head on i'm sherri so koski as we start the show today i just wanted to give a shout out to a viewer who e mailed me she's twelve years old and she's just getting started with knitting she's very excited about some of the first projects that she's doing which happen to be scarves i think we all remember those days when most of what we did were scarves and she's moving on to some other projects and very excited about the things that she's doing with meetings i wanted to  say a great hello to a list tell her keep saying i think that this is a great time in her life to be doing this twelve is a great age to be learning all these new things and i hope that she sticks with it and i hope she keeps e mailing me and telling me what's going on with her knitting that's very exciting for me to be able to keep up with what she's doing and i always love hearing from all viewers no matter what age so when you have things that you want to discuss with me make sure that you e mail me as always my address is sherri so koski at yahoo dot com and that's the best way to get in touch with me and i return my e mails as quickly as possible especially if you have problems with your knitting because sometimes those things are what would hold you up with your project and sometimes like an e mail viewers through those problems and come up with a solution for you and i'm always glad to do that another thing that i want to do before we get started on our main topic today is to sort of retrace our steps a little bit if you've seen my show on cast ons there was a little bit of information that i gave and one of those techniques that ended up not being the best way to accomplish that and i wanted to sort of backtrack and take you through that again and that was what we called a provisional cast on where we started with a little bit of a quote shade chain and as i said even if you don't crochet a great deal you can accomplish a chain and we'll see if we can get a shot  that there it is and as you can see a chain is basically what we think of and knitted stitched looking like as it's moving vertically you can see it's those v's that sort of inter with each other and that's what a chain stitch in crochet is going to look like it has some bumps on the back which are accomplished as you're going through that chain what we're going to be focusing on though is the v themselves and this is going to be the base for what we call a provisional cast on and as we covered in that so with the cast on that's going to be a cast on where you actually need to remove this base so that you can then pick up those live stitches and then knit in the opposite direction as well and sometimes you'll want to accomplish that if you have a stitch that is sort of shaped in a specific direction going away from the needles you would want it to be mirror image to say for instance on a scarf that had a scallop that edge or what have you that you might need to be able to mirror image in that way and your directions on your project are going to tell you to use a provisional cast on you're not going to really need to guess about that but the way that we need to accomplish this is to there again look at that v we're going to put our knitting needle in through both sides of that v and i know they're getting that really great shot of it for you there i just put my needle in through both sides of that be and you're going to pick up the working you know orne through both sides of that and i'll do it for you again put it in through both sides of the v and you can see we're not using that bump on the back at all we're not going through about it all it's laying completely to the back of our natal and then just as we would with any pick it pull the working your and which in this case is the grain of offset it to be so that you can be able to see it much better when it we have two colors of course and any waist y will work for you or crocheted base that you're doing your crocheted chain so you would go ahead and pick up as many stitches into that crocheted chain as you needed according to your directions then what's going to happen is that if you have worked from the last stitch that you chain this would have been the first it's that i changed when i started with the crochet arc this was the last i'm going to undo that little bit of a tale that we've pulled through our last stitch and you can literally on one caught in there you can unravel that base much easier if you've gone through those vs then the way that our original i told you which was now you can see this is just going to unravel because we have off of it but if we undo the chain and you can see it just unravels these would be then the line stitches that we would been pick up on to our needle and work in the opposite direction after that chain is on wound so i hope that's helpful if you ever come across a provisional cast on in your direction she will know what that means now and once again if you need sort of an update on that you can always find those directions  in their tutorials and that's information that you can get from me if you choose to email me if you don't remember where exactly to get that information they have some great still shots of this technique being done and it's something that you might need to have in your knitting repertoire if you have directions that call for that so we'll go ahead and move on and our main main topic today is going to be cables i had the occasion to see and knitter who watches the show and she thought that going over cables again might be something that she might like to say as well as some of the other viewers so what i've done is put together as many cables as i can could come up with a lot of different techniques will be dusk us think about every aspect of cables in this show as well as in my next show so that you really have a very good understanding of what cables are how they work and some of the choices that you can make in order to make your cables more effective in your knitted projects so as with everything we need to think about the needles and the fibers that we're using every project starts with those selections before you ever cast honest it you really mean to think very carefully about the equipment that you are using which in this is this case is going to be your needles as well as the fiber that you're using which is going to be your yarn as far as needles go i brought in the one that i most commonly use that there are several out there on the market you might to check with your local knitting store which here in peter's township is bloomin your and this is one that sort of is like a double pointed medo you can see it has points on both ends and just has this bit of a bend in the middle there are ones that are a little more you shaped than this that are very popular as well that's something that you might consider this one happens to be metal they also come in different their would there be in blue there are other things that you can  them in the reason that you need this little bit of a bend is that it helps grab onto the stitches that you are transferring they sort of just sit back in this bend as they would on a huge shaped needle as well and it's a great advantage to you to be able to have those stitches sort of up on that bend and they sort of stay there as you're moving things around which you'll see when we start doing the technique part of the show so that's