Crochet cables

I have become slightly obsessed with crocheted cables. I never knew it was possible when I started crochet. Cables are really cool and I never thought I’d be able to make them. Most crocheted cables look somewhat different to knit ones. Here are my first bits:

Pic is sideways.

On the left is a pair of twisted cables on their side. The right is honeycomb. Both of these patterns were in a magazine (Interweave Crochet winter 2010) whose article about cables really started me down this route.

I had a good old poke about in the patterns section of Ravelry 🙂 looking for more cables, as well as sticking my head into the knit patterns because there are some beautiful and inspiring designs there. I admired this one especially. I love that collar! And because the cable is so big I could figure out how it worked after looking at it long enough. It is called a staghorn and I haven’t yet found a crocheted version, so I decided to try and figure one out myself.

Fairly ambitious for my second cable ever! My first swatch was not great, but helped me understand it better. My second one is the brown one and my third the heather coloured one:

Experimental staghorn cables

Each row is different as I try different things to get it how I want!

Once I was happy with it, I wanted to find a project to use it in. But first I got distracted by a challenge to figure out a DNA cable:

Crocheted DNA cable 🙂

That was fun 😀 I don’t think it is perfect, the cross-bonds could be more pronounced, but it is identifiable!

Then I found an ideal project to use my staghorn, chunky cabled legwarmers 🙂 It is a simple enough idea, just a rectangle with buttons. It took me a while to measure and chart a pattern for myself, and I have now done 6 rows!

Not a good pic!

It has a twist, the staghorn, another twist, honeycomb and a third twist, then the buttons. The pic doesn’t show it well at all! I was quite annoyed to discover that I made an error in the chart and the twists flanking the staghorn go the other way than what I had planned; instead of echoing the shape they oppose it. I considered frogging (ripping it back to correct the error) but I had only just got the first half of row 5 right after 3 attempts!

I still want to see how it looks the way I wanted. So I shall do this one how it is and then the other one the way I wanted to and I don’t care if they are odd! Most people probably won’t notice and hey I used to wear odd socks all the time!

I got some buttons today for them. I need 8 and I didn’t have 8 the same in a colour that worked. But now I do 🙂

Ironically, although I still want to finish them, I am excited today because I devised a totally new way to crochet cables that look more like knit! I need to develop the idea, but my trials so far are working well.

Crochet cables are cool 😀