Twisted Cable Sweater: A Long Term Affair

A week or two ago I was sifting through my contacts’ new uploads on Flickr when a favourite knitter of mine who produces some of the most amazingly beautiful knits had a new set of pictures that caught my eye. The sweater that she had recently completed and modelled was the Twisted Cable Sweater from The Designer Knits collection by Sarah Hatton & Martin Storey.
The cabled sweater in question is actually used for the cover design of the book, sitting about the frame of a particularly sullen-looking model who may have just been stood up by a prospective date whilst waiting in the cold before being told by the photographer ‘cheer up love, it might never happen’. Every time I look at the picture the model looks a bit more angry, so I’m glad to have seen my knitter-friend’s jumper warming up someone with a smile on their face. Perhaps it was the original joy that encouraged me to want one of my own – I wanted to have my own happy-making knitwear, and added it to the mental list of things I might fancy making, one day.
It was only a week or so later, however, when enjoying a day-trip to Chester to visit Black Sheep Wools that I happened across the book that bore the sullen looking lady with the gorgeous cable work glaring at me from the racks of pattern books. I had a flick through the designs and decided that as I was in a yarn shop I might as well just go with my fancy, and I picked up the book and the yarn to go with it and made my way home. I already have a knitting project on the needles and a sewing project blossoming in the forefront of my mind, so could I really cheat on those current projects by casting on something anew?
Of course I could. My knitting needles cannot get jealous, and this is a love affair that I was too strongly drawn towards to ignore. In a rush of emotion at starting something new and exciting I cast on this exciting new project and into the ribbing.

Oh my goodness the ribbing lasts forever.

I think that time had actually started to move backwards by the time I reached the increase row to begin the cabling. It’s not that the rib section is particularly deep: about 7cm – but the knitting to get the desired gauge is very dense, so the row height is quite compact.

Looking at the projects listed on Ravelry, I can see that I am not the only person who has had trouble hitting the correct gauge with the given needles. In fact, every project listed seems to have used a needle size 2-3 sizes smaller than that given in the pattern, so maybe the pattern gauge needs to be revisited to give a more ‘average’ needle size for initial gauge experiments.

Nevertheless, I am now past the ribbing and into the exciting cabling areas. I have decided to knit the body in the round rather than flat as given in the pattern, because then I only have to do it once, because some love affairs should never be repeated.