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

Fixing my Lace mistakes, dropped stitches and weight fixes

I'm doing a run of lace projects on my SK280 + LC2 and I've been experimenting with fixing dropped stitches. I had done.. maybe 16 rows and I noticed a dropped stitch 4 rows back and decided to see how difficult it would be to rip out 4 rows of 100 sts.

So.. If that happens - rip it back to the start and begin again. Time to undo and fix - V - time to go back to the beginning and reknit has to be considered, but checking every 2nd row worked really well, especially essential to check where there are 4 + transfers in a row.

By the time I was working on the last piece, with no more dropped stitches, I made sure I had evenly distributed weight along the entire width and moved them up every 20 rows. No dropped stitches at all in the pieces knitted.

However if it's at the end of a piece, I think it would be less effort to rip them out. I did try to drop down and reknit - it would be OK in certain circumstances, but I noticed that the dropped stitches were mostly on the multiples of 4 transfers close together, not very helpful place to drop stitches, so ripping back was better.

I decided to take photos of exactly what happens when rows are being knitted, to make it easier to rehang correctly.

Row 1:  travelling right to left- stitches are transferred first, the yarn trails and knits AFTER. The stitches are only transferred to the left and the empty needle has the single thread on it.

Row 1

 Row 2: travelling left to right -stitches are transferred first, the yarn trails and knits AFTER. The stitches are only transferred to the right and the empty needle has the single thread on it.

Row 2

the card in the reader is all ready to knit the next row and needs to be memorised.

For reference Rows 3 and 4.

Row 3

Row 4

I dropped a great deal of stitches on the back, so I workshopped the sleeve to see how to work more weight.
I noticed that the action of knitting was dislodging the bar weights, so I tried putting them on from the back, tried out the triangle weight with the small weight and the caston bar from Bev.

The triangle weights added on the back worked so much better, no dropped stitches at all on the sleeve, so I redid the whole lace section of the back - well worth it, as there were way, way too many to fix. However, one stitch that isn't out of position and hasn't got any dropped stitches, it's just as easy to catch it up from the back. I've done just a few on my Zora, that popped up after wearing.

I tried out using the little orange men in a row so it didn't knit the stitches on the left that I wanted to take off for the initial armhole shaping.

Motif Placement Notes

I liked this lace design, but I thought it would be too much all over. It has columns of single stitch running through it and I thought it would be a good candidate to work out how to do motifs and how to put it where I want it in a project. I decided to do this bit of it.

Working out where to put the selected part of the card into the position on the garment.

 Position of the card in relation to the needles on the bed. Marks on the card reader

Correspond to marks on the needle bed

Then all I had to do was work out which parts of the card, it could be anything from .. say 6 to 24sts or more so it repeats .. say in the centre, all depending on the required design and where it is placed in the project. On this project, I used L1 to R12 and positioned the piece 6 needles off centre - L86, R74 instead of L80, R80, so the motif and gutter stitches were where I wanted them - this time on the right. Maybe next time a centre piece, or on the left, or without a gutter, it certainly works well.

Settings:

Carriage - on the LC exactly as usual plus the magic cams screwed on the sides, levers back

Card reader - set and memorise row 1

Back bed - put the magic orange/white markers on - L on the left, the white side is included in the knitting pattern the orange side is exactly what the little orange markers usually do, R on the right, here are all the settings and add ons when in work.

Bed -Orange markers on the front of the bed are unnecessary to the function, but I left them there so I could easily identify the needles I was dropping and latching back the 2 sts relatched gutter.

Refresher:
To memorise the pattern: side levers forward, card on row 1, white lever next to the card reader - forward.
To commence the pattern: side levers back, white lever next to the card reader - back.
Put the panel on the left next time.

Apres Surf Hoodie

We are having a Machine-Knit-A-Long (MKAL) on Ravelry for this one. 

I made one of these in Cleckheaton 4ply Natural Cotton last year, with one of the punchcards that came with my machine.

This year I decided to use a punchcard that more closely resembled the original (Apres Surf Hoodie) in some of the Bendigo Classic 5ply I bought last year at the Craft and Quilt show in Sydney.



