'Bout time they sent me to the knacker yard!

I decided to make the hood today on the little jacket.  Remember I am using the knit radar for the first time and sometimes I think I am cleverer than I really am..

I thought I was being really clever by remembering to adjust the pattern piece so the centre line was two stitches left of zero to keep the pattern central.  I did a great job of increasing to get to the required stitches and got half way up hood when something clicked in my head!   Clearly the shaping I was doing on the outside edges was for the back of the head so 'Um, where is the opening for the head'?????

I looked back at the pattern and it was marked left side and right side.  Duh!!! The hood has to be made in two pieces.  The centre line wasn't the centre line at all, it was the edge of the hood where the face goes lol.

Undid it and decided to watch the Nascar race instead.  Not such a good idea either!

Ah well, there's always tomorrow

A little progress

Things have been busy here so the knitting had been put on the back burner.  Today, I grabbed a couple of hours and knitted the second front.  It wasn't without 'user error' though lol!  I am using the knit radar and totally misread the stitch numbers on the needle bed and ended up with an extra ten stitches.  Fortunately, I wasn't too far into it when I notices so was not too much trouble to start again.

I had a little trouble right at the end with it missing loops.  Think the weight of the knitting on a few stitches was too much for the machine to cope with the tuck pattern.  I managed to knit them in by hand as fortunately it didn't drop any stitches.

So the back and both fronts are done.

I realized that I was not going to have enough of the cream yarn to knit two sleeves, even with the cuffs being knitted in the lilac.  I called the yarn store and they had one cone left with the same dye number.  Phew!!!! They are mailing it out to me. Much easier and cheaper than the two hour drive to pick it up.

Will do the hood next as I am doing that in lilac and by then the new yarn should be here to do the sleeves.

One of the things that happened this past weekend was we were involved in an accident.  Not a serious one thankfully.  We had spent a lovely day at the lake visiting with a friend at his new lake house.  On the way back we decided to pull into the gas station to get coffee.  My husband was driving and he accidently pushed the accelerator instead of the brake when we were pulling up in front of the store.  We mounted the sidewalk and hit the building.  The wall under the window caved in and our driver side was damaged.  It is still driveable thankfully.  We will replace the lamp unit but will not do the other work as the vehicle is nearly 12 years old. There was no tickets issued as the Policeman was sympathetic and knew it was accidental. The insurance will cover the damage to the property.

The good part of the day, on the lake in our friend's boat

The bad part!

My husband has decided to stop driving.  His legs are too weak he realises.  So I will have to do all the driving henceforth which is why I am grateful to be having the yarn mailed out.

Have also made a little progress on the sunroom renovations this past couple of weeks so it isn't all bad.

A big Thank you to Susan (suzyranner)

Susan posted a comment on one of my prior posts explaining that I had cut off the feed supply so people were not being notified of my posts. I wondered why no one was commenting but thought that my constant ramblings were getting boring.  I was a little sad at that thought but I use my blog as my journal too so that I can go back and look at how I am progressing with the knitting so I carried on rambling regardless!

I hope I have corrected the problem but maybe others might not be so happy when they get my stream of posts popping up lol.  Sorry guys, there's been quite a few!

This time it was user error! and does two a collection make?

Yesterday afternoon while the Nascar race was on I went up stairs to knit a front for the jacket.  I was doing great, I was up to the neckline shaping and started on it. I was feeling pretty good at this point until I noticed I had started to decrease on the smallest size on the pattern and it is the biggest size I am knitting!!!!!  Pure unadulterated, can't blame it on any one but myself, user error lol.  I wasn't mad because it was my own doing. The machine, my Betsy, was functioning perfectly. I have since marked in pencil on the pattern where I need to go to to avoid a repeat of this. I will erase it when I am done.

Now to my other news.  Friday I bought another knitting machine.  It was an impulse buy at a great price.  (I bartered and got it for half the asking price) .  The guy who was selling it is a local Policeman who bought it for his wife he said, about 15 years ago.  But she left him 5 years ago and didn't take it so he wanted rid of it. He didn't think she had used it much but it has been used.  He totally blew away any value in it being an antique collectible by throwing away the original box and storing it in a tool box but as I bought it to use and not resell, that's not a problem. Doing some research I think it is more like 20 years old but no matter.

It's a KnitSmart 3-in-1 system.  Actually, it's a hobby machine.  Everything is plastic except the needles.  It's more like a toy but it knits double knitting and bulky yarn.  It wouldn't do the super bulky 6 we bought to try though. Not surprised really, it's like flipping rope!!! I wouldn't even want to hand knit with it, it's so thick. I'm assuming this machine is like a Bond but never having seen one I don't know.  It does have an electronic row counter which I don't think the Bond's have.  I can't get over everything being plastic.  Even the plates that move the needles are plastic and you have to wax them lol.

