Wrap up (Int/Adv): Madam I'm Adam ...

Don't worry if you're a little puzzled after reading the title of this post. If you look carefully, you'll notice its a Palindrome - it reads the same forwards and backwards. In other words, its reversible. Making knitted fabric that's reversible can be very simple (garter stitch) or a little trickier (cables). This week, Keith showed the class one method of making a palindrome cable. The key to the method that Keith demonstrated is using a truly reversible fabric. As stated above, garter stitch is one such fabric however, when doing cables, it doesn't work that well because of its bumpy nature.

A rib pattern (K1P1), works really well as a reversible fabric that makes cables reversible. There are two reasons why ribbing works well with reversible cables:

1. Ribbing itself compacts the stitches and because of this, the already receded purl stitches in the ribbing almost entirely disappear and you think you're looking at a garter stitch fabric.

2. The cables also compact the stitches horizontally, adding to the effect. 

Because the purl stitches create valleys inside the cables, ribbed cables tend to be a little flatter than cables made with stocking stitch. They are still textured and slightly raised and great to make.  The Palindrome cable is made in the same manner as a regular cable except that instead of knitting in stocking stitch with a reverse stocking stitch background, you are knitting the cables in the rib pattern. Here is the cable instruction that Keith showed:

C8F: slip 4 sts onto cable needle and hold to front, K2, P2, then K2, P2 from cable needle

After you've tried this you may want to experiment with them a little and see the difference if you use a 1x1 rib instead of a 2x2. Also how do they look cabled over 4 or 6 stitches instead of 8? Can you think of another way of making a Palindrome cable? If you want to get a little more perspective on Palindrome cables, pick up the current issue of Interweave Knits and check out the article in there by Lily Chin. 

Yarn over and out!

JAS