Nothing Hard Is Ever Easy

It occurs to me I may have been a bit hasty when I started the corner motifs for the Blessingway Blanket. Going from slightly more complicated but still straightforward single cross cables to the intricacies of Hannah Cuviello's Celtic motif just might have been akin to attempting surgery after that college anatomy course. Perhaps the wise would-be cabler should attempt an intermediate design first. Enter Barbara Walker, A First Treasury of Knitting Patterns (the blue one), and the Serpentine Cable.

Ms. Walker assures me that the pattern looks more complicated than it is. I know Ms. Walker wouldn't mislead the innocent cable knitter. There are, however, two problems. None of the patterns in this, the first Treasury, are charted. Then, the pattern calls for a multiple of 8 stitches plus 4, which I can easily adapt to fit the 36 stitch pattern that runs down the middle of the Blessingway Blanket, but I have to figure out how to work in the beginning and ending cables, the ones that run down to the points. Oh, make that three problems (and no one expects the Spanish Inquisition), because I have to take a 28 row repeat and figure out how to fit it into the space of four 44 row repeats. Guess how I spent my weekend.

If I've done the math right (and that's a big if), I can make this work if I start the single cables two rows earlier and end two row later than the pattern calls for (another big if). Multiple calculations and charts later, I thought I had it figured out. Note the verb there, "I thought." Past tense. Then I started knitting.

I thought wrong. More graph paper is called for. The only way to get to easy is to go through hard.