Adventures of a Desi KnitterAn academic juggles knitting, sewing, and other crafts in Kolkata

Starter problems

§ August 22nd, 2006 § Filed under BPT Cabled cardigan § 5 Comments

This cardigan pattern is great once you’ve begun, which is easier said that done. And then it’s so much fun.. okay, okay. no more poor rhyming attempts. Long day. Back to BPT (incidentally, this whole naming of patterns is weird enough, but does anyone know why BPT? Said very quickly it sounds like some rude stuff Calvin says to Susie Derkins with his tongue stuck out.).

As I said in the earlier comments to Quill, the pattern is very oddly written in the beginning. Here’s how it explains the first two rows:

Beginning with row 2 of the  cable patterns, work Set Up Row [WS] as follows:   Sl 1, p1, CB, p4[5,
7, 8], CF, place marker, p4[6, 6, 6], CB, place marker, p6[8, 9, 10], DC, p6[8, 9, 10], CF, place marker, p4[6, 6, 6], CB, place marker, p4[5, 7, 8], CF, p2. Inc row [RS]: Sl 1, *work in patt to 1 st before first marker, k1 into st below, k1, sl marker, work cable sts in patt, k1, k1 into st below, rep from * 3 times more. [inc 8 sts each round.] Basically you repeat these two rows until you divide for the body.

Since the cable stitches in the first (WS) row is only knit-purl with no twists, it’s a breeze. So are rows 2-4; the twist happens in row 5, which is the RS. And there comes the problem. I took the cable positions on the RS to be the mirror versions of how they were placed on the WS. In other words, if you knit the WS row as written above, doing CB, then CF, then DC, then on the RS you’d go DC, CF, CB, right?

Wrong.

As the pattern is pictured, even on the RS (row 5), you have to do the cables in the same order that they are  written in the set-up row, i.e. CB, CF, CB, DC, CF, CB, CF. Only if you do this will you find that the cables slant the way the should, as they are pictured (which is actually very graceful!) I found this a little confusing, and only after several froggings of ugly cables that had lost their way did I figure it out. (Of all the people who’ve made this cardigan nobody has mentioned this save Quill, so maybe this is normal to most, but it certainly wasn’t to me.)

Anyway. Once the starter issues were resolved, however, it’s going splendidly. I am a teeny bit worried about puckering at the increases (am using  the  KRL/KLL (Knit Right Loop/Knit Left Loop) technique of increases which make it very even, but tend to the tighter side. Have to be careful to do them a little loosely, but then you have to worry about ugly gaps at the raglans.