So, if you work a short row slide by working very short rows back and forth, increasing on the right and decreasing on the left, and you insert i-cords the same way, what about working a cable that way?
This is standardized testing week at our homeschool coop, and since I planned around the inevitable exhaustion of weird days, I had time to sit down with a swatch and notebook and figure it out. I need to cook easy suppers more often.
First I made a ruler out of a small cable swatch and laid it over a stockinette swatch to see how the rows and stitches worked out. I needed 4 rows for every 3 stitches, so once I had my stockinette swatch long enough for a base worked a purl row of p3, Increase. I used lifted increases.
So far making small swatches and using them as rulers is working well for me when I want to see how different stitches and patterns line up, I recommend it! You can use the evenly spaced increase formula for it to get nice numbers.
Then I cast on 7 stitches with a backward thumb loop and turned (a cable cast on works too, any single thread cast on). I worked the cable as follows:
Set up row (WS) (P3, lifted increase) across. Cast on 7 sts with backward thumb cast on
Row 1: Sl 2 wyib, k4, p3tog, turn.
Row 2: Sl1 wyib, p4, (k1, p1 in the same st) turn.
Row 3: Sl1 wyib, p1, 2/2 cable, p3tog, turn.
Row 4: Sl1 wyib, p4, k1, lifted increase purl, turn.
Row 5: Sl1 wyif, p1, k4, p3tog, turn.
Row 6: Sl1 wyib, p4, k1, lifted increase purl, turn.
Repeat Rows 3-6 across, ending on row 5. Bind off 6 sts.
P3, lifted increase purl across.
If this were worked in the round, you could come back and sew the cast on and bind off together, think ahead and cast on provisionally so you could 3 needle bind off the cable together, or come back and graft it.
Is this fiddlier than sewing a cable strip in place? I’m for fewer ends to weave in myself! I tried making a sample in color shifting yarn, and the changes in the color going sideways over vertical changes was cool, but my yarn was fuzzy and hard to photograph clearly. Wouldn’t this look interesting across the top of a sock?