Rang the lovely Bill King and he's explained the supersize cable method - I had written it down when it made perfect sense, but then afterwards, of course, it was complete gibberish!
The supersize cable method is a way of creating really wide cables, without having to use a length of seperate yarn. Basically you split the crossover into two or more sections, and cross it gradually. This is how wide cables are created in industry. You need a ribber, and a multi-transfer tool.
For example, say you wanted to work a 5 x 5 cable. Set the needles up as follows:
ooo12345678910ooo
ooooooooooooooooooooo -- this row is at half pitch
Ribber is set to half pitch, and the two needles in work are opposite the out of work ones on the main bed, to create the "channel" down the sides of the cable.
K 4 rows to set the pattern.
Put two needles up on the ribber bed, roughly between needles 5 & 6 on the main bed. K one row, then drop the new sts. This adds slack for the crossover.
Pick up sts 6-8 on one tool, and sts 1-5 on another tool. Pass 6-8 to the back and put on needles 1-3. Replace sts 1-5 onto 4-8. K a row.
So you have:
ooo67812345910ooo
>K another row, adding two more sts on the ribber, K a row and then dropping the new sts.
Pick up sts 9-10 and 1-5 on seperate tools. Pass 9-10 to the back, and place next to 6-8. Replace sts 1-5 on the right hand end
You should now have:
ooo67891012345ooo
K rows to next cable and repeat.
Of course, you could do far larger cables with this method. You shouldn't try to cross more than about 3 sts max at a time, though, so the wider the cable, the more crossover rows you'll have to do.
Updated 24-02-2021: Revisited here
4 comments:
Hi Jane,
Thanks for this! Like you, I had beautiful notes taken down when Bill was demo'ing that turned into a foreign language on the journey home!!
Thanks for posting your notes!
I think I understand it, and I'll have to try it, as I just love cables.
Have you a special project in mind for it?
Thank you for posting this. I followed it to the letter. However, there was so much resistnance from needle 9&10 when trying to move 678 to the vacated place of 12345. After all, it is a huge “jump”. What could be wrong? I am using pure,wool. Best wishes.
Good question! I am not sure now myself, maybe I have written it down wrong! I will have a look through BK's MKM articles and see if I can find something with diagrams, and then I can direct you to a back copy (or revisit this technique in another post).
I didn't add a note about tensions - I suspect you may have to have quite a loose tension on the ribber to do this. The idea is that the "behind" stitches will be very loose - you won't see them so it won't matter - so these are the stitches nearest you in the cross.
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