What I've Been Doing Over at the Lace Factory

I've been busy making lace over the last couple of months with my SK280+LC2 lace carriage. Lauren suggest I get all the projects done then put the machine away and sew them up - freeing up the clutter in the loungeroom.

My over abundance of Bendigo 4ply Cotton is my focus yarn out of my stash for these projects. I still have too much, but I've made five projects from 12 x 200G at the lace factory, which is a start

So I thought I'd share my experimental successes and failures

I tried out six different ideas.

First was Wild Lavender with a lovely circle lace pattern from the Harmony book. I punched the cards all by myself too!

Lauren's next good idea was - if you make one and you like it, make another - so right on cue - Damask Rose got itself made from a slightly different circular pattern.

Wild Lavender

 

Damask Rose

 Then I tried out the motif bits and pieces to put part of a card on a stripe and relatched the gutter on the next project - Maritime Trellis

Maritime Trellis motif

Progress: not making any

Well that was the first three projects off the machine - then came the next three.

The White Diamonds did not go well, there were a few little piles of white Snow at the back of the machine while I worked out how to stop it dropping stitches on my next project - White Diamonds throw over cardi. But eventually with enough weight, evenly distributed across the needles - Success!

White Diamonds Throwover Cardi

Then there was the upside down punchcard to figure out where and how to copy something I'd seen on someone over at the shops.

first try was with the garter bar - and I didn't quite like it...

Knock off Version 1

Knock off Version 2

 

And here I am sewing it up (I'll get a better photo tomorrow)  It's a lovely colour and looking good.


Which bring me to the sixth project - loved the lace card, thought it was gorgeous, but a little bit too much over the whole garment.

Ah I forgot to say I decided to use my cone of Bramwells Savanah "knits as 4ply" cotton. a little bit thin in my opinion, however... I ran into problems which I had no luck in solving.

I had a few breaks on the large piece but it was an absolute nightmare using motif in the centre of the front. I'd done the back... sigh, but I think there was.. six breaks in the first 100 rows and I decided to give up and do it plain. It is my official fail.

I think five success where I've learnt so much, is not too bad.

So... that's the fun I've been having at the "Lace Factory" over the last couple of months.

Now I have to sew up the Knock off, White Diamonds and the plain black tee. (and Thanks Lauren, my lounge room is clear while I do it).


And I've finished sewing up the last two projects so I'm going to add them here:

Knock Off Lacey tee

Front of White Diamonds

Back of White Diamonds

Shoulder Seams on the Machine

I came across this youtube video for putting in a shoulder seam in two parts. Worth looking at but that's not how I do things.

Finished side straight off the machine: not yet washed, blocked, press or anything.

No. So this is what I did:

Knit my back and took it off with a long circ needle.

knit the front and put the shoulder onto decker combs, (a garter bar would be OK too)

Back goes onto the needles, wrong side faces the machine, public side faces me, BEHIND the latches.

Front goes on to the open latches

Flip the decker to vertical while holding the work so the stitch all roll onto the needle

Add a little weight on both pieces. Pull ALL the needles back so the back stitches are now on the front

just like this

I did bind off around the gate pegs

As with everything, how different people do the same thing always interests me. Depending on how firm the shoulder seam has to be, how stretchy the fabric, will determine as to how to finish off the live stitches, back stitch, make the last row MT+1 or 2 and latching off, lots of scope for what the design dictates. And it was easy with the decker comb and if the back was taken off with a garter bar and flipped, then it would be really quick.

The photo of it finished was very blurry, so I'll take another one and come back and put it in tomorrow. Which I've just done. Here they are straight off the machine, not yet washed, pressed or anything but I think it is a nice tidy and quick seam.

Finished underside

More Berets? More Beads? Nooo it's a Tam with beads

Over on Rav we are having a MKAL for Diana's Tam. It comes with video instructions, is done on a standard with lots of things for our newbies to play around with.

If only life was that simple, wouldn't it be loverly. So, problem we had and this isn't just this, but many, times, there will be things that just don't quite work as planned. You follow the directions and pffftt, as soon as you blink it doesn't work. One way to check on Rav for handknitting is - how many people have actually knitted and finished it, without incident. If everyone is saying nothing but "finished" you are on a winner, it's fine. But machine patterns are so few and are between, machines and yarns can vary so much.

But back to problem solving a pattern. Well our Knit-a-Long is going and we are finding that the fabric and band is too loose or big, it's come out too slouchy for some. Then we have a maths problem with the band, it's 12 sts too short. So some of us decided to make adjustment and start the short rows on needle 12, making two stitches each segment out or making the crown two stitches less and keeping the short rows commencing on 10. The problems with the band .. hmm, I thought, how about I try a 11.11 rib, which will reduce the distance the yarn has to travel to still get 199 stitches needed and make it tighter.



So this is what I decided to do, after one false start:
Crown: Cast on L21/R22, on T5 not 6 and as the yarn was a little drab, add 3mm pink glass bead every 3rd stitch starting on stitch 11 from the left.
Band: Cast on 198, L75/R75 = 100 on front bed and 98 on the back bed (of the Passap) 1R N/N T1, 5R CX/CX T3, 20R N/N T3.
Joined by 3 needle bind off. Next time I'd use sew as you go to join instead.

All in all a lovely Tam, with some very small modifications to make it just right. Very happy with it.

Berets

I've been hand knitting some berets all from Luxury 10ply, I bought with the Murano I needed to finish off some felted slippers.
And here they are

Dreamy inspired by Snow's Beret on Once Upon a Time

A lovely beret - Brambles - a pattern on knitty.com the colour is correct in Dreamy

And lastly a big disappointment - don't bother with this one, the instructions don't match the model, I did a lot of modification to make it like the photo and when I put the comment that it didn't match on the Rav page for it, it got deleted. So. Can't delete this. Don't bother - if she can't be bothered providing accurate instructions don't bother knitting the dodgy version in the instructions.

Starting off 2013

Starting off 2013 again with the intention to going cold sheep - meaning to buy some things that I need to finish projects, and one or two things in September at Fairfield Yarns near Manchester. I know, last time I said cold sheep I really meant frozen sheep meaning not buying a thing. However I ran out of cotton and bought enough to finish the cardi, so in the end I decided that cold sheep for me meant buying a little bit but using up so much more.

Here is my Ravelry stash tab totals

Anyways this is from my Ravelry Stash page. the 44 used up are the ones I've set aside to make projects.

I want to do some lace projects first. I've been busy swatching and tomorrow I'll try to finish off one project and start winding the 4ply cotton.

the little messy bit at the bottom is what happens when weights come off and you don't notice. Nice even weight if so important for successful lacemaking.
Tuesday is forecasted to be a very, very hot day, so I'll try my best to working out all the patterns for the swatches and finish winding all the cottons. Ready for Wednesday, when if they are right, will be cooler again.

I'm hoping to use 50 x 200g of those Bendigo balls this year.

And before I go off to measure my swatching efforts, this is how I finished 2012:
No of  Projects: 33
No 50g balls deemed used: 328.9
No of metres knit: 33,548m

And I've decided that's not too shabby.