Yarn Ho! My yarn arrived from Elann. If Fuzzy Mabel is the place to go for luxury yarns (and they have their free shipping through August, so I would say it is),then Elann is the place to go for bargains. Instead of paying $12.50 a skein for the Rowan Denim at my local LYS, I paid $3.25 a skein for Den-M-Nit at Elann. (Thanks to Silkenshine for alerting me to it!) It will be hard to show my face at the shop, of course, but with a difference that enormous, I don't feel that I had a choice. Elann also included suggestions for calculating the difference in sizing when using denim yarns, bless their hearts.

I am making Brooklyn from Rowan's Denim People. You will I am sure have noticed that there is a tendency around the knitting blogs to make the same stuff. Everyone makes Clapotis, or Birch, or Sophie (hey, me too) or Rogue. The unfortunate side effect is that no one seems to have made Brooklyn. So I can't seem to find any hints or tips. I was hoping to be able to benefit from someone's experience with subbing yarns, but I guess I have to be a trailblazer. This picture is from the book. Brooklyn is the guy sweater. The girl sweater is Picot, which #2 daughter is making for herself from Plymouth Stone Cotton. She and her brother will be able to replicate this picture when we are both finished.

So here are the current knitting projects chez Fibermom. Picot is at the top. Once the picot edging is completed (and it is not that hard), this is an easy project. Brooklyn comes next. It is 1x1 ribbing at the moment, and then will be plain stockinette, so it qualifies as my Zombie Knitting piece. The Lotus shawl, in Cherry Tree Hill's Possum Laceweight, is at the bottom. That is my Epic Knitting piece. Needle sizes are 1, 2, and 3, from bottom to top. The #2 needles are antiques, with a steel cable. That detail is for the knitting history buffs among you.

The Den-M-Nit is a good crisp yarn, smooth and pleasant to work with. The Possum continues to feel like a good quality wool, though of course tiny lace knits up so slowly that it will be a while before I have an actual fabric to fondle.

Here is how we feel today. The heat is excessive. Only the cat is actually behaving like this, but this is how we all feel.

We have given in to the heat. We move slowly, if at all. Housework has dwindled to nearly nothing. Gardening, too.

We did go out for #2 daughter's birthday. We decided to go downtown for lunch and a preprandial stroll. We have a very picturesque downtown. Since we are the county seat, we have an arts center and a town center building and a fine little downtown section, even though we are a small town.

The gardens are especially nice. We actually win prizes for them, in those beautiful town competitions. Is it bragging, if I have absolutely no responsibility for any of it?

We moseyed around the square, stopping on the way to visit this place. #2 daughter used some birthday money to buy a couple of small items, at which point the pretty girl behind the counter said, "Is there anything else you'd like? That I could hook you up with? For free?" We were taken aback. She gave #2 daughter some extra goodies for a birthday gift. We attribute this to the adorableness of #1 son, who goes to school with her.

We had lunch at one of the downtown landmarks, and then it was time for a ritual drink. We went to this rather horrible bar and ordered a daiquiri for #2 daughter. She got to show her ID, and the bartender studied it with great seriousness. He brought her a frozen red thing and charged me $6. It tasted fairly appalling, and #2 daughter gave up on it after a couple of sips. Just as well, really, because she had to go to work. We were disappointed, though. I remember strawberry daiquiris with whipped cream at ladylike lunch places like The Berkeley. Sort of like dessert. Obviously, you don't go to a bar like this to get a daiquiri, even if they do put it on their banner. In our town, however, ladylike lunch places do not have licenses to serve mixed drinks. Not that #1 son would have wanted to go to a ladylike lunch place anyway. We went to the famous underground burger place. It is not underground in any political sense. It is just in a basement. You go downstairs to enter. But they do not serve daiquiris.

We reminisced with Dr. Drew about ordering Shirley Temples (ginger ale and grenadine) for the girls when they were little, and he told us about the Roy Rogers, which is Coke and grenadine or something like that. We threatened to get one for #1 son, but he vetoed the suggestion. He did ask for a sip of the supposedly strawberry daiquiri, but we had to refuse that.

