Husband Sweater Planning

I've started the design process for my husband's sweater. I have the yarn (peer gynt color 2543- light brown) and I have a basic idea of what kind of sweater I'm making (something cabled). But I've been having a really hard time picking cable patterns. I've been looking at just about every sweater I can find (Ravelry has been great for this- it's just as good, and just as much of a time-suck as everyone says it is) and nothing really struck me. Then, today, I was at our local book store. They have a much better knitting book selection than you might expect- better than our LYS. While I was browsing, I saw Viking Patterns For Knitting by Elsebeth Lavold. Wow. I'm not sure why I wasn't interested in this book when it first came out, but it was exactly what I was looking for. It has lots of beautiful cables that will be perfect for this sweater. The Lillbjars border and braided Lillbjars border are very likely to end up in the final sweater.

Both of these cables (like most of the cables in the book) are open/close loop designs. But the way the loops are opened and closed is different from how I've done it in the past. Both Alice Starmore and Girl From Auntie use one method, and this book uses another. What's interesting, is that I think both methods are useful. But they each serve a different purpose. Compare a cable knit using the first method to a cable knit using this new method. The first method produces a much more rounded shape, while the new method produces a more pointed loop.

In some patterns from the Viking Patterns for Knitting book, I really like the pointed loop that is produced by Lavold's increase/decrease method. In others, I think the old method would look better. In some cases, I think a combination of the two methods might look best (open the loops in one way, close them in another). I'm off to knit these cables a couple of different ways to see how I think they'll look best.