Good news and bad news!

I finally got the LC2 lace carriage re-assembled on Christmas Eve.  That is the good news.

Yesterday, the 28th, I sat down to try it. Detailed below is the bad news!

I started off knitting 70 stitches using the main carriage, I did about 20 rows.  Then I changed over to the lace carriage.  Something distracted me and when I came back I started to knit with it thinking I still had the main carriage on.  I knitted about 4 rows and it was really tight.  Then I remembered I had changed the carriage over.  The tension setting was at 0.  Well OK then!  I changed it up to 7, put in the punchcard LC1.  I did my first row to remember the changed the settings accordingly and gingerly started to knit.  It seemed to be going ok but after a few rows I could see some holes weren't appearing where they should, then it got worse and the stitches were getting caught on gate pegs and all sorts of things were happening.  I stopped!

I took the knitting off and noticed that it had bent all the latches on the needles in use.  Yes, all 70 of them.  aarrgghh!!!!!

So that was my first LC2 experience.  I was so disappointed as I had waited a long time to get it operational. (see previous posts for all the gory details)

I have ordered 100 new needles at a cost of $55 so a costly experience.

I think knitting on the '0' tension at the beginning didn't help.  Also, I think I should have done more plain rows after I changed it up to '7' before I started to use the punchcard.

I had put in a brand new sponge bar yesterday as I had read that for lace it needs to be a good one.

I am going to take out the needles with the bent latches and move some from the outer edges in and give it another go.  But this time I will only use 40 max needles in case it happens again.  I have 30 spare needles on hand so with the 100 I ordered I should be covered if I bend any more.

Any tips anyone??????????