something that you might want to experiment a little bit with which cable made a works best for you which one you prefer and that's something that you would do when you start doing your swatch and any time we start a project we do advocate doing swatch using the yorn that you plan to use using all the equipment that you plan to use the size of the needle etc so that you get a very good idea of what your finished project is then going to look like so of course part of that is going to be your fiber selection since cables are something that you do that are a great deal of technique and a great deal of work and sometimes very time consuming you want to think of that as being something that you want to show all that technique should show and in order to do that you want the your in to have as smooth a texture and as sort of  the way that it is spun is very important as well those are things that you're going to look for in the yarn that you use sometimes when we're knitting you can't use the exact your and that's called for in the pattern maybe it's not available if you're using an older pattern or if you're shopping at a store that doesn't maybe have the brand of yarn that is used in those specific directions and sometimes you're going to need to switch a little bit the yarn that is used in the pattern you still want to stay as true to idea of the pattern as you can in other words if it's a very tightly spun wall and sometimes your yarn shop employees would be able to tell you what to look for as far as switching out your yarns but for basic purposes some of the things that we're going to talk about now is the texture of those you are into that are very good to use as far as cables are concerned cascade to twenty which i'm going to hold a single strand up here for you to say is nicely spun hundred percent wall shows any stitches has great definition for that this probably is one of the best selling your is out right now if you get on to ravelry dot com which happens to be sort of a knitting community website it is their number one used your and if you go into their yarn search it comes in tons and tons of colors they have solid colors they have what they call their quattro which is sort of for very closely related colors spun together they have somehow the earth which are really beautiful this happens to be one of the solids but you can see this is a technique that will be demonstrating a little bit later but you can see that the definition in those stitches is really very nice they sit knits set up very high  opposed to the pearls that are in the background that are recessed so that gives you a lot of definition which is what you want when you're doing all these techniques that are taking a great deal of time and you don't want them to sort of be swallowed into the yarn and not show for you i'll hold up another one that i've brought in just as some of my swatches this is a little looser in the twist i don't know if we'll be able to get that on the camera wait until maybe we can get a little bit of a close up but what that is going to do as far as your stitches is that because excellent sot there where you can see that it's a great deal loose in the twist than that to twenty was that i held up for you made by cascade and you can see that we do see those cables but maybe not just quite as chris as we saw on the two twenty you're still getting a little bit of that texture from the looser twist as you're looking at those stitches and anything that attracts your i as that looser twist will anything that attracts your eye as opposed to that cable is going to make the cable a little bit less noticeable now this i could live with it's not something that i would be entirely on happy with but you might want to keep that in in mind that the crisper that looks the more definition that you're going to get in those cables another one that i brought in for you to see maybe you're not thinking of using an animal fiber so i did bring in a cotton for you to look at this is one hundred percent c old and it's very tightly spun as well you can see there isn't much texture to the yarn itself it's a little darker color we might not be able to get as good a shot on it as we have on some of the other ones there you can say it but it is a little drape here in texture which will then mean that your tables are not going to sit up quite as chris as they will with something that it is a little  firmer to the hand because the draping miss it's going to give you just the slightest little bit less definition what come on back after the break i have some specific cables that i want to discuss with you and show you the exact techniques diabetes association because we want everyone to be healthy and happy and border your free copy of planning for a healthy life to help manage the things you can welcome back and then on the going to be talking more about cables and as we start in from the break i'd like to talk a little bit about directions because those are going to be really important for your project i mean to find directions that you understand very well and if  purchased those from your local yarn shop they of course will be a great resource if that isn't the case sometimes online sources such as ravelry where you can get some feedback about people who have also used that  set of directions before those are going to be some valuable things for you as well there are going to be basically two ways that cables are going to be described to you in your project directions one is that they're just going to be written step by step what you do across each row and i brought a book and this happens to be one of my favorites this is how to knit by debbie blitz and this actually is a little older book this is actually before she started having your own your in line and designing exclusively with those who aren't but it does happen to be one of my favorites and you can see that she has basically a dictionary of a great deal of cable to stitches and all of these directions are written in words row by row i don't happen to mind that i can sort of understand the directions whether they're done this way or in graphs which is going to be the  next thing that i show you this happens to be another of my favorite books which i reviewed here on the show a couple couple of episodes ago but a lot of the newer directions especially ones that are larger areas of cables are going to be done more in a graph and you can see on that it's almost a literal visual translation of what those dishes are going to look like in your knitting you can see where there's a black dog that's going to be a pearl and visually best going to be more recess to your eye as a paroled stitch would base and that's a great way of translating that into print where the stitches crossed each other they've made that i'll try not to move it too much and put my finger where i mean you can see if it's crossing to the left they make it look that way if it's crossing to the right they make it look as though it's crossing to the right so the way they're crafting these directions now is really very smart and makes it very easy for you to use these and get the desired effect and understand what those directions are meaning you as i've done on the show before i always use a sticky note across those rows when we use those graphs and that's a great thing for you to have around in your knitting bag is a is a