Sunday, July 08, 2007

MK Challenge - Passap day 1

Well, after a bit of fiddling around, I got the Passap machine to do this:



Please ignore the rotten edge with dropped stitches and holes, also the display that reads "cast on 2", which it shouldn't. I haven't figured out how to make it do a fancy tuck stitch yet, but I will, never fear!

It took me several hours to get this far because first I used some awful yarn - brown wool plied with yellow nylon, an old cone from Uppinghams. Apart from the fact the colour combination is awful, the yellow started to bunch up in the tension mast and cause lots of problem. The second yarn I tried was some 3ply white - it's so old it keeps breaking, so poss. needs to go into the freezer, or down the tip. The third yarn I tried is a kind of cotton/viscose, it's a 4ply, this was too thick for the machine.

The yarn in the video is 1ply magenta acrylic, I think. I figure I'll carry on with the knitting until it's a blanket length, then just overlock the damaged edge and remove the holey bits.

I'm finding the Passap ok to work with, although it's a bit snippy about skipping ahead of anything it wants to do. For instance, I've got a cast on and some knitting going, but I'm not sure how I get it to start doing something in pattern without going through the cast on again. I shall figure it out though!

In typical British weather fashion, the weather's been lovely all weekend, although it's still chilly for July - you can't sit around with no sleeves, put it this way. I want to play with my new machine, but my body wants to get out into the sun! Think a trip to Cov in the new car this afternoon, might treat myself to some new undies.

Lace knitting now past the 7th repeat - finally I think my slow brain is getting the pattern. Glad I photocopied the chart though - the book'd be dog-eared by now!

Oh, and I knocked out another lurid neon charity tee yesterday, using the "pick up as you go" method. No sewing up to do, except for the ribbing. Not sure how I feel about the side seams, though, and it sure slows the second half down. I hung the bottom edge of the sleeves onto the sleeve edges and cast them off using the transfer tool - it worked ok actually!

G's playing Civilisation and is having a whale of a time killing off rival nationalities. The cad!


Current mood: determined

1 comment:

Susan said...

So can you set the Passap to do all the increases and decreases automatically or do you still have to do that manually?