Happy days are here again....

The reseller (Andrea of Andeeknits) has loaned me her ex-demo PC10 - and it arrived yesterday (I do love new gadgets! Shiny shiny!). And the fault remains - any stitch cam between L72 and L28 becomes invisible - so it is the carriage at fault, as I suspected. I'm glad I kept on with this because I'm not ready to pension off my EC1/PE1 whilst they still work, despite Silver's lack of interest/support in their old kit. Their response was very disappointing considering this knitting machine is the most expensive thing I own, after my car!

I'll be posting my carriage down to her again in the next few weeks (it will take a while for the part to arrive I suspect). The good thing is I can now pack the durned thing away and get on with some chunky knitting I've been eyeing up. I did try the yarn in question (worsted Peaches n crème cotton, bought in a mad fit of passion right before Spinrite bought them out) on the midgauge and practically broke my hand, in fact I gained a lovely bruise as that was the first yarn I foolishly tried to cast on with on this machine. Technically it OUGHT to work - it's a DK thickness - but in actuality it just doesn't have enough stretch. I've knitted various things (peg bag, jumpers) with it on the KH260 so I know that beast can take it. Also I picked up five balls of James C Brett Marble chunky at the Dream Week - and although the midgauge knits it just fine, it is at the top end of its range really.

So I'm rather chuffed - we finally have a conclusion. It's been doing my head in now for a few weeks. I cannot praise Andeeknits enough - she has listened to my woes on the 'phone and in person, and has trusted me with some kit which I haven't yet paid for. Having played with it, I might now buy - it has the standard cards built in, which I didn't know. Yeah, touching stuff is fatal when it comes to yarn and gadgets - fatal to my credit card, that is.

The PC10 is a rather poorly-thought out replacement for the EC1/PE1 combination. If Silver had thought to ask machine knitters what they actually wanted, or if perhaps their machine knitting division had the heady budgets of yesteryear - we might reasonably have expected a USB connector for DAK, or WinCrea, or some other computerized patterning. We might have expected a connection from the old EC1, because feeding 20 odd cards in for a 200st wide design is still far quicker than drawing white and black dots on a dinky strip of a screen. We might have reasonably expected the ability to read stitch patterns directly from a USB stick, and the ability to accept modern memory cards (CD? SD? MicroSD?), instead of the rather outdated and highly specific card it WILL read, which is not even compatible with the card that the PE1 uses - that was another mistake! You could have feasibly thought that you could design your pattern on an EC1 reader sheet, saved it to the memory card on the PE1 and then be able to use that pattern on the PC10 elsewhere - but apparently not!

Apparently the PC10 is being discontinued - presumably it didn't sell. Ooh, I WONDER why not?! (yes, that was sarcasm). If they'd thought it through better and put a little more effort into the design, things might have gone a different way. As it is, Silver sell expensive electronic knitting machines that cannot pattern without further expense - and they no longer sell anything that does the patterning. Go figure.

It's sad, because the short-sightedness of the one manufacturer still in business, doesn't help promote a hobby that has already gone "underground" (online) to keep itself going.

Ok, rant over - it's too sunny outside to be cross. Things are looking up in my knitting room, and that's good enough for me today.

Only slightly excited...

I’m borrowing a PC10 patterning device from the seller, to prove (or disprove) once and for all, what is wrong with my SK860. I like playing with new toys but this has become a necessity – one way or another this little saga must come to an end, not least because I have lots of things I want to knit in my queue and the SK860 is now holding that up. If it works, I’ll buy the PC10 I guess - hadn’t planned on it so it will have to go on the credit card. If it demonstrates the same fault, then the carriage is definitely at fault and will need to be returned (possibly with the machine) for repair. So although I’m slightly excited to be playing with a new piece of kit, I’m going to have to wade through the manual first as to how to get a pattern into the blasted thing. I’m out both days this weekend so I’m hoping I’ll have the time to put it through its paces.

In other news, I’ve only had one bid on my Ebid auctions (and that for an Alan Dart handknitting pattern, which we all know is like knitter’s crack for some people). So I have had no choice but to list other things on that famous auction site – just because it seems to get the most exposure. Luckily these are mostly books and small machine knitting items so there shouldn’t be too much hassle with postage/things going wrong. It seems to be a necessary evil, alas. Trying to limit myself to about 20 auctions a week because that’s a lot of postage and packing to organise when one works full time.

