When I first started knitting I became curious about whether there was a way to combine cabling and stranded knitting, and what that would look like.
So back in 2011 I turned to google and tried to find combinations of cabling and fair isle, or cabling and intarsia or cabling and any color techniques in general. I looked and looked. Almost nothing came up, and what did come up didn’t interest me.There were cabled patterns where one cable was a different color, and the rest of the work was another like in the photo below. Or two-colored cables.
However I was interested in the combination of color and cables together to create new textures and patterns that didn’t really look like cables and didn’t really look like stranded knitting. I was convinced that by combining them, it would be possible to make something that looked totally new and different.
I eventually stumbled upon a photo of a hat that was somewhat similar to what I wanted. I looked at it and looked at it, and thought a little bit, and then wrote a pattern for a hat.
This was my bulls eye beanie pattern, or my first strabled hat pattern. (Stranded cables = strables)
Once I had made that, I wrote the pattern for my squiggle hat, which you can find here, if you are interested in seeing how exactly the stranded knitting works along with the cables.
And I also came up with a theoretical 2-colored honeycomb strabled pattern, which became the Williston hat, published by Juniper Moon Farms.
Since I wrote those patterns, there has been more activity online in the world of knitting. There are many more wonderful designers online, and a lot of really cool unique designs. And there are definitely other designers who have done it since. Here are some examples.
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/entwood
However this technique has yet to gain much momentum. It’s so neglected that it has yet to have an official name. I’ve decided to call it strabling for now. And if anyone knows any more cool examples of strabled patterns, leave a comment! I would love to see them.
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