Well, I can tell you that trying to use the garter carriage has been quite the experience!
If anyone has followed my blog for a while they know that I am not new to knitting machines and know a reasonable amount about using them but this garter carriage is a whole different animal. I have named it the 'wee beastie'.
The first time I used went like a dream, but I only did a small piece to try it.
Brimming with confidence after that I embarked on a baby blanket for my soon to be new great grand baby.
Well.................what could go wrong did go wrong and it was 99% user error. I was way too big for my boots, thought I knew it all! Wrong!!!
Anyway, after posting in some knitting machine groups and getting referred to a group dedicated to using garter carriages I got a lot of great advice and now, finally, the blanket is progressing. Using the garter carriage is not a quick process. It knits one stitch at a time and it takes 2 1/2 minutes to knit one row of the blanket. Unlike a manual carriage which you just pass over the row of needles and a whole row is knitted in seconds. BUT! the garter carriage can do patterns that just using the manual carriage can't. That said there are a gazillion patterns that just using the manual carriage can do but it can't do garter stitch or plain and purl in the same row.
Enough of the boring stuff.
Here is a photo of the blanket on the machine, it has taken many, many days to get to this stage. It has to be baby sat. You can't walk away and leave it running, can't take your eyes off the 'wee beastie' so it involves a lot of sitting and watching.
I think I will only make smaller items using the garter carriage in the future.
It does regain it's shape when you take it off the machine and I will be edging it in either yellow blanket stitch or a row of yellow crochet to match the top and bottom.
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As in the words of Thumper: If you can't say 'nuffin nice don't say 'nuffin at all.