I went home to can some chow chow and bake a birthday cake. #2 son had computer stuff to do, and of course had to catch up on his lying around, since he had made quite a few motions during the course of the day.

I finished the second bawk. It is supposed to be more manly than the first. I cannot hold myself up as an arbiter of manliness, as we know. The variegation (I have never cared for variegated yarn, I admit) turned into reasonably nice stripes.

And I have been holding out on you as to yarn. This is the other package from Fuzzy Mabel: Kokopelli in Turquoise Trail. It was a present for #2 daughter, so she had to see it before I posted it. However, I share it with you in case you might be considering using it. This is a very soft and luxurious yarn. It has a bit of a sheen, and a thick, handspun feel. It is destined to be felted, so I will show you how that works out. In the skein, though, it is lovely stuff.

And the last bit of knittting news is a FO from #2 daughter, who completed her felted bag. This is the Carried Away bag from Simple Knits for Sophisticated Living. She used Lamb's Pride worsted for the bag, and Frisky for the straps, which she left unfelted. This is the third felted bag we've done this summer, between us, and there is one more planned -- this same bag, with the horizontal-to-vertical ratio reversed, in the Kokopelli. This may satisfy our felted bag desires, but maybe not. It's hard to stop once you get started.

We had the first really busy day of the season (besides the fair, of course) yesterday, and the Poster Queen had the day off, so I was working very hard. Then I got a call to say that Dr. Drew had shown up for a visit ( a surprise for Pokey's birthday). So it was a fun day.

At the gym, I read about an interesting kind of brain damage. In some cases, when the corpus callosum is damaged, people become petrified by their brain's inability to make up its mind, as it were. The left hemisphere has an impulse to do something, and the right hemisphere has an impulse to do something else. In normal brains, this is okay, The two hemispheres can communicate, and we decide which to do, or choose to do the two things in a given order. In these brain-damaged individuals, however, the conflict leads to paralysis. One man froze on a staircase for ten to twenty minutes at a time, waiting for his brain to work things out and begin sending messages to his body again.

Naturally, this makes me think of WIPs. I know this was your first thought, too.

Some WIPs (works in progress) become UFOs (unfinished objects) through failure to follow through. I have some of those, and of course #1 son's celtic cross quilt is on the verge. But we won't speak of that.

In general, though, I don't care to have a lot of WIPs. There are plenty of knitters on the web who are working on five or six projects at once -- Dweezy does this, for example, and it seems to work for him. For me, though, I think it would end up being like the brain-damaged individuals. I would be so paralyzed with indecision over which one to work on that I wouldn't do any of them.

So when I have multiple WIPs, it is usually just because they are -- or I can persuade myself that they are -- in completely separate categories.

I often have a novel and a work of nonfiction that I am reading at the same time. If I read two novels at once, I might mix up the characters, or find it hard to shift from one imaginary world to the other. But I can read Lolita in one spot and Sensible Chic in another, since they are entirely different.

Just so, it doesn't bother me to have the Windblown Shadows quilt, #2 daughter's skirt, the Lotus shawl, and a bawk all going at once. Quilting is different from sewing clothing. Both are different from complex knitting like the shawl, and the shawl is itself different from simple knitting like the bawk. Even if I make the next bawk complex, sport or worsted weight cables will be distinctly different from lace.

This may not be completely convincing. Allow me, then, to offer you Julie Theaker's completely convincing argument for having two quite different knitting projects going at once.

Theaker distinguishes between Epic Knitting -- things like a lace shawl on #1 needles or an 18-color traditional Fair Isle sweater -- and Zombie Knitting, which covers all that unshaped stockinette.

