All Tangled Up

The tangled yoke cardigan pattern should come with a warning stating the following, “Do not attempt to knit this cable late at night, under the influence, while talking to people or watching TV. Disregarding this warning will lead to headaches, cursing and repeated failed attempts ending with frogging.”

Apparently I had enough sense to forgo drunken knitting, but not enough to quickly lock myself away in quiet room with yarn and chart. Because of this most of the weekend was an epic battle of knitting verses knitter with the knitting beating me soundly in the brain region.

Things to keep in mind when knitting this beast:

1. Actually read the chart - This is a no brainer right? Well there was more than one instance where I “remembered” the chart and remembered it incorrectly. This goes hand in hand with number 2…..

2. Do not assume that you remember the direction of cable twists on similarly looking symbols. Odds are that your semi dyslexic brain has reversed it. Check the key or 2 rows later something just doesn’t look right and you start blaming your mother for bad genes.

3. The direction of the cables switch after hitting the center motif so don’t go into autopilot and forget to switch. To do so means 2 rows later the left half of the sweater will have to be picked out in 5 stitch segments to reknit the cables correctly. (It would have been “interesting” to have two sweaters with this mistake so a timed test could be run. Is picking out 5 stitches at a time faster than ripping out 2 ½ rows and having to pick up cabled stitches?) On a positive note a stitch marker right at the center of the motif solved this problem for future rows.

4. If suddenly there is an extra stitch do not Ktog it together! You’ll find that 4 repeats are one stitch off because an errant stitch has been dropped and has unraveled all the way through the cable. Thankfully felted tweed can take all this abuse and still look good.

In fairness all of these problems were the fault of the knitter. The chart is well written and the only thing I’d add is an instruction to put a stitch marker in the center. Having the marker there acted as a helpful point of reference and made the stress level a lot lower.

As you can see the cable and I made peace when proper attention was paid. It might be a little high maintenance but it sure is pretty.