 Hello and welcome to the Marley Bird YouTube channel brought to you by Red Heart Yarns. In this video I will show you how to make the exquisite capel throw. This is a beautiful throw pattern that is free and available over on the redheart.com website. You can find a link to everything you need regarding this pattern right down there in the video description box below. And while you're down there go ahead and smash that like button as my kids say to let me know you enjoyed this video. As you take a look at this pattern you can see that it is made up of cable stitches and garter stitch. If this is the first time you've ever done a cable don't worry I will walk you through step by step how to do this really simple four stitch cable. Sometimes it is called a four stitch back cable, a four stitch right cable and if I'm correct the pattern actually calls it a two by two right cable, two slash two RC. Don't worry all of that is going to be really clear here in just a minute. All I need you to do is download your pattern, grab some worsted weight yarn and some size nine needles and do a little test swatch with me so that you can learn how to make this really beautiful throughout. Before we jump into the pattern why don't I take a second and try and explain to you how cable stitches actually work. As you take a look down here at this cable you can see that it looks like when the cables are created the two stitches over here to the left jump up and over the two stitches over here on the right and that is exactly what is happening. If we have a total of four stitches that we are working with what happens is we will take the first two stitches and we decide if we want to move them to the front or if we want to move those to the back. For this pattern we move them to the back. So what we do is we take these two stitches, we move them to the back by placing them on a cable needle, we will knit the next two stitches in line on our left hand needle. So now they are over here correct. But now we still have these two stitches right here we need to deal with. So we take the two stitches that are on the cable needle, put them back over here on our left hand needle and knit them and now we have created our cable. It is that simple. We just changed the position of these four stitches. Can you see how my fingers on my left hand are actually on top of the fingers on my right hand? That is exactly what your stitches will do. If we were doing a cable that was a cable four stitch to the front or a cable four stitch left we would take these two stitches, move them to the front on a cable needle, knit these two and then bring these two into play. Do you see how my two fingers on my right hand are in front of my two fingers on my left hand? That is exactly what your stitches will do. That little motion of rearranging the stitches is all it takes to create a cable stitch. Now it will look a little messy to begin with because it takes you working a couple extra rows of stockinette to actually begin to see how the cable works. But it is just as simple as switching the two stitches place and that is what creates a really simple cable. To create this blanket you will begin by casting on 164 stitches and working in garter stitch for 14 rows. Once you do that you jump into the body of the blanket and that consists of making sure that you keep the first 12 stitches in stock or in garter stitch and then you begin dividing up the body into stockinette portion and a garter stitch portion. And on every 8th row you actually will do that cable stitch that we just talked about. Yes that is correct. You only cable on every 8th row. That's the beauty of cables. It doesn't mean that you have to cable every single row and it's really confusing. You just have one really big action row that you need to pay attention to and all the rest is just some knits and pearls. Really simple. So let me show you how to work an actual cable. Let's pull in a swatch that I have already created and what I have done on this swatch is I have done 4 stitches in garter stitch, 4 stitches in stockinette, 4 stitches in garter, 4 stitches in stockinette, 4 stitches in garter. I am keeping the outside stitches in garter stitch throughout this entire swatch that I am creating and I have gone ahead and added these stitch markers there because I am going to recommend that you do the same thing for your blanket on the outside of the 12 stitches. So you will knit 12 stitches, place a marker, do the body, place a marker, do 12 stitches. It will just help you keep track and know that those outside stitches are in garter stitch. Okay. So I am on my 8th row. It's time for me to do a cable and that's what I am going to do. So let's go ahead and knit over to where the stockinette portion is on my swatch because I am placing those cables on the stockinette stitches. When I get to my stitch marker, I simply just slip it and I'm right here. Now we are dealing with these 4 stitches, correct? So remember what I said, these 2 stitches here need to be held to the back so that we can get to these 2 stitches. You have a choice in what type of cable needle you want to use. You can see down here there are several different types of cable needles available to you. You find one that works great. I am just going to choose this little horse you look in one today and let's use that one. What I will do is I will take my cable needle and I will go into the first 2 stitches as if to purl. I like to take one at a time, that's my preference. And then I literally let those stitches just dangle in the back of my work. See how they are just hanging out right there on that cable needle. I now will go ahead and knit the next 2 stitches on my left hand needle. Because I want these 2 stitches to come in front of those 2 stitches I just placed on the cable needle. Now that those 2 stitches are in place, I can go ahead and come back here to the stitches from my cable needle, place them back on my left hand needle. And all I do now is knit those 2 stitches that are now on my left hand needle ready to play. See how it just changed their position? They just changed where they land on the actual needle. So that little crossover right there is actually your cable. See what I mean about it? Not looking like it's much right now. But as you begin to work along, you begin to see how