Counting in Cables

There's a lot about cable knitting that can be confusing to knitters who are new to the process, but one of the things I find most often confuses new cablers is the number system. When you see a pattern instruction that says "knit 4," you know that means to knit the next 4 stitches.

But if you see an instruction that says "cable 4 back" or, more likely in the wild world of knitting abbreviations, C4B, that doesn't mean to slip 4 stitches and hold them to the back, then knit 4 stitches and work the 4 stitches off the cable needle. Instead, it means that the whole width of the cable is 4 stitches, so to work it you slip 2 stitches onto a cable needle, hold it in the back, knit the next 2 stitches, then knit the 2 from the cable needle.

This gives you a cute little cable that slants to the right (to get a left-slanting cable, you do a cable front). Both techniques are easy once you learn how, and you'll soon be making simple cable projects like this cabled headband and even more complex patterns like the cabled phone cozy.