Cabled knitting (and an endorsement from Embi)

If I could by choice be the poster child for any product or consumer good (that is, if I were meritous or important enough in the first place), it would be Debbie Stoller's Stitch 'n Bitch: Superstar Knitting.  Really, I'd endorse any of Stoller's books, but this particular book (the latest to be published in the Stitch 'n Bitch line, in 2010) was an absolute treat to find on the shelves of my local library.  I must say that being a Stitch 'n Bitch fan, I'm slightly embarrassed that I didn't hear about this book sooner, but I'm not very keen with picking up on what is new the world over when it comes to consumer goods; that's the price that I must pay sometimes for frequenting the library often and the retail stores almost never.  I digress . . . 

In all of her books, Stoller has this delightful flair for describing how to execute stitches and techniques in fun and lucid language, all under wittily-named chapters and sub-headers and accompanied by uncluttered and cute (yes, cute) illustrations.  Stoller holds a Masters in psychobiology and a Ph.D in women pyschology, so naturally she makes efforts to briefly include the history of feminism and how women's crafts have evolved artistically and socially.  But the chapters don't read arduously like a history text book or a social science abstract: think mini-dissertation written in the vernacular of, say, a cool aunt or a hip, liberal arts college professor.

Superstar Knitting includes 41 classically modern patterns and tackles cables, lace, intarsia, and more cast-on and bind-off techniques than you may ever need or care to know.  And with Stoller's clear and natural voice, the complicated patterns all make sense!

I've been wanting to make a tam for a long time with this particular yarn that I've owned for an even longer time, but I wanted the hat to look like more thought was put into it than the rudimentary stockinette stitch (which is a clean, classy, and functional stitch, yes, but one day baby must learn how to frolic).  I thought that lace or cabling would make a hat look spiffy, and then reminded myself that lace is usually way too soft of an asthetic for my personal taste.  So I decided to give cabling a try . . . that is, if I could find the right pattern . . . and learn how to cable.

Enter Superstar Knitting and the "Gretel Tam" project!

The pattern follows a beautifully intwined lattice cable, which (Debbie Stoller was right!) is much easier to create than it leads on.  Cabling is also incredibly fun, and it was exciting to watch the cable form as I knit.

Thanks to my uniquely-shaped head, I tend to wear my Gretel Tam more like a Gretel Beret, but I love my new hat nonetheless.  And always a hooray for warm ears (which is why humans made clothes in the first place: to keep the naked body warm.  It's smart design that protects the body beautifully).