Cables and the Longest Night

Twelve panels and two and a half months later, I have finished the sampler scarf. I ended with cables, using Isela Phelps's instructions. Except for the first two links. For those, I followed the example of another loom knitter and wrapped the pegs an extra turn each just before the stitches are swapped. With my worsted weight yarn and the small gauge loom I used, I think that was one turn too many. The last two links near the end of the scarf are better porportioned, and they're the ones where I followed the instructions exactly.

Even so, I've seen needle knit cables in which the links aren't long strands but are strings of knit stitches. So I've been turning around in my head a way to replicate that. I'll have to sit down and test my theory sometime after Christmas. Of course, someone has probably already worked out the kinks, as it were, in my mental math, but I don't know about it yet.

Winter is now official. Tonight will be the longest night on the calendar before we creep back into the light. Last night I attended a concert by the Appalachian Christmas Quartet, a group of five musicians who have been cobbling together their own versions of carols and hymns for the last ten Christmas seasons. Next year they'll be in the Chicago area. Visit their site. Keep tabs on their plans for next year; and if you'll be in Chicago next December, go listen to them. They're a hoot. And very good.

By the way, my candy making foray was a success. If just barely. I've made only the truffles so far, but the recipe didn't turn out quite right, so I had to do some emergency confectionarying. (Is that a word?) In the end I made Double Dipped Truffles. Quite decadent, with three kinds of chocolate and a gooey caramel center. Mmmmm. Oh, and I learned how to dip them without sticking them with a toothpick, taking the advice of a 1915 cookbook to use a fork to dip them and the side of a toothpick to slide the truffle off the fork. I made almost a gross of truffles.

Merry Christmas, everyone.