So last night while #1 son and I were having a quiet and companionable evening, he vanquishing things in Warcraft and I knitting, I got a few more rows done on the Lotus shawl. Once my husband and Dr. Drew and Pokey returned and I became engaged in attacking Dr. Drew's politics (sorry about that), I switched to the 2x2 ribbing of the bawk. This works well. I can have Zombie knitting for knitting while reading or during really interesting conversations, and Epic knitting for times when I can give it my full attention.

If you have a wider emotional range than that, you might need more WIPs. Maybe that explains the sheer number of WIPs some knitters juggle. There could be color work for happy occasions, steel-gray Ganseys for coping with depression and disappointment, chunky wool garter stitch afghans for angry moods...

Hey, it is Chanthaboune's 21st birthday. Go wish her Happy Birthday, okay?

Yarn Ho! I received the possum fur yarn from Fuzzy Mabel. Let me say that I had a great experience with them. They shipped my order in two packages for speed, even though it was free freight. They were accurate and quick, and they wrapped the yarn in pretty tissue paper, so they get lots of points.

This is not, I hasten to add, American opossum fur. That might be nice stuff, for all I know, but frankly they seem too rat-like for me to want to knit with their fur. This is the New Zealand possum, which has fur of the same molecular structure as a polar bear,  and is a pest on the order of our kudzu, so we do not have to feel bad about using their fur. (Indeed, we are assured that "every possum fur product you buy helps to protect the rain forest [and] the ozone layer.") This means that the yarn -- Possum Lace from Cherry Tree Hill, 40% wool, 40% possum, 20% silk -- is a sort of super-fiber that allows you to swan around on cool evenings feeling toasty while looking nice in your lace shawl.

It does not, at first blush, seem like a super fiber. It seems like a nice laceweight wool. But we will see. If you are considering this yarn, let me warn you about the colors, as I was warned. The fur does not take dye well, apparently, and the colors end up uneven and showing some brown. I chose "slate," a useful gray, rather than a light or bright color. There is definitely unevennesss in the color, but it does not seem a negative with this shade.

If you care to, you can look at Silkenshine's comment on yesterday's post and find a link to see shawls made on #50 needles. The picture above is four rows of a shawl made on #1 needles. Knitting is indeed versatile.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been searching for a super shawl pattern to go with the super yarn, but I have not found exactly what I wanted. I have been like the customer yesterday who, rejecting all three dozen planbooks in the store, assured us that she "just can't think horizontally." I found a lovely online pattern, the Leaves and Flowers Shawl, which is almost what I was looking for, but not exactly. So I am going with my back-up plan, a rectangular stole in Lotus stitch (from The Pattern Library Traditional Knitting). Here are the factors that led to this decision:

* The yarn arrived and I want to knit with it, so there is no more time for shilly-shallying.

* The Leaves and Flowers Shawl calls for slightly more yardage than I have. The gauge is larger, so it would probably work out just fine, but the possibility of running out of yarn would add undesirable stress to the knitting experience. The thought of frogging lace is one that will make the strongest knitter quail. With a stole, you can just quit when you run out of yarn, and no harm done.

* Last month, I predicted that fall fashions this year would include a romantic trend. The news from the runways shows that I was correct, so I might well find that I could use more than one lace shawl. (Here I am pretending that I care about fashion. I don't. However, I do always get a kick out of correctly predicting retail trends.) The stole can be a run-up to a more complex shawl.

* The number of knitting books I have been buying in the course of my unsuccessful pattern search is beginning to be alarming. I had better quit.

#1 son is not a licensed driver, by the way. He is not despondent, though, and is intending to practice more and try again.

#1 son drove us around yesterday. He is hoping to take his driving test today. We picked up #2 son at the dorm, went out for an overpriced and badly cooked breakfast, and picked up the essentials of dorm life: shower shoes, Cheese Doodles, candy, batteries, cold cereal. #2 daughter said this was what her grocery shopping always looked like. I believe her.

