Not Much Knitting Happening

I've spent most of the day clearing out old paperwork and finishing our tax returns and my mom's. Go ahead, laugh! Like the shoemaker's children with no shoes, we two tax accountants don't get our personal tax returns done until the last minute. This is an annual occurrence that baffles both of us. Sigh.

So there's not much knitterly news. As I've mentioned, the second part of Cheryl Oberle's Highland Triangle Shawl is not going smoothly. I started a swatch on smooth yarn, rather than trying to find out the problem with 225 stitches per row. I put it aside Thursday in a fit of pique, and picked up the gent's scarf that is second on my 'To Be Done for Christmas' list. This is another seamen's scarf, this one in charcoal grey, some more of the now-discontinued Cascade Luna d'Oro wool/alpaca yarn. My first plan for the design didn't look as rich as I had hoped; not enough definition in the combination of cables. So I went back to Barbara Walker, and almost immediately found a Great Idea: Plaited Cables. I'm doing 2 columns of large cables, twisted every 4th row, and divided by a small cable, which is twisted every other row. The 'plaited' effect comes from moving the cable twist by 2 stitches every other time. I really like the effect. And it is so very easy; the entire WS row is just knitting as the stitches present themselves. The yarn is a bit darker than the photo; I lightened it to better show the cabling. {EDIT: the two cables don't match in the picture. This is due to one being more squashed than the other by my scanner. Honest!}

Side note: Is it just me or are cable needles inhabited by mischievous imps? It seems that my little wooden cable needle, about which I wrote last month - which works really well! - has jumped off my lap, my chair-side table, the knitting, etc., in any and all directions possible. This one is straight and not much longer than a toothpick, so there's no hook with which to dangle it from the knitting. Oh, well.

That's today's story, and I'm stopping with it.