Cameo is growing steadily (when I don’t mess up and have to frog a row). Frogged my one and only attempt at slip stitch crochet, and will probably frog the first Eve's rib tunic top I made with the rest of that yarn, as I doubt even I’LL ever wear something QUITE that loud. Bearing in mind that yarn was originally a cardigan, it's taking quite a while for me to work out what to do with it. Why, yes, I did buy it on a whim, how did you guess? Which is why "Ooh, pretty!" is never a good enough reason to buy any yarn. Even it it's made of rainbows, sparkles and unicorn poo. Ahem.

I am also part-way through machine-knitting another Lilly wrap top, and need to finish the first one - whether or not the second one gets finished in time for its intended recipient remains to be seen. Somebody will get some use out of it.

Weaving

Only just got these photographs off G's camera - these were taken on Heritage weekend (Sept 11th), at the Weaver's house in Spon End, Coventry. The house was really interesting and you could see straight up to the roof (originally it would have had an open pit for a fire, the chimney breast was a later addition). I didn't have time to see much unfortunately. Better luck next year I guess.


Demonstrator at work on the portable folding loom - the IKEA stool was rather wobbly, the loom was better made!


Back of the weaver's house from the garden


These strips were woven by members of the public and then sewn together


Loom inside the house

In other news, have run some diagnostic tests on the SK860 using the PE1 and everything seems to check out. Have uploaded PE1 shots to Flickr - not sure how they are supposed to look, so it doesn't really help. Started another Lilly wrap on the SK840. Hoping to get my standard ribber working again soon.

Drawing assymetrical and oversize garments on a charting device

These sketches were done as a result of a question by donnydl on the Ravelry group - thought they might be useful here for reference.

If you have a garment that is too wide you mirror the missing bit on the edge of the paper - "fold" the garment drawing in a definite place eg 60 so that the extra bit is easy to work out. Of course, make sure you have enough needles too! See picture below, the missing bit is hatched in the second picture.



If you are knitting an assymetrical garment and do not have a wide enough sheet, you can mirror that line about zero. This is a rough sketch of a ballet wrap top - the front neckline is in red, the sleeve is in blue:

Checkmate

No responses so far regarding my borrowing some kit to help diagnose my midgauge problem. Although, it's early days yet (only posted my requests yesterday). I'm beginning to think it might be a faulty carriage because I now know of at least two others with the same fault. We shall see.

Am going to be listing more MK books and things for sale on Ebid this week. If that link doesn't work, my username on there is steelbreeze23. UK only sales at the moment, I might open them up if they don't sell first time around. No offence to anyone outside the UK intended, but the hassles I had with the last batch of auctions have put me right off. In most cases, the international postage cost will be higher than the actual auction value, which is a bit of a struggle for me financially at the moment as it comes out of my own money up front. Been an expensive month one way or another, and I owe himself £300 for a short break he's booked for us in December also!

Right, well I'm off for chinese before knitting night. Hurrah for noodles!

Argh - (accidentally) talking like a pirate

So I went down to reunite my SK860 with its carriage. It performed beautifully. However, when I got it home, it started to play up again. Turns out if I put the left cam between 70L and 30L it "disappears" as far as the EC1 is concerned - so the pattern stops advancing. We only tried it out over 40 stitches, of course, so did not find the problem.

Hoping I can find someone local who can lend me something so that I can establish whether (a) the EC1 needs calibration or (b) it's actually the carriage at fault. If I recalibrate the EC1 I risk it not working with the SK840. Argh!

Alternatively I can just suck it up I guess and make sure I either knit items assymetrically (would cause problems with the long ribber comb) and/or make sure I travel to 70L whether I'm knitting that wide or not (can cause yarn take-up problems though).

In other news I made another Lilly wrap and a tuck lace scarf this weekend - both need some finishing. And the cameo vest re-crochet continues inexorably. Really need to get working on this stash!

Lost mojo and non-plussness

After such a wonderful week at Metropolitan, you'd think I was raring to go, right? Well, I was. But rewinding some yarn I bought last week took forever (and I've still two balls to do), and I've discovered that Thomas the cat has been using my SRP60N as a springboard to get to the window, and he's damaged the left Rusell lever on the ribber carriage. It knits, but makes a rather scary zipping noise. Woe is me!

Got to reunite the rest of my midgauge with its carriage at the weekend, oh joy. Doesn't sound like it can be fixed - so I have a very expensive, plain knitting machine. Not happy - if I'd known that was what I was getting, I'd've stuck with the LK150 and not bothered upgrading. I understand the sellers are keen to talk us into buying new machines, but I can't see any incentive when they don't work as expected. Silver's patterning is separate, which means if it doesn't work, your machine doesn't pattern. If they hadn't, in their wisdom, withdrawn their punchcard midgauge, that is the machine I would have gone for.

