cotton

I had a non-monogamous weekend.
Friday night kicked off with a show at Festival Gardens, and knitted some rows on Parcel.
I learnt how to turn a back cable into a front cable one row after discovering it. Disaster averted.

Saturday night was spent watching Castle, before having a girly night and spending some time with my 10 Stitch Blanket (which is slowly getting bigger after being ignored for some time).

Then Sunday was all about the next step sockalong socksDangerous Turns. These socks fit like a glove.
The only thing I’m not happy about is the cuff. But I’m never happy with my cuffs, they hang of my ankle rather than hugging it.
Somewhere along the line I missed a cable repeat and I’m still deciding how annoyed I am about it.

So I’m not over the moon with these socks. And I haven’t weaved in the ends as there is still the possibility that I will frog them.

I don’t mind them, but I know how they should look.

I’ll look at them in a couple of days and see whether I can live with the mistakes.

I’ve gone a little cable crazy. I’ve cast on two cable projects in the last week, one of which is dangerous turns.

These are a good candidate for the Next Step Sock Sockalong (hosted by crafts form the cwtch and is about stepping out of the sock comfort zone and trying something new).

Firstly I’m knitting these out of cotton. Which I haven’t knitted with before. I have no idea if they’ll make nice socks but I wanted to give it a go. I’m a bit tired of using Noir all the time and I’ve promised myself not to buy it again, but I was in Spotlight and wanted instant gratification yarn, so I bought Panda Regal 4ply Cotton.

Secondly I’m knitting cables without a cable needle. I’m a cable beginner, who naively assumed that there was only 2 types of cables.
Well there aren’t. And last week they had me beat. The tutorial I used didn’t cover what to do when there was purling involved. And stubborn old me wasn’t about to use a cable needle.

Fortunately the answer came to me in a dream.
After nearly throwing them across the room, frogging them, and sobbing into my cotton, I wisely decided that I would sleep on it.
After dreaming about knitting (is this common?) I had the answer.

All of a sudden the cables fell into place and I knew what to do.
So I manually transposed the stitches. Once I had done that I could knit and purl as I pleased.

And then last night I figured out how to do it in one clean swoop, the grumperina way. And it seems so simple I don’t know why I didn’t get it before.

So these are my next step socks.
I’m hoping now that I’ve got the cables figured out for good and the early cables don’t look too rubbish in comparison.
Or that I forget it all and can’t figure it back our.
Or that I have actually ‘got it’ and haven’t just made something up which doesn’t work.

Eep, maybe I’m not as confident about cables as I thought I was!!