Fiber Arts Friday: Alpaca Cape, part 3

My Alpaca Cape is starting to get a bit unruly.  Measuring in at 36 inches by 36 inches and just over half-way there.  It's going to be luxurious when it's finished.  :-)

I'm using US6 needles which I did not realize until reading this Spinster Beth's post that US6 actually comes in two different sizes.... 4.0 mm and 4.25 mm.

So of course, I had the smaller size for all of my circs and the larger size for all of my dpns.  *shakes head*  But I've been to the LYS and have all of the smaller sizes for this project.

The cabling is in progress....

... and going well, but I had one cross in the wrong place.  So this spent about two weeks in time-out while I decided if I was ok with it as a design feature.

I decided I wasn't.  Then I spent some time thinking about ways to fix the cable.

I figured I could drop the stitches, but wasn't sure how to re-make the cross.  So I resigned myself to the worst case scenario of having to rip it back... I didn't want to, but I was ok if I had to.

So I took the project to Knit Night a couple of weeks ago and asked my Comadres for some advice.

We talked about different strategies and the pros and cons of each and decided the best course was to drop the 8 stitches and re-knit using smaller dpns.  One of my lovely friends even found this tutorial by the Yarn Harlot.  I do love my Comadres.  :-)

So here we go.... I have a table, headlamp, reading glasses, crochet hook, smaller-diameter-dpns, a clear head and coffee for courage.  ;-)

I knit up to the cable panel and removed the stitches from the left needle:

Then I dropped the 8-stitch panel 6 rows to the last cable-cross:

I put the loose stitches on my smaller diameter double-pointed needle and clipped the strands of yarn out of the way with a stitch marker:

Separating out each strand as I was ready to work with it, I re-knitted up to the correct location for the cable-cross:

 Completed the cable cross:

 Knit the remaining rows and returned to my needles:

I've fiddled with this some to try and stretch out the new stitches.  So now I just have to decide if the loose stitches on the left side of the cable panel will work out enough during blocking.

This process was much easier than I expected.

I've knit a couple of rows since fixing the cable, and the loose stitches seem less obvious, but I'm not certain if I'm happy yet.

I'm on ball #5 of 10.

Happy Fiber Arts Friday.