Very glum. The only saving grace lately is that I treated myself to a new (second hand) mobile. Having a bit of a game trying to transfer all the useful Palm stuff I need onto it, though. It's going to take some time before I'm fully swapped; and in the meantime the old Palm Treo is showing its displeasure by discharging itself every day, and being completely flat when I want to use it for something. It had better battery performance when it had a SIM card and connected to the network - nonplussed!

FO: Dream Week simple shrug

Anne Brown's simple shrug pattern wowed everyone last week - it's a simple strip of knitting, approx. 800 rows, steamed and sewn in a few places. I think these would make great Christmas presents too. I panicked a bit on the day - the class notes said not a natural yarn, Grigna would be great. I'd no idea what Grigna looked like - labels fall off cones in my house - so grabbed a cone of Uppinghams baby 4ply acrylic. As it turned out, it was perfect! After knitting I got to kill it, too, which is normally only done by mistake! :)


When worn this way up, you get a waterfall collar


When worn this way up, you get a rolled collar and a split back

Dream week competition highlights

This is just some highlights of the competition garments. Ably modelled by Rachel, Tricia and Anne Brown. Bill King modelled a bow tie at the end, but my camera batteries ran out at that point so the only pics I have, had no flash. These were taken on the run in a room full of people, so apologies for the poor angles. The whole set is here








Second prize


Carol's waistcoat.


First prize (also a necklace which wasn't shown the first time)




First prize (non-wearable)


The teddy won second prize

Some Dream Week highlights - pics of Metropolitan

Warning, rather photo-heavy post, although some of them don't seem to want to show.


Vintage hand flat machine - Bill King worked on this. You operate the large lever with one hand whilst pushing the carriage with the other. Looks like quite a work-out, but the machine isn't used much and would be smoother. The knitting it produces is very fine. One of these machines is manufactured by a company with the common spelling of my surname - a knitting ancestor perhaps?


The tearoom - purveyor of coffee, pavlova, and Bailey's cheesecake, to name but a few delights!


The shop and classroom - Anne Brown of Posh Frocks between classes



The "miscellaneous" yarn room - lots of single cones here.



Two views of the museum classroom. Pig sound effects extra for free! (the pigs live right outside this room) :)


Lots of literature in the corridor, plus odd doodads for your machines.


More yarn - the new stuff is Shamal and Metropolitan Crepe, there are two more small rooms of yarn via the door


Main corridor looking towards the entrance, coffee shop on the left (with photographs of garments worn that week in the window).


Big classroom - did my hands-on classes in here.


Bill King's masterclass in the museum.

Dream week swatches

Iris Bishop class - knitting a square onto the reverse side. Location is marked on the material with needle-out columns and loose rows.


Iris Bishop class - basketweave ruching, using lace holes as markers. I only have a few ruches at the top (and Iris did two of them) because I ran out of time. Will repost when I've finished it!


Erica Thomson class - Rather poor swatch of tuck lace - went a bit wrong and didn't get time to steam it, but never mind.

Last day

The last day we always have a surprise lecture - this year it was a slideshow of images from the Norwegian students. One of them travels 18 hours on various buses just to get to the college - with a ribber! They meet every seven weeks for a class of a week. I loved the fashion show where the models had mad space-age "wigs" made from neon dyed tights and polystyrene balls. Carol presented certificates to everyone who entered the competition, and I finished up with a coffee. Bill King did an impromptu demonstration of one of the vintage cast iron knitting machines, in the hallway outside the "museum" room.

Took mmryse back to the hotel as the coach wasn't leaving until 2pm and had some soup before getting on the road. It never fails to amaze me, the amount of drivers that sit in the middle lane of a motorway. Yes, even on the toll road, when there is almost nobody to overtake. Very sad!

Spent all day yesterday demonstrating the CSM and making charity jumpers on a borrowed LK150 at a Heritage open day near Warwick, which was a lot of fun - the weather stayed pretty good, too! Today I'm hoping to see a few Heritage sites myself.

Dream week, day 4 (Thursday)

Today my first class was with Anne Brown of Posh Frocks. She gave us a sideways knitted skirt pattern, which has flares and short pleats that rise about 25cm into the fabric. She also showed us how to steam the skirt properly using wires. I was so inspired I got three cones of crepe and a pattern book - but what I really need is a decent steam iron with a reservoir.

