cable attempts no. 2 - plaited cables.

A few weeks ago I joined Ravelry, the social networking site for knitters. I didn't post anything on it right away, since I wanted to spend more time actually knitting rather than babbling about it on the internet, BUT last night I was having a hell of a time trying to figure out the pattern for this hat, so I decided to ask for help. I posted in one of Ravelry's forums and got responses that recognized the hat as having plaited cables... which I had never heard of, let alone knew how to do! Rather than keep asking stupid questions I decided to look online for patterns and find out for myself. That's when I stumbled upon this lovely blog and got a step by step tutorial -- with pictures! lucky me!

Getting purly with it led me through the process over 9 sts:

row 1: slip 3 on to cable needle, knit 3, knit 3 from needle, knit 3 more, purl 1. repeat.
row 2 + 3 + 4: knit all knits and purl all purls!
row 5: knit 3, slip 3 onto cable needle, knit 3, knit 3 from needle, purl 1. repeat.

Yup! Pretty straight forward. I discovered it's a lot like what I was doing here, only when I tried applying that pattern, for some reason, it didn't look right. I'll be referring back to Nancy's blog for some other patterns and tutorials, too. She's got some great things over there.

Thanks to all the others who suggested patterns and techniques. They all led me to a fun experimental piece. Now I've just got to pick up some yarn to make the real hat and we'll be rolling!