The swatch turned out rather well on my SK280 using LC2 T8:

The 5ply went through quite well, and I did have to take care to keep it evenly weighted so I it did all the transfers without dropping them. I dropped about 6 stitches over the whole garment. A lot less by the time I finished (none on the hood for instance).

Changes I made:

I don't like the hem, it rolls up and annoys me, so I made a hung hem. On the lace carriage. EON T -2MT, 1row with ravel cord. hang the long weights with hooks on the ends - bring all needles into working position, knit 19 rows MT,  1R +1MT, 20R MT then I slipped the ravel cord stitches onto a thin circ needle and hung the hem. I know some clever people can just hang from the ravel cord, but not me!

Here is the hood getting itself knitted, I've hooked the sleeves onto the gate pegs to show them.

In keeping with my lengthening requirements, I've used Helga's tutorial to adjust the bodice and sleeve cap - but this will be my stock standard method for now on.

I decided not to so the last couple of rows on the hoodie. I just added a couple extra rows. I won't be wearing the hoodie in public. The lace carriage hold position was OK for the shoulders, so it wasn't for "it's too hard" much more "I'll never wear it".

I had to put my machine away (bathroom reno was happening) so I did the i-cord bind off on the neckband by hand on 3.25mms. I'd do it by machine otherwise.

Things I'd do differently.


Now I understand how the lace cards work - having punched a whole lot on new ones to choose from, I'd make sure I centred the actual pattern a little better. I could easily have moved it around to the centre o | o bit of the pattern was in the middle. If I use this one again I could either offset it so it does or punch another one. I bit obvious, but now I know!

Also I deliberately made this one an "oversize" size, so I can wear it over things around the house. It is nice and long and is very warm.  I will definitely make another something, something, just as soon as I clear the decks with the 8ply projects I have lined up first.

LC2 Lace Carriage Punchcards

After making my Zora lace cardi a couple of weeks ago, I decided to do another lace project while the machine was up.

I was looking at the cards I have for my fine gauge and saw something that greatly resembled the pattern on  Apres Surf Hoodie.
So adapted it to the 24 hole punchcard for the std machine for the 5ply wool I have out for a mystery project. I have a punch and I have some blank cards.... which let me to....

In a unrelated chat on Ravelry, someone mentioned that there were patterns in the Harmony Machine Book, so I got it out to have a look and there they were, lots of lace patterns to choose from.

My son was visiting so that cut down the time to work on the machine, so I've had such an excellent time marking out the cards cards from the Harmony book and an old book then punch when he was visiting his friends.

And here are some of them

 

And this one from a really the really old and tattered book that Beverley gave to me:

I put a cable in the top part to see how it looked. I like it without the cable better I think.

That's all I had time to run the cards through the machine. It's away now for a little bit while I get some renos done. I have an excellent time punching and  understanding how the lace carriage works in relation to the holes punched. I'll run the rest through the machine in a couple of weeks when the dust settles.

Lace Carriage Notes

I've made some notes for me for the lace carriage, with pictures.

Kitty, as always, is right on hand to help.

Dont move the needles beyond the needle bed.
Use ravel cord to hold stitches, (this works really well).
Take time to do it right.

Use the lace carriage to do the stocking stitch.
Yarn in the feeder, side levers forward and no punchard.

It knits at a looser stitch than the main carriage.

Inserted lace card

To tell the carriage where the pattern goes (starting from the back) :

bring the white lever next to the card forward.
Set the edge pins.
on the carriage flick the side levers forward, and the dial to transfer.

When ready to start, move both levers back and the centre dial down.

Increase and decreases can be done as normal, just move the edge pins to their new position and take the needle out of work (for decreases). All the pins do is stop the carriage from doing anything.





Just do your increase/decrease and move the edge pins. then knit. If there's a needle, it will knit, if not it doesn't, so it doesn't matter where the edge pins are, all they do is stop patterning. Just remember to move them and take the needle out of work.

Also hold new ball under the feeder until it takes up.

Make sure to pass BOTH edge pins AND the drums need to clear the punchcard assembly AND the row counter.


 Sometimes the edgepins moved and jammed under the carriage, push it back.





Causes of jams are, the edgepins becomes dislodged, push it back.