The females in the family went to church. The males cannot be persuaded to do so, even to hear #2 daughter's solo, which was excellent. The pastor said,"Every time I hear her sing, I feel like I'm fallin' in love." One of the ladies came up after the service and said she felt the same way. Next week we are singing a Sally DeFord duet. We'll see whether anyone else falls in love. People enjoy my singing, but I do not think it causes them to fall in love. This could be a useful talent for a girl who intends to sing professionally. Even if listeners don't feel like falling in love with her in particular, the feeling of falling in love is such a pleasant one that it would probably guarantee album sales.

The sermon was excellent. The topic was the problem of evil, always a tricky one. The pastor said that good and evil are so closely intertwined that you could not eradicate evil without eradicating good. Arranging that humans would no longer have the capacity for impulses toward bad behavior would keep them from having impulses toward good behavior.

Eddie Izzard does a bit on evil among herbivores. An evil giraffe -- what could it do? "I am eating all the leaves, so the other giraffes will get none, and starve. Muah ha ha." You see his point. And yet, if there are no evil giraffes, there also are no noble, self-sacrificing giraffes.

Izzard also has a bit on walking into a shop wearing make-up, and the shopkeeper's reaction. I don't think he has considered it from the shopkeeper's point of view. He is assuming that the shopkeeper's dismay is based on prejudice. I think, from my own experience, that it is more likely to be dismay at the etiquette problem of how to address the customer. I have had several customers of whose gender I was not certain. Including a couple who looked like men in make-up. You stand there trying to guess, knowing that at some point you will have to say "Ma'am " or "Sir." I'm not old enough to call other adults "dear," so it's either take the plunge or come up with some kind of circumlocution that allows me to talk to them without committing myself. I bet I have a dismayed look on my face.

Even outside the shop, there is a little bit of an etiquette question. A friend and I were outside the arts center once (after a Bobby McFerrin workshop -- it was great) and a man dressed up as a woman came up to ask for directions. He had done such a good job of dressing up. Way better than I had. But he was obviously a man. We wanted to compliment him on his costume, but there was always the possibility that he was imagining that he actually looked like a woman. I mean, if you see someone dressed up as a mermaid, you can admire the costume, can't you? But a man dressed up as a woman -- it is conceivable that he thinks he is fooling people. A compliment might shatter that illusion.

And, as with the customers of uncertain gender, it could actually be a woman. Treating her as though she were a man in drag would be worse than enquiring after a baby's due date and then discovering that the woman was not pregnant.

But I digress.

It was wonderful to see #2 son. He is having a good time and making friends. This week they will begin building their "primitive hut." He is planning a really cool one. We gave him a good home-cooked meal and took him back to the dorm. At that point it was so hot that we could do nothing but loll around for the rest of the afternoon and evening. That is our excuse, at least. Summer lethargy is a habit of ours.

The second bawk continues. I am using the online pattern, but I decided to hasten the decreases at the neck by switching to smaller needles. DPNs, while I was at it. These are bamboo, and they have a nice, smooth feel. I usually use steel, and am not excited enough about these to want to replace all my needles, but they are very pleasant to work with.

Going from #5 needles to #2 needles will automatically make your knitting smaller. For the bawk, I want a nice tight turtleneck collar, without disturbing the pattern. This does it handily. You can do this to provide waist shaping, too, on patterns that don't have it, or to shape a sleeve slightly more than the pattern calls for. This is another reason that it's worth having needles in lots of sizes. I do not , however, have any monstrously huge needles like the ones you can see today over at Silkenshine's xanga. You should check those out. You would not have to stab people with those, should you decide to be violent with your knitting needles on an airplane some day, because they could be used as a club.

We went to the market, where things are in full swing. We loaded up with peaches, berries, squash, melon, beans, herbs, and peppers. We ran into The Empress and That Man, buying lots of tomatoes for canning, and a neighbor who has a sensible approach: go all the way around the square first, and then go back and take the best on offer. We just start at one side and keep buying until there are no more dollar bills left in our jeans. This works well if a) you have a sensible number of dollars in your jeans to start with, and b) you begin at a different spot each week, so that you will eventually get around to everyone.

