How to Cable without a Cable Needle

I’ve been working on a lot of cable knitting projects lately, which is not something I normally do. I don’t know why, but I don’t typically use a lot of cables in my designs or choose to knit things that have cables. They’re actually pretty fun.

Especially when you can perform the magic trick of making cables without having to pull out a cable needle or spare double pointed knitting needle to use as a cable needle.

Once you understand how cables work and which way the stitches need to go to make the cable turn the way you need it to go, it’s actually really easy to do. It does involve temporarily having some stitches hanging loose from a needle, so if your yarn is really slippery, you might not want to use this technique.

But if you’re working with wool or another fiber that is relatively grabby this is a great technique that feels really clever and like it saves you time having to pick up, use, and put down your cable needle as you work across the row. (In the video I’m using Lion Brand Wool-Ease Chunky, which has long since been discontinued, but like the other Wool-Ease products its a blend of wool and acrylic, and it worked just fine with this technique).

I like doing it this way when you’re only slipping one or two stitches to make your cables. If they are much wider than that it’s easy to get your stitches twisted or out of order when you pick them back up.

Have you ever worked cables without a cable needle? Do you have other cable knitting tricks to share? I’d love to hear about it! (And hopefully I can share with you why I’ve been making so many cable knitting projects soon!)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDcDn3StOuA]

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I have never stitched a greeting card, but I kind of like the idea of it. It’s a card and a gift all in one, and hopefully one the recipient will hang onto for years to come.

This collection of easy and colorful greeting card cross stitch patterns from Susan Bates (via Gathered) are a great place to start if you want to stitch your own greeting cards.

These text-based designs cover a lot of card-sending events, such as:

get well soon
happy birthday
thank you
thinking of you
congratulations
anniversary
new home
good luck

The lettering is done in gradients and there are other details like hearts and stars, a house key and a gift, depending on the text. There are full cross stitches and back stitch on all of the cards, and they use 15 colors for the cross stitching and six for the back stitching (and just two colors are used for both, so it’s 19 colors total).

The designs vary a bit in size but the biggest one is 52 by 67 stitches, which comes out to 3.75 by 4.75 inches or 9.5 by 12 cm when worked on 14 count fabric or 28 count evenweave. The text suggests beads are also used in the patterns but there’s no note of them in the key, so go wild and add some beads if you like.

Designs are worked on a price of 6 by 8 inch/15 by 20 cm fabric and then mounted to a card with a colorful baking piece of card stock behind it. This is easy to assemble with whatever cardstock greeting cards you have on hand.

You can get the free charts as a PDF from Gathered.

Have you ever stitched your own greeting cards? I’d love to hear about it, or let me know if these inspire you to try.

[Photo: Susan Bates via Gathered]

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