Second class was also Anne Brown, a "surprise" lecture - this was for her fingerless gloves. I think she developed it from a Knitwords pattern that was rather complicated. Hers has a hand-manipulated lace edge and a pin tuck. The thumb was done by doing a little bit of short rowing in waste yarn and it is then knitted on later. This woman casts off with a latch tool very very fast - I need to learn that! She also uses the garter bar very confidently.

Last class was with Anne Smith of MKM - "Cunning Cables". She explained her foolproof cabling method and showed us lots of variations that can be achieved with no more than a double or triple transfer tool.

Got back to the hotel and started packing (I hate this bit!). The competition is judged on Thursday nights. The non-wearables were on an end table (there was a bikini! Ha!). After the meal the wearables were ably modelled by Tricia, Rachel, Anne Brown and (briefly, to much hilarity) Bill King. The standard was excellent as ever. The first prize went to a five piece suit which included skirt, top, cardi, bag and necklace, and the second to a large cape made of lace knitting sewn into hexagons (It looked like crochet from a distance). A peg bag won the non-wearables and a teddy was second. There was also a very clever bird about 75cm high with a knitweave body. Managed to get photos of most of it before my batteries died, there will be a photo post soon I promise!

All in all a really good week and I hear they are already taking bookings for next year.

You better, you better, you bet

Yeah, more song titles as blog titles, am thinking about my poorly SK860 carriage and having to traipse down the M5 with the rest of my kit in a few weeks to see if we can't get to the bottom of it. There's no way I'm posting a knitting machine AND my EC1, because if the latter got wrecked, then the SK840 is left high and dry also. I'm hoping we can replicate the fault and that this isn't just some stupid operator error I'm making. Anyway, by the time I'd paid for postage and insurance, I might just as well go in person anyway. At least the schools are back so the M5 might actually be moving.

No, I don't have Designaknit, although that might be a future option. I'd need three different cables for my various electronic machines though, so to buy three cables and the software would be teetering on the edge of £1k. Who said machine knitting saves you money again?! Guess if I go that route I'll have to work my way up to it - I've another 40 years I reckon! :)

Yesterday I had three more classes (I opted out of the trip to Chester - I'm maximising my machine knitting time this week!). First thing was Bill King - an amazing array of samples and mockups using a myriad of techniques. He showed us how to do godets, which I believe was in a previous issue of MKM. Full fisherman's rib (every needle), move to half fisherman's rib, then gradually transfer every 10th stitch to the main bed and knit 4-6 rows. On the next row, transfer a needle either side of this and repeat until all needles are on the main bed. This produces an interesting godet and the changing ribs mean the knitting width drops and produces a flare. You could also change this about for different effects.

After lunch it was Erica talking about her tuck lace skirt. The pattern for the skirt goes from a tuck diamond into EON fabric with a column of tucks - an interesting idea. Despite having a helper I somehow managed to mess it up a bit and got out of synch, also had to wait for the second card to become available. Kudos to Erica for doing all the punching she did, though - that was a LOT of punching! Ended up with a big hole in mine too somehow - the machine wasn't playing entirely fair methinks! There might be a picture but it's a rather embarrassing swatch to be honest!

We overran a bit so I only got a few gulps of coffee before going into my last class, which was a hands-on with Iris Bishop. I'm always telling folks to RTFM but I wasted time knitting a sample and didn't realise it continued on the second sheet. Duh - not even the staple clued me in. We did two techniques - knitting squares onto the purl side of a base fabric marked with a grid, and using columns and rows of lace holes to rehang the base fabric and produce mini hems that give a basketweave effect. Very effective and I did manage to get enough done to hopefully remind me about it later (pictures to follow)

I may have accidentally bought some James C Brett Marble chunky in peacock blues - Nick from Uppinghams was in attendance. Fatal (to my bank account).

The evening's entertainment was a chap from the "Colour me beautiful" people. He was very funny and had us in stitches. I think I have the book somewhere. Said he was Gok's dad - ie the Gokfather (groan).

Ojolly, I accidentally hit delete on your comment when I was trying to accept it. Am surfing in bed and my finger slipped - many apologies! Please feel free to comment again and I'll try not to be such a doofus next time! :)

Dream week, day 2 (Tuesday)

Today we started our personalised program. In the morning, I had Anne Smith of MKM talking about "Racy Raglans". She had started with the basic fully-fashioned way of decreasing, and gone onto various different methods producing different effects and come up with about 22 variations including mini cables and an arrowhead one - unfortunately we rather ran out of time. Also learnt that cardigan, balaclava and raglan all had military origins. We had a bit of a giggle because she mounted her samples upside down and they rather looked like bikini bottoms!