Then it occurred to #1 son that he had seen a pattern he liked at the LYS the previous week. It was, he said, on a poster between the two rooms. And no, he did not care to come along to find it again.

So I went to the LYS myself and went to the corridor between the two rooms, and found -- nothing. Nothing in the way of a poster, at least. The kind ladies helped me search, and at last it struck one of them that there was a poster for Rowan Denim People up somewhere -- and there I was with another knitting book. Another knitting book which does not contain a shawl. This is becoming alarming. I did not actually need any more knitting books -- except for one with the perfect shawl pattern in it.

Oh, I asked the ladies for a shawl pattern. I described, inarticulately, what I wanted, and they searched. I waved my hands to demonstrate the way I wanted the pattern to go in the back without saying "with cool geometry" out loud, because I do have some sense of normalcy, really I do. They showed me patterns and I said things like, "No, I want a really complicated one" and they said things like, "More complicated than this?" and I got to be on the other side of the transaction. Just as I find myself thinking, "It's a planbook, for heaven's sake, just pick one!" these ladies were doubtless thinking, "We've shown you every shawl pattern in the store, for heaven's sake!"

"I'm being unreasonable," I assured them. "Well," they said, "You have a right to be unreasonable." I thought that was very nice of them.

So I bought the book, but the yarn --- we are talking about 17 balls of a $12.50 a ball yarn. I wanted to make sure that I had the right thing, exactly. So I brought the book home, and #1 son says yes, the Brooklyn sweater is exactly what he wants. He will have it for Christmas.

Has anyone out there ever successfully subbed any other yarn for the fiendishly expensive Rowan Denim?

The book has many very cool designs. I was particularly pleased with the men's designs, because you know my guys do not want to look like Mr. Rogers. They are clear, the photographs are well done, and there are schematics and charts when appropriate. I think I will enjoy using the book. However, as I mentioned in this morning's post, this yarn shrinks quite a bit vertically, and not at all horizontally, and all the patterns are adjusted for that shrinkage. So I now have two sweaters (Brooklyn from Denim People and Shaped Denim Jacket from Celtic Knits) designed to be made in this ruinously expensive and eccentric yarn. [I've come back to report that I found this yarn for sale online at half what the LYS is charging for it, so I am going to quit whining about it. However, I am still interested to know whether there are good subs for it.]

So I ask again -- any substitute suggestions?

So when I at last got home from all my errands, I did a bit of scrubbing, and then settled down with the bawk and Olivia Joules. It is too hot to consider anything more active than that. This morning there were people out running, doing yard work, and such, but now the streets are empty. Olivia Joules is a cross between James Bond and Vogue magazine, which is not a bad cross for a hot day. You get your terrorists, and your high fashion and cute guys.

The bawk is going well -- I thought. I like the way it is striping, I like the springiness of the ribbing and the self-effacing little cable. Then #2 daughter said, "Who on earth are you going to give that to?" Now it is having self-esteem issues. No, not really. It is only yarn. Its feelings cannot be hurt. What's more, it remembers, in its little woolen heart, how its sister skeins became Hopkins, and it knows that it has its own charm.

In the course of my search for a shawl, I have encountered some other cool knitting books. No shawls in them. But this one does contain sweaters, socks, hats, and scarves for adults and children.

Since it is a Debbie Bliss book, you know that it has classic designs with a bit of flair, that it is beautifully photographed, and that the directions will be accurate.

This does not mean that it has no flaws. Now that I have been knitting from some more modern books, I notice the lack of charts and schematics. I grew up knitting without them, so I can, but it is nice to have them, especially since the photos in Celtic Knits are often so artful that you cannot actually tell what the sweater looks like. You have to read through the pattern to determine whether it has a set-in sleeve or what sort of shaping it uses. There are also patterns designed for Bliss's Denim yarns, which are specially sized to accomodate the kind of shrinkage expected of that yarn. These patterns will need adjustment if they are to be made in another yarn. And, speaking of adjustment, some of the designs are given in only one size. Among the women's sweaters, only one is given in a size larger than 36".

