Hand Tooling Lace Socks on My Passap

Passaped Spring Forward Socks

I have wanted to make Spring Forward socks for the longest time. And I decided that I want to make them on the Passap machine as an experiment to see how difficult is really is.
 

Spring Forward lace sock one done

 

Tools of the trade, row counts on kindle

I put the row count and lace pattern in excel, then pasted it into Publisher, made it a whole page, saved it as a .pdf and sent it to my Kindle.

I also needed the yellow prongs and my favourite, most used tool, red hooky.

At a colour join. Put it through the feeder and hold it on the join,
then cast on, both socks will be the same

To get your socks to match, choose the colour match and put it on top of the eyelet and start your cast on.

I chose one of my new eyelets with the metal tip

I made sure I was using one of my new eyelets with the metal tip, I have two of them. I didn't want another broken tip.

I used pushers to identify the transfers

I used the pushers to mark the correct pattern.

I put the two parts of the chart - where the ssk/2tog fall - both those pushers are put back in the rails, so all I had to do was nudge up the two pushers next to them, which made it easy to see where the two needles were. I don't have a better way to describe it, but it was very quick and easy.

I also put the pusher back into the rails that corresponded to the single stitch between the two yos. So I was able to check that I had been following the chart correctly.

there is no way to check

There is no way to check how the pattern is forming on a Passap, whether I had it correct, so after I did one complete pattern, I took it off on deckers to check it.

If I dropped a stitch and couldn't pick it up straight away, it was quicker to take it off, fix it and put it back. This was mainly on the first half of the first sock. I took more care from then on.

Take off on deckers to check the pattern

Progressing well

And here it is under the machine - I thought it was an interesting picture! sorry!

And they are finished:

 

And here they are, all finished

All done!

My old eyelets are on the left. The plastic around the tip breaks

For Raymonde - the old eyelets - the tip breaks off through age. On my lace socks, I didn't want to pick up half a lace sock off the machine - it was tricky enough doing it without equipment failure!

Some Zoomy Vests

My stash on Rav 6 Mar 2012

I've been working on getting rid of my old WIPs (works in progress). I decided to start finishing them this year, starting with the nearest to finished. Well I finished the body and started on the sleeves. The more I did the less I wanted to finish it, wear it or have anything to do with it. So I decided to NOT finish it, and undo/frog it. So that makes two things I've put back into balls.

 But what started this epiphany, was... I need to make another blue/black vest or three. The ones from last year have suffered from "wearing them all the time".  I have one redish tone one that I can walk out the door, and I machined and hand knit - green! Two green vests. Great! I don't know what I was thinking, just getting them done. Which brings me to my Zoomy. Lauren and her Dad brought me back two packets of 10 Zoomys in different blues from their road trip home from Melbourne, in Dec 2010. Sadly my old Zoomy vest - well I don't think even the needy will want to wear it. It's rubbish. But backtracking to my WIP hand knit problem, I really didn't want to start another handknit until I made them go away. Problem solved, it's no more, it's back into balls.

My Shalom Vest with elledot (Leila's) buttons

So onto the Zoomy. I really need vests, so I made a replacement Shalom for the one that I threw away, and have started a Heather Hoodie on the other packet.

Heather hoodie in progress

And now I'm back to machine knitting. I'll finish off my second Lana Vest this week, then I'll think about whether I pack up Yoko and do something else one of the other machines. Maybe I'll make another Shawl Collared Cardi on it before I do.

Lana Sweater in progress - only sleeves to do

And I went to Spotties and bought some cotton jersey to make some long body/sleeve tees for this winter. I'd like to get them done next week, ready for the cool weather, which I don't think is too far away. I got some nice easy to wear ones from Primark, three plain cotton jersey ones from Lauren's trip to London, year before last and the three I brought back from my trip to London. I must admit I like the 100% cotton ones better and I'm so sick of stuff that is too short. So this year, I'm getting rid of all the too short stuff.


That's enough to be getting on with now I think!

Put Your Pattern on Your Kindle

How to put a pattern on your Kindle so it's easy to read and what do I need on each page?

Here are my three pages I prepared for the Lana Sweater I've just made:

Three pages each one is pasted in separately

I downloaded the .pdf,
then "printed" to onenote.
then select all and ask it to copy to text.
then copy it into a new onenote page.
then set about into editing it into something I can use, different yarn and bigger size, for brushed (shrink when washed) cotton.
I tried making a .pdf directly from one note, but the margin and the font size was too small to read.

Next
After working out what I wanted to do - which is the three pages I've put above, I put each pages into Publisher - I made three pages - then enlarged each section to take up a whole page.
Then made a .pdf
then sent it to my kindle
which was lovely and here it is

One Kindle Page is one page in Publisher/Word no need to magnify

If you don't have publisher, you will need to do your pages in Word - I suggest font size 30+ so it's nice and big. Remember one page in Word/Publisher is one page on the Kindle screen. I do not want to fiddle about with enlarging half of it and missing something, and I want to be able to read it easily.

Next:

What does it all mean?
I try to get rid of all redundant information. I write what I understand and what I don't need is the "how tos" that are on the original pattern. I need to know what setting I need on the machine, how many stitches and rows and when to do something.. basically just that... I don't need words like Armhole Shaping, begin neck shaping - transfer stitches to main bed.

I use the row counter = RC000 to tell me that something has changed. I'm beginning a new something.
I'll run through my back notes :

Back

CO 100, 2:2 ind rib, means cast on 100  = R50, L50 - in Industrial ribbing, (11.11.11 etc on both beds) I only count the main bed not the ribber, if there are two T numbers, I'm doing ribbing and I don't care what the number of needles are on the ribber, there are two under each empty needle.

1R T R + R reminds me to change the dials 

90R T3.2 + 3.2, means after casting on, knit 90 rows with 3.2 on both stitch dials

RC000 - always tells me, something's changed and I will put the two ribber stitches onto the single empty needle. I always do this so I can leave out these words too.

T5.1: +1 ev 6R to 120 sts -> RC72.The single T #  tells me I'm on the main bed increasing 1 stitch each end every 6 rows to 120 sts, then knit straight to row counter 72.

RC000 - oh you know what this means!!!

-8sts next 2R, means I've started my armhole shaping and take off 8 stitches the next 2 rows

-1st ea end ev 2R x15 = 80sts means dec 1 sts each end every 2 rows to 80 sts

-> 78RC means knit straight to row counter 78

-9 sts next 4R (S/R) means using short row method, minus 9 sts each end for 4 rows

Take off and I always knit one complete row across all stitches before I do this but I don't need to say it cause I always do it.

There you are then, what I do for me, so when I'm at the machine, I know what setting to use on the machine and when to do what so I can make one of these, for instance:

Lana Sweater before it was washed