A Caliper Cable is a variation on the Double Cable (two cables next to one another that mirror each other). To create this cable, you work a pair of yarn overs; you drop them off the needle on a subsequent row or round; and you pick up the dropped stitch a few stitches over, creating an elongated and very elegant cable. The result is a recessed vertical line, flanked by a pair of simple upside-down v-shaped cables. Very pretty! Here’s our Caliper Cable tutorial, where we show you how to do it.

Click To See Video Transcript

I am going to show you a few techniques used to make the Jasmine Scarf. I have a small swatch here with just a single repeat right in the middle. I’m going to start on the wrong side for the wrong-side row. The first thing you do is purl six stitches, so let’s do that real quick. After you purl these six stitches, the pattern says to purl one, wrapping the yarn twice. Is that six? Two, four, six, yes. So to do that, you purl normally, wrap it once and then you just wrap it one more time, just like that. Then the pattern tells you to purl eight. So we’re going to do that…two…eight. All right, and then once again, it says purl one, wrapping the yarn twice. Here’s that step again: wrap it once, wrap it twice. 

Since I only have a single repeat on my swatch, I’m going to go ahead and just purl to the end of my row now. On the right side, you start out by knitting six stitches, so we’ll do that: one, two…Once you’ve knit those six stitches, you’re going to come to your twice-wrapped stitch. So what you’re going to do is just let that stitch fall off the tip of this needle to the front of your work, just like that. Then you’re going to knit four. Once you’ve knit four, you’re going to look for that dropped stitch and pick it up with your left needle and then knit it…Like that. 

Then you slip the next four stitches, purlwise, keeping your working yarn in the back. So that’s one, two, three, four. At this point, you reach your next twice wrapped stitch. Once again, we’re going to just let it fall off the tip of the needle to the front of the work. Now we’re going to slip those same four stitches back over to the left. We’re going to pick up the dropped stitch with your right needle and put it on your tip of your left needle, and now it’s ready to knit. There we go. Just like that. Once again, I just have one repeat on my swatch, so I’m going to go ahead and knit to the end of my row. That’s all I’ve got to show you today for the Jasmine Scarf.

Our Jasmine Scarf is a free pattern that offers lots of practice with Caliper Cables! For this scarf, we placed Caliper Cables in rapid succession, which is referred to as Elongated-Stitch Herringbone.

Caliper Cable | Purl Soho

And to learn more about Caliper Cables, check out Barbara G. Walkers’s Charted Knitting Designs: A Third Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

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