I love you, Cable Needle, but only by comparison

My sister made me a kick ass pair of wool fingerless gloves for Hanukkah that are so beautifully cabled and ribbed that I have pretty much taken them off only under threat of death or in the case of bathroom activities.

I loved them so much that I managed to convince myself that the pattern in Holiday Knits, for which I originally purchased the book after seeing them pop up on Lady Lino's blog all perfectly knitted up (duh, obviously), was within my grasp if I would just sack up and use the cable needles languishing in my needlecase (thank you, Caro - I love this thing lots).

So, after fortifying myself with holiday-shaped sugar, I sat down with a handful of #3 DPNs (they say to use #1's, but I only had #3's, so sue me) , green cashmere from the stash, a half dozen needle markers, an NFL game on the tube and the dreaded cable needle.

A few fated days and an entirely new vocabulary of four letter words later, the gloves materialized as though there was no struggle at all:


And now, just a short week or so later (after much blocking) I've almost forgotten how I swore (loudly and while flipping off my cable needle) that I would never make these ever again, and am almost ready to pull out the other cashmere stash balls and make up a pair for a friend of mine in chilly and faraway Arkansas as a thank you for the holiday hospitality.

Have I sustained a head injury? Perhaps. We'll see how those cables come out this time around. Either way, I will never hate the cable needle as much as the Grommet Puncher. No, not ever. That thing is fresh from the threshold of hell.