Necessity is the mother of invention

We drove to Virginia this past weekend. Eight hours in the car each way. I can't do nothing for that many hours, so on the way out the door I grabbed some needles and a ball of yarn. I decided to make socks. It needed to be a simple design, because I didn't have a pattern to follow. I cast on and started the cuff. I quickly decided that it couldn't be too simple of a pattern, or I would get bored. I could have chosen to just do a rib pattern for the whole thing, but I'd done that before and I wanted to try something different.

I decided to run a simple cable down the center of the sock. The only problem was, I didn't have my cable needle with me. I thought the yarn might be stiff enough, or the stitches big enough (size 2 needles) to just take two stitches off the needle and let them sit there while I knit the next two stitches, but that didn't work well for me. So, here was my solution:

 When I reached the point where I needed to twist the stitches, I used the previous needle to hold them, then knit two, placed the held stitches back on the left needle, and knit them. The second cable was slightly easier because it came at the beginning of the needle. I did both cables by holding the stitches to the front, but it would be equally easy to do a cable with the stitches held to the back.

It worked like a charm.

Here is the completed sock (a long sock for a long trip):

I liked this method so much, I may never use my cable needle again. I doubt I was the first person to do this, but it was a new idea for me. Maybe you will like this trick, too.