake until I was about to bind off the opposite end. If I was a perfectionist I would rip the whole thing out and do it over. I’m not, however, a perfectionist. I am a pragmatist  but if a problem is fixable I must try to fix it.

I went to my LYS and the ladies had some good suggestions including creating a stitch at the back which would sort of mimic the cable look and covering that cable with a pin or button or some other distraction. These are perfectly good suggestions and, if I weren’t my mother’s daughter, I’d use one of them. But I am my mother’s daughter so I decided to go with the one idea the LYS ladies didn’t even mention. In fact, they encouraged me not to try it.

I can just snip a thread in the crossed row, pull out the 12 cable stitches, re-attache a new piece of yarn, re-knit them in the proper order and then kitchner  (graft) the hole shut right?

Right, well it isn’t as if I haven’t learned anything in the last 48 years, so I worked up a swatch to test my theory before taking scissors to my sweater.

crossed the wrong way

snip the crossed row

pullout the cabled stitches, place on needles and re-knit properly

kitchner the hole back together

 

There you have it. Aside from my rather rookie looking attempt at kitchner, it works perfectly fine. The key is to kitchner it back together properly. My stitches were twisted here but, being so anxious to see how my “fix” turned out I chose to not bother with switching them back into proper positioning. Well, this wasn’t a kitchner stitch tutorial and I told you I’m not a perfectionist.

The cable thing, The snip- unknit- reknit thing: totally works. Now off to make some coffee and have a chat with mom.