Joining cables with kitchener

#1

Greetings

Project: Priest’s Stole –
I started each end and worked up, in order to keep symmetry in the cables and the stitches all facing the same direction. There are three cables across the pattern (4 st, 8 st, 24 st, 8 st, 4 st). The patterns contains 16 rows. Only the center cable (24 sts) uses all 16 rows, the others are repeats of 4 rows.

I plan to use Kitchener stitch to join the two pieces invisibly. Two questions for your wise counsel:

  1. On what row should i stop knitting and commence Kitchener? For example, should side A stop on Row 1, and side B stop on row 2? OR should side A and B both end on row 16 (actually 15 to be the wrong side)?

  2. Has anyone tried to use Kitchener on cables? advice? I presume to end both sides so that the Kitchener stitch is done on the wrong side will work best…

THANK YOU for your advice. I am working with Pure Silk (Debbie Bliss) and it splits and frays terribly – so i want to avoid errors, lest i make a mess of this gift.

#2

Yes, you can kitchener cables–do it between the cable twists.

the hard part isn’t the cable --its the switching from working the kitchener stitches in knit (the default) to working in purl (a frequent “background” stitch for a cable!

1 way to work it, is havea length of yarn, and some stitch holders handy.

starting at the cable (not the edge of the work!)

kitchen the knit on the knit side, (leave along tail)
pass tapestry needle to wrong side

turn the work to wrong side (the purl stitches either side of the cable are now expressed as knits)
now use the remaining yarn kitchener the background stitches
then use tail to work the kitchener on the other side of the cable

if the cable is wide, start in center and work out from center point… (turning work to wrong side/right side as needed)

#3

That is very helpful advice – it makes sense to work from the center out, and to switch sides for knit vs… purl.

There is a cable twist on every right side row, so I remain confused about which row to stop knitting and start to join with Kitchener.

Thank you thank you very much.