you get these really great cable stitches. Let's do this again and this time I will hold my yarn in my left hand for those of you who are continental knitters. I'll get over here to where my stocking at portion is. And I'm going to take this time right now to point out something. I am a big fan of stitch markers. You all know that. And for me, when I am working in a stitch pattern where I know I have a definitive separation of stitches where I have garter stitch, I have stocking it, I like to use a stitch marker between those sections. Okay, so if you are like me and you get confused as you're working along either on the right side or the wrong side and you want to be able to keep track, don't hesitate to add a stitch marker every four stitches. So that way you know exactly when you're supposed to do a stocking at and when you're supposed to do garter stitch. You can have a stitch marker all the way down the row like several of them. Lord knows that I would if this was my blanket. So I want to just point that out that you could add a stitch marker right there. I'm over here to my four stitches for my cable. I need to move these two stitches to the back and knit those two stitches so I will grab my cable needle once again. Go into each stitch as if to purl. Let those hold to the back of my yarn and I want to make sure that my working yarn, when I go to knit my next two stitches, they aren't hindered by that cable needle. Okay, it's just hanging out there. I go ahead and knit the next two stitches from my left hand needle. Grab the two stitches. I moved, place them back onto my left hand needle and I simply knit these two stitches. I'm to the end of my row so I would continue on. What I want to point out here is that after you finish your cable row, the next several rows, you're just doing plain knitting, whether you're doing stocking at stitch or maybe you have stocking at stitch just for the cables and then you have garter stitch or reverse stocking at between the cables. The pattern can vary all over the place. The hard part is that you need to remember on what row you did your cables on so that when it's time to do another cable row, you have the exact distance between your cables. So for this example, this blanket, we have seven rows between each cable because we will cable on every eight row. That's where I add a stitch marker, a removable stitch marker on the side. It's really as simple as it gets. I get a removable stitch marker and these ones I happen to make if you want to link to that. I'm going to put my stitch marker here on the Marley Bird YouTube channel. I'll take my stitch marker and I literally put my stitch marker directly into the last stitch of my cable row. I don't mark the cable, I don't do anything else. I put it into that stitch and I just let it hang there. Now I have a point of reference to be able to go to and say, okay, so this row, this where my stitch marker is, that's where I did a cable. I can then count how many rows I've done until it's time to do another cable. You can see here, I have my stitch marker from the previous cable row and now I have my stitch marker from this cable row. This does not mean you have to have a series of stitch markers along the side to mark each cable row. You can move one stitch marker up every time you've done a cable row. It's totally up to you. That's how you can keep track of what cable row you are on. I also want to point out that on the wrong side for this blanket, you need to maintain pattern. This again is going to be where the stitch marker is really coming handy, so I'm going to show you how those work right now. It's time for me to knit across these first four stitches. If I were making the blanket, it would be knitting across 12 stitches. I'm getting to my marker here and that marker is a big signifier that says, okay, my outside stitches are done and I'm getting to the body where things need to change. When I'm on the wrong side, I see all of these pearls and it's really hard to distinguish which stitches are just pearls and which stitches I need to do garter stitch, right? I'm looking at pearls when I do garter stitch. These first four stitches need to be purled and that's what's written in the pattern. Let's purl these first four stitches. Three and four. If I were just getting in some sort of a rhythm or a habit, I would be like, okay, I'm just going to go ahead and purl down the row, what I'm not supposed to. The next four stitches need to be in garter stitch. This is where having that stitch marker between every four stitches can be a big signal for you to say, hey, wait, you just finished those four pearls. Now it's time to do garter stitch. Let's do four garter stitch. Once I finish those four stitches there, I could place another stitch marker and now I'm back to my four pearls. That will help me stay on track and specifically, it helps me stay on track on the wrong side. That way my right side maintains the stockinette stitch and the garter stitch as established. I am not afraid of using stitch markers to help me to every advantage I can get to help me stay on track because I know that I tend to start getting squirrely like where you think about something. It's like squirrel. The stitch markers are a big reminder to me, hey, wait a minute, something's changing here. You need to change with it and it just helps me stay on track. Now that we're looking at the right side, you can already see where the cables become a little bit more distinguished just by doing that simple wrong side row that we just completed. We're starting to see this beautiful cable stitch. You would continue on in pattern working your cable stitches separated by garter stitch until the pattern reaches the desired length. You finish off with 14 garter stitch rows, find out loosely and you have an exquisite cable throw. I hope you enjoyed this video and you'll come back here for more videos right here on the Marley Bird YouTube channel. You can find videos that will help you become a better knitter and crochet ear. I'm Marley Bird, proud spokesperson for Red Heart Yarns and don't forget to smash that like button. Thanks everybody. Now that you know how to create a cable, why not learn how to do cables without a cable needle? In the next video, I have available for you right here on the Marley Bird YouTube channel.