How I Do Wrapped Short Rows

This is how I do short rows. Other people have their way, and this is my fav:

carriage on hold bring 1 needle out to hold - knit one row

Do the same on the other side

On this first pass I hold the second needle down

But some people just put it back - I find it will still come off the needle this way

I use the 3 prong tool instead - just under the stitches you want to knit - much better than a weight

and for sock heels, this is what I do, keep going 1 needle wrapping each end until a third of the stitches remain.

For more needles between wraps - a skirt for instance. On this one I'm doing 4 needles on one side (cause I borrowed my sleeve and I only have 50 sts), I bring out to hold 1 less needle (3 ndls), put the pong under the first needle held and the next two needles being knitted. When this row is knitted, I will keep the tool there, pull out the needle to be wrapped and knit back - this is a nice quick smooth way to ensure I get a good tight wrap, no stitches dropped or tucked to make it untidy

close up on the right side

this is the sample I knitted

this is what it looks like on the wrong side, but as I'm knitting it I can check it's going well. (and now my sleeve has done it's volunteering to be my short row sample, it's back to regular knitting and is now regular non short row sleeve.)

Little bit on Hand Tooling Lace

I've just finished two jumpers with the same panel but one with 3 and the other with 4 repeats of the panel.

Humboldt Raglan - minus the raglan!

 First I make a template of the pattern I'm repeating, here I've marked the edges and centres of each panel by putting a piece of cardboard onto the needle bed and putting in the pencil marks on it.

Another really good idea is to mark the bed with a waterproof pencil, but I can't find my one and only - so cardboard and pencil it was:

The first three transfers were the same,  so I bring the needles forward that are to be transferred on those first three repeats - transfer, 3 x to the right; 3 x to the left, knit two rows:

Then I do the same for the rest of the pattern, I found bringing the needles out to be transferred to be the quickest and easiest way to get it done. If you have to start second guessing which is this one is the right one, it slows everything down and makes the whole process very tiring. So... put the template down, bring the needles out, (check the line up) transfer, knit.

Here is a nice close up of the lace pattern. For this one, at the end of the pattern is two rows of reverse stocking stitch. I used the put the latch tool two stitches down, pull down, relatch, reattach, pull out to hold, do the next one. Again, working quickly and steadily gets it done, using the machine's settings to help keep track of which has been done - so there's no second guessing and no mental exhaustion from doing that over and over again. That's the real trick. Do the prep, and keep working at a steady pace and take short breaks to refresh the mind and stretch the legs.

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

Pretty Ribbons II aka Putting Stuff in Shows

 I have been banging a drum lately on changing people's attitudes into entering stuff into shows. Trying to convince people to stop worrying about being judged, and submit eyecatching stuff to appeal to the public. Let the judges have the worry of picking out one instead. Anyways here is my story

Last year I decided to put a few things into the local regional shows around the Sydney Area, Blacktown, Castle Hill and Hawkesbury. I got some ribbons.

This year I decided to put a few things into the same shows plus try my hand at a bigger show - so I decided to enter the Royal Canberra Show. I was intending to put something into Sydney, but they moved their date forward and I wasn't confident that what I had planned to do would turn out. Sometimes it doesn't. Next year I will do better.

So.. onto Canberra. It has just had it's 100th celebration, and they had the Great Scarf Competition. You had to put in why it was relevant to the centenary. I decided to combine a method popular in the late 1890s to early 1900s - pre threading beads/pearls onto the yarn and knitting it into the fabric, which I did both ends by hand, then did the middle bit by the KX350. Mixed methods were permitted. And it won first place.

Alpaca Storm Scarf

Next was a baby jacket I made as part of our Passap Model book challenge in the Passap Ravelry group, one of the girls made the baby jacket out of book 19. And it won first prize.

Passap Baby Jacket

Lastly comes another Kate Shawl, It won First prize, Non Professional Champion more than 2 yrs experience and Overall Reserve Champion which is what the two rosettes are. (I know I thought of the cows too!!) This was apparently put on and paraded around the judging area (I did say this was OK). They loved it. And it took them a while to figure out how I did it. This is exactly why people should be putting things into shows. This is a relatively new technique, but this isn't the first time they should have seen it. I do not expect to be so honoured in the future. I'm just thrilled I got this result this time.

Kate Shawl

Lastly I'll show you what DIDN'T win at Canberra, zilch, nil, nada nothing, there must have been a few things to choose from in this category - my Passap hand manipulated socks that took me a week to make! And were in cotton and I thought were brilliant - just goes to show - you just never, never know...

Passap socks

I've also put in Diana's Beret, which one a first prize in the Blacktown show, and a First for the Mohair Scarf in Castle Hill. No photos of these yet, they still have to go to into Hawkesbury and St Ives, then I'll put their photo in.

And the most wonderful feedback I got was from a brand spanking new machine knitter who saw my Kate Shawl at the Canberra show and was inspired to get herself a machine! How Good Is That?

So my fellow machine knitters - These things I have I learnt:

• have the article made well before the closing date, so there's no pressure,
• baby items can be donated to charity if you don't have babies to knit for
• keep your labels - some of the big shows like them
• don't worry about being judged
• give the judges something to worry about instead
• pick something that looks good to the public
• you will always win if you are the only entry

And good luck in promoting machine knitting as a wonderful craft that's still alive and kicking..

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

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.