The Knitting Fiend

So, I showed you how to cross a cable without a needle; the final result picture looked perfect. So, easy!

Except, once I began knitting the whole blasted sweater, the crosses sometimes looked icky. See that loose stitch on the left of a cable cross I just worked above?

Fortunately, I can fix that. I’ll show what I do if the icky-ness bugs me immediately, which it usually doesn’t. In the first place, I know the loose stitch generally evens out when I stretch the fabric horizontally and vertically later on as I knit it. Oh, you didn’t know you could just stretch fabric and even out the size of your stitches? Well, machine knitters call stretching the fabric “snapping” it. Fabric is so stretched horizontally on the knitting machine that you can’t help but learn that it’s ok to stretch knitting quite a bit. Practice on your swatches, you’ll see what I mean.

Ok, so I know most of that will cure itself when I stretch the fabric. But, what if the stitch is still loose? Well, I find a small needle, and insert the tip on the shorter end of the stitch, as shown below left. I draw up some slack. Then, I insert the tip under the bars of an adjacent stitch, and pull gently; see below left. That’s usually enough, although, I might eventually insert the tip under all four bars and pull up.

The final result?