I'm totally smitten with knitted cables lately.  This is a bunch of pre-work for a headband/earwarmer.  None of the stitching shown here was used in the final headband.

All this work was to figure out exactly how to make braided cables start with skinny braid-bits that grow thicker as they tangle around each other.  

And then I was determined that the braid-bits had to come out of the ribbing in an aesthetically pleasing manner (this is me rolling my eyes because that's the part of the headband that will be hidden under my hair ... but I'll *know* it's there, right?)

I was also trying to decide how wide the piece needed to be (to cover my ears) and whether I liked the straight edges or the wavy edge of the braids on either side.

This is a ton of work that just got frogged (a couple of times more than you see here, too), but I learned the anatomy of a cable.  I know how to identify the row that crosses over and count up from that to know how many rows I've done since the cross.  Invaluable cable-info, for sure.

I'm 99.9% done with the finally headband.  I'll post pix when I get the finishing touches done.