Fixing Cable Mistakes

Last summer I worked on a large project that involved many different cable panels. It was the Aran afghan in the Berroco Comfort Knitted & Crocheted Afghans book. Since I am not a perfect knitter I definitely made mistakes along the way. Sometimes mistakes in cables aren't that noticeable, but I couldn't live with the project unless I fixed them. I didn't always realize I'd made a mistake until several inches later. And ripping back several inches of work would negate several hours of knitting.

So Barb showed me how to drop stitches JUST in the cable section to fix each mistake. This leaves the rest of the afghan intact, and saves hours of frogging and re-knitting. Last week Michelle brought in the back of her Point Gammon Pullover from the Fall 2010 Issue of Interweave Knits. She'd made a small mistake in one of the cables. Can you see it? I showed her what Barb had shown me. We put the stitches we wanted to leave intact onto her circular needles and the stitches that were involved in the 'fix' onto a double pointed needle. The live stitches that weren't involved in the 'fix' stayed on the circulars and we ripped just the stitches we needed in her 'fix' down to the row where she made an error. All she needed to do was re-knit the stitches involved in the error using the strands behind the work and two double pointed needles. Her remaining stitches stayed out of the way on the circular.

The key here is to be sure you use the loose strands behind your work that were ripped out in the correct row order. You've done this if you've used a crochet hook to re-knit a dropped stitch! This just involves more stitches. When you reach the row at the top, simply move the 'fix' stitches back onto your working needles to continue the work. Hooray, the cable is fixed! Now back to knitting your regularly scheduled program...