Fixing a cable
Make tricky stitch rescues easy – we show you how.
Being able to repair an incorrectly worked stitch is a skill that will see you well throughout your knitting life, and save you hours of knitting time. Here we show you how easy it is to rescue a cable stitch worked incorrectly many rows below your working row. Read our expert step by step – you’ll be amazed at how easy it is!
1 Try not to avoid cables, even if you have discovered a mistake several rows, or even patterns, back in the past. In this example the first cable on Row 7 (worked from our Cable Chart on page 8), has been knitted as a C4B instead of a C4F, but it hasn’t been noticed until Row 13. In a garment this could mean unravelling a whole lot of stitches but there is an alternative. It helps here if you have a spare cable needle as well as the one you’re using, and your crochet hook will come in very, very useful.
2 Work your next row (Row 13) until you reach the cable stitches, then drop the next four stitches of the cable off the left-hand needle and unravel down to the cable that has the mistake.
3 Place the first two stitches onto one cable needle and the second two stitches onto the spare cable needle.
4 Reposition the cable needles so that the cable is twisted the correct way, (remember, in this instance you should be working a C4F instead of a C4B) and slip all the stitches onto one cable needle.
5 Now you need to ‘re-knit’ them using the bar of yarn unravelled from the row above, so with the (now spare again) cable needle, knit these four stitches as you would with a normal piece of knitting. Alternatively, you can use your crochet hook to re-knit each stitch one-by-one (see page 6), slipping all four stitches back onto the cable needle at the end.
6 At this point, your work should look similar to this.
7 Now you can use your crochet hook to work the plain rows up to where you need to rework another cable on Row 11 (following the steps on page 9). Work the
first stitch on your cable needle up three rows (Rows 8, 9 and 10), and hold it on your spare cable needle.
8 Repeat the instructions in Step 7 for the remaining three stitches.
9 Repeat the instructions in Steps 3 to 5 to complete Row 11.
10 Complete Row 12 in the same way you worked Step 7, placing your finished stitches onto your left-hand needle. When you’ve finished, you may notice that your cable looks a little lumpy or uneven. In this instance, use your crochet hook to help even out any untidy stitches. If your cable still looks uneven after that, blocking your finished item will help.