Cables? Cables are gorgeous but sneaky! They will shrink your fabric. There’s a video version of this over here, should you wish to watch me flop them around and point to things and listen to me talk.

Now, admittedly this is a particularly dramatic example! (The cabled panel and the ribbed panel are the same number of stitches, but the ribbed one is nearly twice as wide.) But all cables will shrink your fabric at least a little.

The bigger the cables and the more densely they’re packed, the more they’ll shrink your fabric. So a four by four cable will shrink it more than a two by two cable. And cables that happen every other row will shrink it more than cables that happen every third or fifth or seventh row. And cables that are stacked up right next to each other will shrink it more than cables that are scattered about with lots of uncabled space between them.

So this particular bit of cabling (where you’ve got the whole stretch cabled and those cables are worked on every other row) will really tighten things up, while a different cabled pattern wouldn’t be nearly so dramatic.

Now, don’t fret, this is all already accounted for in the sizing. That’s why the two hats in the pattern have two different size charts. One is almost completely covered in cables, while the other one is only about half covered in cables. So one has twice as much cable shrinkage as the other, and thus needs a different size chart.

But when you’re off having your own cabled adventures, you want to keep in mind that cables are a little bit sneaky, and your finished fabric probably won’t be quite as big as you might expect.

The hats are Implicit, and they’re out now!