It has 104 needles on the original machine, and it came with an extension of 26 needles making it a total of 130 usable needles.  It is an 8mm so bigger than a mid gauge but smaller than a regular chunky. Apparently, according to the manual, they were going to make modules to buy to be able to convert it to a 6.5mm or a 9.5mm machine.  The modules being the needle beds, the carriage would work on all three sizes of them.  Will keep a look out for them on the internet, might be able to pick one or both up cheaply somewhere one day.

Some extra thick double knit.  I think they call it worsted weight here in the US.

Some bulky #5 yarn. I love this yarn, it knits with subtle changes of colour.  The lilac is for comparison as it is what I am using on my Studio 700 to knit the little jacket.

I used plate #30 for the yellow and plate #35 for the purple. There are 8 different sizes, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45

The stitches are huge lol!

The carriages, end pieces and knitting plates all packed in the bottom of the toolbox.  The tray with the accessories sits on top 

There are a lot of great things to be said about this machine.

• Great portability, not too heavy to carry around and quick to set up
• Simplistic
• Fits on my kitchen island so don't have to be upstairs to knit. The island is on casters too so can move it anywhere downstairs easily
• Dropped stitches are easy to pick up
• Knits thicker yarn of which I have a lot. We inherited my Mum in law's stash of yarn
• My husband wants a chunky cardigan so I'll be able to knit him one on this machine
• It was very inexpensive

The down side is I don't have a ribber for it and doing any sort of fancy stitch-work takes manual manipulation.

But it's a completely different type of machine and will be used to knit plainer bulkier things and I get to use up the stash! I will try ribbing on the machine by dropping the stitches and redoing them with the latch tool and if I can't manage that I will hand knit the rib and put it on the needles.

My 700 with ribber is my real pride and joy though. I love that machine and my personal preference is for finer knit garments.

Didn't get any sort of knitting done today as my husband was feeling up to doing some work on our sun room conversion so that's what we did.  There's always tomorrow or the next day..............

Yeah for progress

Yesterday was a good knitting day.  It was late in the afternoon when I went up to give it another try. I had a little problem with the ribbing but I undid it and jiggled a little with the positioning of the ribber and started again.

Ribbing this time went great with another perfect cast on.  Transferred the needles to main bed, set up the punch card and proceeded cautiously.

I decided to use the punch card I really wanted to use which was the one that Alex had posted and I had punched out.

After every row I paused and checked the tension mast was OK and nothing was getting caught up anywhere. I glanced at the needles on the machine to see if everything looked OK.  I moved my  claw weights every 10 rows or so.  I only had the two small ribber weights on the ribber cast on comb.

So here is the first piece, the back, in all it's glory.

I was sooooo happy!

Needing some assurance and morale boosting please??

I know I was new to this model and make of machine and it was 20+ years since I used a knitting machine but I don't think it can be all user error I am experiencing.

Today I was positive and eager to knit and get this jacket underway. I had done the new swatches, picked a pattern and new colours.

I casted on and did the ribbing.  That went great.  Even the casting on was perfect.  Usually I have to use the hook tool to put a few stitches on the needles when it doesn't do a perfect ziz zag but today, I think, for the first time ever, it was perfect. I was glowing.  I transferred the needles onto the main bed and set it all up for the tuck stitch.  I got all the right settings, did my remembering row and set the carriage to tuck, remembered to change the punchcard to move.  I had the side levers back.  I was ready!

This time it started a few rows in to gather too many stitches on a couple of needles.  But not the same needles as it had done it before.  I knew this because I had made a note of the needles where it happened before.  The only saving grace, I guess, was that I didn't get all the way up to the shaping before it went awry.

So I took it all off and pondered on what the problem could be.

When I bought it in June the lady told me it had just been fitted with a new sponge bar and I had no reason to disbelieve her but in desperation to find an answer I decided to check it out.

That meant dismantling the ribber which was a shame as it was working great, but I did it and took out the sponge bar.  It was, as she had told me, like brand new.  So that wasn't the problem.

I looked at all my needles closely.  I can't see ant bent ones. So, I put back the sponge bar.  I decided to do a swatch in the tuck stitch before I put the ribber back on.

It did great, no dropped stitches or broken yarn which is what happens after too many stitches gather on the needle.

So, I started thinking that maybe, somehow, having the ribber attached caused a problem.  Couldn't for the life of me see why, but hey I am getting desperate for answers now!

Then I thought about my swatches.  Every time I have done a swatch it has been perfect.

What was the difference? The swatch didn't have any ribbing.

Maybe I am leaving on too many weights as I have been leaving on the big ribber weights.

So, I put the ribber back on.  It didn't line up right so the ribbing was dropping stitches.  I followed the instruction from the manual to the letter too.

I re-sited the ribber and tried again and this time the ribbing was good. I did 24 rows of rib then transferred the stitches onto the main bed.  I took the weights off of the cast on comb and just hung claw weights at the sides of the knitting.  I then proceeded to do some tuck stitch which worked perfectly.

Have I hit on the solution or will I go back to it next time will it do it's silliness again?????

