Moving Forward

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness, is an essential lifetime skill."

-- Joan Borysenko

I've been feeling out of sorts as of late so my sister suggested turning back to something that I had put on the back burner; Linemen.

Usually, when I create a new pattern there is a meaning to why and who it is being made to honor. This time it is my family members who are part of the phone company. I have always seen them as helpers to Hermes the God of Communications. Communication is so essential in any relationship. We take the ability to press a button and hear someone's voice for granted since it is something that we do every day but the minute we can't...we notice.

My Grandpa, Pop Pop and my BIL all work(ed) for the phone company and kept (keep) communication flowing. I wanted to design something to honor them.

I usually turn to KnitPicks when I am designing; they have a beautiful choice of yarns and colors that really hold true to gauge. Their Swish is soft and vibrant with 220 yards to play with.

I haven't worked a lot with cables but now I feel my understanding of how they work is much broader. I took a cable I liked that had four legs and charted where each of the legs was going with different colors and then I took out the 4th leg and cleaned up the chart so the cable was balanced. I worked a few swatches and I'm pretty happy with the result.

When I dreamed about this cable originally, it had different colors. So I have been playing around with intarsia cables. After looking at the cable in a few different places, I think I really like the colored one to be the one in the middle. As you can see from the swatch the middle cable is the one that touches each of the others. I like that. I think this would look really neat with any combo that someone desires. I'm going to make a black and red one, a blue and white one and then one to keep for the shop in purple and green which have nothing to do with the phone company but I really like them.

This scarf could be used for teams or other things that have two colors like Hogwarts' Houses. I really like it.

Of course, the whole thing is starting to curl and that is an issue that I hope (pray) will block out.

I bought a book that was filled with things I could only hope to knit in 1996. It was my one day I hope to be good enough to make this book. I bought the book because of this sweater.  It is the Cromarty by Alice Starmore.  She is a goddess of cables and all things knitting.

I really think I could make this now.  I have come such a long way since the 90s.  lol  :)

Cables are very daunting when you look at some of them; all those legs can be very intimidating.  But if you break each cable down and treat each leg one at a time, they become so much easier to manage.


Linemen is just three cables but I really learned so much from cleaning up my cable legs.

Say you have this pattern:
Row 1: P6, K2, P6
Row 2: K6, P2, K6

The middle two stitches are your cable.  If you want to move those two stitches to the right it would look like this:

Row 3: P5, T3B, P6
Row 4:  K7, P2, K5

(Twist 3 Back- slip the next stitch onto a cable needle and hold at the back of your work, knit the next two stitches from the left-hand needle, then purl the stitch from the cable needle)

The (b) back or (f) front instruction tells you where you will be holding your cable needle.  The number tells you how many stitches are in the cable.

This cable moved the stitch over to the right by one stitch. It takes the purl stitch on the right and swaps it with the two knit stitches of your work.

If you want to move those two stitches back to the left again, it would look like this.

Row 5:  P5, T3F, P6
Row 6:  K6, P2, K6

(Twist 3 Front- slip the next two stitches onto a cable needle and hold it at the front of your work, purl the next stitch off of your left-hand needle, and then knit the next two stitches from the cable needle)

This cable moved the stitch over to the left by one stitch.  It takes the purl stitch on the left and swaps it with the two knit stitches on your cable.

If you wanted to take two cables and cross them you could do this:

Row 1:  P4, K4, P4
Row 2:  K4, P4, K4
Row 3:  P4, C4F, P4
Row 4:  K4, P4, K4

(Cable 4 front - slip the next two stitches onto a cable needle and hold them in the front of your work, knit the next two stitches off of your left-hand needle, and then knit the two stitches from the cable needle)  In this cable the right-hand cable leg goes over the left-hand cable leg.

A C4B, where the two cable stitches are held in the back, would do the opposite and the left-hand cable leg would go over the right-hand cable leg.

You can use these three cables to do this:













(the example is worked over 16 stitches, all of the abbreviations are listed above)

Row 1: P6, K4, P6
Row 2: K6, P4, K6
Row 3: P6, K4, P6
Row 4: K6, P4, K6
Row 5: P6, C4F, P6
Row 6: K6, P4, K6
Row 7: P5, T3B, T3F, P5
Row 8: K5, P2, K2, P2, K5
Row 9: P4, T3B, P2, T3F, P4
Row 10: K4, P2, K4, P2, K4
Row 11: P4, T3F, P2, T3B, P4
Row 12: K5, P2, K2, P2, K5
Row 13: P5, T3F, T3B, P5
Row 14: K6, P4, K6
Row 15: P6, C4F, P6
Row 16: K6, P4, K6
Row 17: P6, K4, P6
Row 18: K6, P4, K6

And there is a simple little pattern you can use to embellish hats and such.

Happy crafting,
Ruinwen
:)