There are complex Arans, traditional Fair Isle designs, and a simple lace shawl. There are shaped jackets, a pretty ballerina-style wrap top, a simple lace scarf, and a charming child-sized smock. I expect to make several of these designs.

Since I have been at xanga for a year, I am amusing myself by looking each day at what I wrote a year ago. I am easily amused. A year ago today, I wrote about the Homeland Security website. Yesterday, the news I was reading directed me to the newest version of that site, and I have to say that things have not improved one bit.

We all have our own ideas about how to respond to terrorism. This is the official word from the White House. It intends to persuade us that the United States is doing useful things about terrorism, and you might find it convincing if you do not, as I do, find yourself looking at item after item and thinking, "Well, that's a lie." It does include lots of color words. There is someone involved in the whole War on Terrorism thing in Washington who is really into colors. I bet that originally there were exciting color words involved -- the Ecru Revolution, the Chartreuse Level of preparedness -- but the other guys said, "Hell, we can't talk about a Fuschia Alert!" and the color fanatic had to accept a very limited palette.  This is the official word on preparedness. It tells you to have a plan (though not what sort of plan or how to come up with one) and to do some shopping, and also how nervous you ought to be with different colored warnings.  Here you will find T-shirts commemorating the London bombings with expressions of quiet courage rather than, say, mad panicky jingoism or despair. If shopping makes you feel safe from terrorism, then you could do worse than shopping for these T-shirts.

I do see the problem for the planners. Even apart from the fact that whole "War on Terror" is a sham, it is hard to come up with a good plan. There you are, sitting around the table with your family, trying to review your anti-terrorism plan since it is an Orange day -- and what do you say? "If you are going to work, minding your own business, and someone blows up the subway..." See? It's not like a fire. You can't really make good plans for dealing with the unpredictable behavior of the deranged. So Homeland Security says, "Make a plan. No, we don't know what kind of plan. We have no advice for you, except to buy duct tape."

I continue to search for my next project,  even as I continue work on the current bawk and on the quilt. I am leaning toward a scarf -- the lace triangle kind, beginning at the neck and shaping with cool geometry at the center. I do not know the trick of this, and have not been able to find an explanation of it anywhere. Nor have I been able to find such a pattern in any of the books or magazines in the LYS or the book shops, either. I am still looking.

As I look, though, I am finding some other interesting knitting books, one of which is Teen Knitting Club. I brought it into the store along with Melanie Falick's excellent Kids Knitting. Even if you aren't a kid, you might like these books.

Teen Knitting Club is directed at teens, with teen models (some in braces, and all looking their ages, rather than the teen models we see all the time pretending to be 30) and sage advice about setting up a knitting club at school or dorm. But it also has very good knitting instructions. It has patterns for all the trendy stuff -- scarves, cell phone cozies, hats, tanks, etc. And the thing I like most about it: it leads toward independent knitting. It points out that a scarf is a rectangle, that a cell phone cozy is a rectangle (a scarf, they remind the reader) folded in half, and a tote bag is a really big cell phone cozy -- another rectangle. They explain how to measure gauge and calculate how many stitches to cast on for a hat that fits. They examine the nature of different kinds of yarn and explain why it matters.

In a day when people boldly publish "patterns" consisting of simple math and popular stitches, and pretend that they can hold copyright on the construction of a garter stitch rectangle, it is nice to see a book presenting actual knitting knowledge in a form that will be accessible and appealing to young knitters, teens or not.

On the lace shawl front, I did find this free pattern for a shawl of the kind I am seeking, from blogger Kirsten Kruse, who does beautiful knitting and quilting. It is not exactly what I had in mind, but I may make it, or at least start it, in order to learn the geometry trick. And once it is begun, I may fall in love with it. You know how that is. I am thinking it could be pretty in the Plymouth Stone Cotton we have hanging around the house waiting in vain to become NBaTs. Rather a case of moose lace, perhaps, but I like a nice moose lace in the fall.