I ran out of time today and tomorrow we have to go to Columbia for a hospital appointment for my husband so it will be Thursday before I get back to it.

I can't remember my machines of the past ever being this temperamental.  I only ever remember fitting my ribber on the machine once and it worked perfectly from the get go.

I made sweaters on my last machine using tuck stitch and big sizes too not just small sizes like I am making now.  I am wary of starting anything big on this machine.

So to summarize, to date I have had problems from the get go.  Some were definitely user error, like the casting on problems, but Phil put me right on that and it works like a charm now.

The ribbing problems are a case of getting sited perfectly and I am getting better at doing that now.

The fair-isle problems I had on my last sweater were due to the different punch card I was using which was shorter and stiffer than the usual ones and once I re-punched a card with the same pattern it worked perfectly.

So I have been able to come up with solutions so far but this one has me beat and totally disheartened.

I don't want to give up.  I am not a welcher.  I am a great perseverer but I am out of ideas on how to make it work. I don't want to just knit plain knitting and fair-isle garments.

My knitter blogging friends make tuck stitch garments so I know I should be able to do it. They don't seem to have the problems I do.. I am sure my knitting carriage is functioning properly and I put all new brushes and wheels on it when I got it.

Help, suggestions, ideas and moral support needed.....please.

I am off to rewind all the bits and pieces I did today, at least that gives me enjoyment lol.

Swatch sample

I did a swatch using three different punchcards for tuck stitch.  I tried to find ones that didn't look like they piled too many stitches on one needle in the hope it would avoid the problem I was having with the odd dropped stitch. I was surprised at the different sizes that the patterns make as each section has the same number of rows and the same number of stitches.  I am going to use the pattern at the top.

The centre sample is quite thick.  I am hoping I can use that punchcard and tuck stitch to use up my very thin yarn so I don't have to use two strands.  But that's a future project.  Have to get this one under my belt first.

I have decided to use different colours to what I originally planned.  I will do the rib, the hood and the band at the top of the sleeves in a pretty lilac colour and the body in off white.  I have a 9oz cone in both of these colours and they are the same yarn as the blue I used in this swatch.

Fingers crossed for a successful day today!

Feeling a little deflated and disappointed

I went up this morning to knit the back of the jacket.  After yesterday's debacle and the time before I was trying to be really positive.  I talked to Betsy (my machine), had a heart to heart with her and explained that we were a team and were going to create some lovely garments etc. etc. etc.  Yesterday, after the fourth attempt,  I took the machine all down and then put it all back again.  This seemed to correct the ribbing problem I was having again.  On the fifth attempt I managed to get the ribbing done but the tuck stitch went awry. I abandoned it at this point, I had run out of time to do any more.  Today,  I was so positive.  I did a sample of the tuck stitch pattern and that went well.  So I started on the back.  The ribbing went great and the tuck stitch was doing really well up until nearly the shaping for the armhole.  (Same place as the first time I tried it).

So I am a little disappointed to say the least. I have started this back nine times now and still not got it done.

I am going to give up on trying to do the chosen tuck stitch pattern and try another one.  I really don't want to do just plain knitting on this jacket.

The tuck stitch pattern was one I punched and did the nail varnish repair on.  It had held up until today when the hole popped out but that wasn't the problem.  It had dropped a stitch and broke the yarn but some how kept knitting but the pattern went wrong at the point the yarn broke.  It was like the stitches were just building up on the needle in just one place. Going to fix the punchcard using sellotape (scotch tape) as my knitting friends said that's how they do it.

When I start again I will use one of the original cards just incase it is the card I punched causing the problem.  That takes user error out of the equation.

Did I say I was disappointed? Just a couple of times eh?

Have to get my woolwinder and whirly gig out again to rewind the abandoned piece.  That's the only good thing to come out of this, I really like using it.  I'm just like a kid with a new toy!

Nuff said!

I've decided to give my machine a name.  Betsy, don't know why but it just sprung into my head. so Betsy she is.

Somewhere in a blog I read, and I've quoted it before, words to the effect that how much knitting the knitter got done was dependent on how her knitting machine was feeling that day.

Suffice to say Betsy was in one heck of a foul mood today!!!

"Nuff said!

It arrived yesterday!

Ordered Wednesday and arrived Friday.  That was good service.  I set it up on my kitchen island with the whirly gig but it wouldn't wind.  I was mumbling and grumbling and my husband came over to see what I was whining about.

"It doesn't work" I said

"Well, did you set it up right?" he said

"I think so" I said

He tried it too and it didn't work

"Let me look at the instructions" he said

"It doesn't say" I said

He looked at the instructions

"You've attached the yarn feeder thingy wrong" he said

"Oh" I said

"Wheres the wrench?" he said

I gave him the wrench

He re-fitted it and 'Voila' it worked and it's wonderful and I love it and him too.

Here it is in all it's glory and working like a charm.

Off to work on the jacket now!