a little tablet full of sticky notes so that you can mark the line when you're using those graphs it's a great way to keep track yourself so what i'm going to do for you now and i have this set up in a swatch is that i'm going to do a really basic cable for you so that you can see how exactly a cable is done because when you look at this and you've not done it before you might think that it's a little bit confusing i'm going to turn just a little bit so i know that our closeup can can get in through here this way basically what happens on your cables is that it's going to sit on a background of something that is going to push to the back this happens to be reverse stockinette stitch which means that all the pearls are to the front it can also be a seed stitch with which has a little more texture to it it can even be a garter stitch because anything that has some of those pearl bumps facing us is going to then make our stock a net stitch which is going to be what runs in our cables come forward for us so it's set up in that way our cables on this one are going to be four stitches are cross so i will go ahead and do three pearl stitches which is going to be my outside border and this first one that we come to is going to be as you can see it's crossing toward my left hand and when we crossed towards the left we put the two stitches as i said this is a four stitch cable so it's running two and two that's going to come to the front and i can kind of anchor that a little bit with my  that the two stitches from the needle the knitting needle ok and then i met the two stitches and you can see how those set down in the bend of that needle the way i told you that they would then i knit the two stitches from the cable needle and that will cross them in front and to the left so that is a left leaning cable i'll go ahead and do my three stitches of pearl that is running in between these two cables and then i've set the other cable up so that i can show you what it looks like if we want that cable to lean to the right i put those on to my cable nato and i hold those to the back i knit the two stitches from the knitting needle and then i knit the two stitches from the cable n now in your graft that's going to be shown that way it's going to be two stitches and it will be leaning in that in whichever direction it goes and then you'll know that that's the way you do that they generally also give you a little bit of a legend so that  you can look at those symbols and it says you know knit two stitches hold the other one in the back do this do that to the other so that you know what those all mean as well this is what the back of your work is going to look like you can see my reverse stockinette stitch which is pearled on this side is going to look of course like stockinette on the back and you can see that you get that little bit of a hick up where my crosses have been on the back and then what's going to happen when you do your reverse roe is that generally speaking ninety nine times out of one hundred what's going to happen on your backside when you're working on cables is that you're just going to knit the knit as they face you and pearl the pearls as they face you so your cables are generally speaking only being done on your right sides so any time that you're working on a cabled project of course that the backside of the project is sort of day cation time you really don't have to think too much about it other than what it looks like as it's facing you so that is what that row is going to look like going across after we have just cabled generally speaking cables are not going to be done every right side grow on this particular one then there is going to be a right side row where there are no cables and that is because when you twist those stitches you need some recovery or what i think of are recovery because if you twist them every right side row that there are exceptionally tight this also gives you a denser fabric than you would have with just say a rib which would be where we didn't cross these over so that's something that you're always going to want to keep in mind is that a cabled project is going to have a little more weight to it because of those crosses then you would have otherwise so that's how to do a basic cable just a two over to either leaning to the left or to the right with a reverse stock a net separating them the next one that i want to show you is a pretty basic cable as well but what we've done is to mirror image the is so that they are sitting next to each other and creating a little different effect and it's really no more complicated than what we've already done except that the two cables are sitting next to each other if i put my phone over this cable you can see that that the one that is still showing is leaning to the right and then this one is leaning to the left but when you look at those they look like they're doing something entirely different or more complicated it's sort of creating these huge shaped cable so what we did on this one was to set this up with the stitch in between and save stitch as some of you may know is where you do the opposite of what you normally think of this it has a pearl bump so i'm going to need it the next one has and missed it so i'm going to pearl it and that gives you that sort of back and forth and in and out texture which we call seed stitch it's also a great background for these cables because it has enough texture to it that the stockinette stitch which is the cable is going to sit up out of that so i'll do those few stitches of speed and then when we get to our cable my first one is going to need to lean to the right which means of course that those stitches and this is a six stitch cable that's going to go to the back and this is going to come over and to the right in the front so i knit those three and you can see how those stitches really are sitting in that little bit of a bend on that cable needles so that's something that you'll want to explore is what exactly what  of cable needle that you're comfortable with then i met those three off of the cable needle so i've accomplished that half of the cable then in order to mirror image that of course the next three will be held to the front i anchor that just that little bit with my film and i knit the three that are on the left hand needle and you really for the most part just sort of ignore that cable needle i mean you don't want to get away from you but you really just knit off of the knitting needle the way you would any other time and then go back to your cable needle for those three and cable needles are one of those things that tend to get away from you there are a smaller items so you know sometimes they get down in the questions of the celts or whatever so having an extra cable made or wound is a really good idea too because there's nothing worse than not being able to find it when you're in the middle of a project so i advocate maybe getting more than one so we're nearly at the end of the show all finished this were no and let you see it again i hope you'll come back for the next show because we'll be doing lots more cables then and there you can see there is our mirror image cable to six stitch cables sitting side by side mirror image just to get that special effect but when we break it down it's really very simple isn't it i'm sorry so cal ski and this isn't it on thanks for being here today