I have only just learned how to knit and purl less than a year and a half ago. I am ok, but not great - I don’t knit too tight anymore, and my tension is mostly consistent. This website has taught me a lot. I am learning to cable, but am having a problem. When I cable with cheap, ordinary yarn, my cables come out fine. I have another yarn that is lighter, thinner, and has a very slight fluffy texture that I am trying to cable. Everything is fine except the stitches to the left of the cables (one cable is left-sloping and the other is right-). The stitches to the immediate left of the cables are very loose, so loose they look like big holes. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Any ideas?
Big gaps when I cable
What size needles are you using? In my experience, thinner yarns don’t cable well if the needles are bigger. 
I am using US 8, same size as for the regular yarn. The rest of the work around the cables looks fine on an 8 and the fluffy yarns is just about the same size as the regular yarn which I also used an 8 on. It didn’t occur to me to try a smaller needle. I will try that. Thanks.
ok, now I am using size 6 needles. The holes are smaller, but definitely still there. Should I try an even smaller needle? Any ideas why the gaps are occuring only to the left of the cable no matter which direction my cable turns?
It’s not so much the cable, but switching from knit to purl. I make sure that I keep my yarn tight when I go from one type of stitch to another to try to avoid that kind of gap.
I don’t know if this will help you or not, but it might be a helpful read. It has good tips on how to fix up sloppy ribbing (which in essence, is not much different than cabling in that it is knit stitches followed by purl stitches) and she gives some really great tips to help make that transition between knits and purls look as tight and neat as possible. Hope it helps.
http://nonaknits.typepad.com/nonaknits/2004/12/a_bit_of_braggi.html