"I’ve been watching the KAL garment-a-month thread on the Ravelry Machineknitting group, with interest - I haven’t committed to it myself, because for eight weeks in Jan-Feb-Mar I will be on an evening course that rather eats into my knitting time.
However, I have decided I will force myself to get to know, and get familiar with, some of the gadgets I’ve bought for my machines, and some of the techniques I’ve only tried once. This is partly inspired by dancingbarefoot, who was working her way through different punchcards a while back.
It’s far too easy for me, to stick to stocking stitch, or simple stuff, quick bang-for-buck, because I am very impatient and love projects that are made quickly. I need to force myself out of my comfort zone.
For example, I have the tricofit(?) thing for my Passap, which does intarsia, and I haven’t tried it out yet. I’ve also not really tried out the transfer lock, because I’m a little afraid of bending needles on a machine where I don’t know how to replace needles. I’ve also never really done much with the garter carriage or garter bar. I always had vague plans to make some kind of cute hoodie for my niece, using pile stitch (I envision fluffy pink hearts, she’s 2 and very keen on pink at the moment).
So! that’s gonna be my personal challenge for ‘09. I’ll probably try and tackle one thing a month.
Anybody care to tag along?! :)"
Schedule so far:
I came up with this:
Jan: 2 colour slip stitch
Feb: DB jaquard
Mar: garter bar
Apr: pile stitch
May: garter carriage
Jun: passap linker
Jul: passap intarsia
Aug:
Sep: pc10 punchcard maker
Oct:
Nov: passap transfer
Dec:
Starting easy, and working on up! :) I still fancy making a circular yoked sweater, and that circular cardigan from Knitwords (Circle of Life, I think), so that might go in somewhere.
Last night I was struggling to focus on anything too complicated. I made some slipstitch samples (see below). I have mislaid my instructions for the colour changer (if there ever were any), and to start with I kept starting the pattern on the RHS, which get you nothing but 2 row, slightly wiggly lines. Once I remembered to start on the LEFT, all was well!
Maze slipstitch 1 - love this one, kinda Aztec
Maze slipstitch 2 - eye-boggle alert!
Grapevine slipstitch - found this amongst the cards, cool huh?!
Passap slipstitch (single bed). The top half looked a bit smoother before I stretched it (it's some kind of 2ply/3ply cotton).
Yup, another Passap pattern that's been programmed black-for-white. I should probably go through and try all the patterns, and figure out which ones are back to front. So far it seems to affect slipstitch techniques. Mental note - if the tension's too tight on a Passap, stitches will be skipped (rather hard to spot if it's already a slip-stitch pattern). Try not to jam the locks - they are a LOT harder to unjam than Japanese machines!!
I see a toddler's jumper in Maze 1, with a cut and sew neckline, coming soon. A slash neck is too easy!
1 comment:
My objective when I proposed the Garment a Month KAL was to get people knitting on their machines. Whatever people want that is fine as long as they get something! I am one to let the machines sit idle for long periods at a time. Comfort might be a better description. I too want to explore different techniques, for now I want to use the machines :) Looking forward to your challenges!
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