I also like this not-free pattern for a Rogue-related hat from the designer of the gorgeous Rogue sweater. Kirsten made it and posted the link, which was nice of her. I have seen and admired the cap elsewhere, but the bloggers did not post the link, so I was left wondering. One of the Yarn Ho!s made Rogue last year, but I am embarrassed to say I cannot recall who it was. This cap uses the Rogue sleeve cables. It is clearly not a lacy triangular scarf, though it does feature cool geometry.

Is some geometry really cooler than others? Can geometry be divided out into cool and not-cool geometry? Can the word even be used in that way? I am not certain.

We had a call from #2 son last night after choir practice. He is having a good time, but it would be better, he felt, if there were less working and more playing. I daresay we've all felt like that at some point.

There was a whole lot of playing at work yesterday, but it was still quite hard work. It was really, really crowded. Some of you live in places where it always looks like this, but I assure you that we were breaking the fire code. If, that is, you can break a code. I am not sure. In any case, I was the one flitting about helping people find things and collecting slips for door prize drawings and bringing water to the vendors and so on, and I felt like Indiana Jones making his way through a souk, if souk is what I mean. And it might not be. I can't help but feel that there ought to be an "h" in it somewhere.

It was fun. People were catching up with old friends, and nearly all of my kids' former teachers were there, so I got to do a lot of "My, how you've grown!" kinds of conversations, too. Definitely a party atmosphere. There was, as there always is in any group of educators, a certain amount of moaning over No Child Left Behind, surely the most ill-considered piece of legislation since Prohibition. But overall, I think a good time was had by all.

Here is a large picture of the second bawk. I am using a meld of the two patterns I've mentioned before. I am giving you a big picture in hopes that you will be able to see the cable.

One of my bad habits is that of deciding what I am doing as the project goes along, instead of planning it properly beforehand. I will not give you any justifications of this. If you share this bad habit, then you already have justifications on tap. If you do not share it, then you will not be convinced.

Be that as it may, my decision to make this bawk with a main pattern of 2x2 rib is resulting in a nice springy fabric. But the original bawk pattern calls for a 3x3 cable. Clearly, a 2x2 rib cannot segue smoothly into a 3x3 cable. But you can do what I did. You can pick out six stitches -- k2, p2, k2 -- for your cable. Then you put the first two k stitches on your cabling needle and hold it in front, p1, and k the two off the cabling needle. Put the remaining purl stitch on the cabling needle, hold it in back, k 2, and purl the stitch off the cabling needle. You will now have p1, k4, p1 in place of the six original stitches. On a ground of 2x2 rib, it will be p3, k4, p3.

Cable the four knit stitches in the usual way. The next time you get to the cable section, reverse the process I just described to get back to the k2, p2, k2. That is, hold the purl stitch before the cable to the back of the work, knit 2, and purl the stich off the cabling needle. Then hold the next two knit stitches in front and p1, then knit the two stitches off the cabling needle. Do six rows in 2x2 ribbing and start over.

The result is a nice fat little cable. I hope that clicking on the picture will allow you to see it clearly, in spite of the variegated yarn. I have not seen it collected anywhere, so I do not know its name, but it will allow you to put a 3x3 cable into 2x2 ribbing, if you should ever want to do a daft thing like that.

You can see that I am doing this on circular needles. If you are working on the flat, the directions will be the same, but referring just to the knit side. Whenever you are working on the flat with cables, the purl side is knitted as presented -- that is, you knit all the k stitches and purl all the ps. Unless you are doing Viking knitting, in which case you haul out your bronze helmet (no horns, please -- that was the Celts), grit your teeth, and follow the chart. I did my cable in successive rows, without plain rows in between, to make it look more like an ordinary 3x3 cable. If you work it on the flat, it will look more like a lozenge cable.