After lunch, I had a hands-on with Anne Brown of Posh Frocks fame - knit a simple shrug in 90 minutes. It was a straight strip of 800 rows and I had chosen to wear my blue lambswool dress, so was sweating buckets by the end of it. It was made with Uppinghams baby 4ply and killed - I started the sewing up during the class but ran out of time. Two people managed to complete it, though! One knits for a living I think. I just wished I had a motor! The noise was unbelievable when 10 people are in full flow.

Last class of the day was a talk by Iris Bishop about plaids and checks. She showed us some wonderful samples using knitweave and other techniques - and today I've a hands on with her so can hopefully try some of them out for myself. It amazes me where she gets all of her ideas from.

When I got back to the hotel, mmryse borrowed my laptop for a bit whilst I sewed up the rest of my shrug, and whilst I got changed she wove in the ends for me, meaning I could wear it for dinner over my evening dress. It turned out really well - will photograph it at some point for the blog and for Rav.

I won another bottle of wine, and the woman sitting next to me (whose ticket I was looking after) also won - so two bottles of wine for our table! Might refrain from voting today, give someone else a chance! After dinner, Nick from Uppinghams gave us a great talk about the various yarns and things he has available and handed them around. He also does things for spinners, I had no idea you could get acrylic as tops.

Had a message that my recalcitrant mid gauge carriage has no problem talking to the seller's PC10. So I'm a bit stymied as to why it won't work with my kit.

Starter's orders

Well, I'm at the Metropolitan Dream Week this week. Arrived at the hotel yesterday around 11am and almost instantly met a fellow Raveller from Holland, mmryse. She's lovely and we hit it off straight away. My room is a lovely one overlooking fields and the bed is a pseudo-four poster (it has drapes at the back). First "talk" was by Karabee Designs - she handed round lots of variegated yarns eg Wendy Happy, King Cole Zigzag and Riot (which is lovely - not seen it in the flesh before). She showed us interesting swatches in these yarns, including ones that were tuck/slip combinations - only doable on Brother and Toyota machines automatically, alas.

I voted for two garments being worn by other people, and this year voting might win you a bottle of wine - and I got a bottle of red! How cool is that? The evening meal was lovely and then we were treated to a fashion show by Anne Brown of Posh Frocks - lovely classic garments with drape. Wish mine came out like hers (and wish I was 6ft and slim, too, haha!)

Classes start in earnest today, so gotta dash, got to dry my hair and go to breakfast.

It's alright, baby's coming back

Well, I bloody hope so, anyway. The SK860 mid gauge carriage is all packed and ready to go back to the seller tomorrow. It doesn't want to talk to the EC1, and I've tried everything to make it happen, but have failed. I DID manage to get fairisle out of it - once, a few weeks back - but it took a few attempts. I put that down to my own inexperience with this machine. But, two extra side levers and a slightly rearranged cam layout isn't exactly a big technological jump from the SK840 std gauge.

Tuesday night I had some free time and thought I'd try a tuck lace scarf, and because it involves non-working needles I needed to run the carriage without knitting to figure out which needles to lose. But as soon as the "set up" rows were done - the carriage is passed past two magnets twice, to tell it the width of the knitting - the EC1 refused to respond, almost as if the carriage wasn't connected. Swapping cables and magnets made no difference. Made a few 'phonecalls the next day, and a suggestion was to clean the sensors with surgical spirit, which I did - got quite a lot of black, which is surprising when it's only been used in the last six weeks or so. Tried again - and now the EC1 will read the first row (so that's a slight improvement) but then it will not feed down on the next pass - so the EC1 can "see" the carriage, but it can't tell if it's changed direction. So - great if I want vertical stripes, but a bit crap for anything else.

I compared its underside to the SK840 (which has no such problems with the EC1, despite the advanced age of both pieces of kit) and I cannot see anything amiss. I think the SK860 build isn't quite as good - some of the magnets aren't quite square, and the directional magnet on one side appears to sit slightly further out than its neighbour - but these are VERY minor details and I'm only nit-picking here - I cannot understand why it won't work.

As I don't think I know anyone else with a similar machine I can test it out on, it's off on a holiday of its own next week, in the opposite direction. I wanted to use it tonight, so I'm feeling rather out of sorts. £24 to post it, and £75 to repair the car's front windscreen (and it turns out mine's not even the fancy heated option, which actually explains a lot) - I've gotten through almost £100 this month already and haven't even paid any bills yet. That has to be some sort of record for me!

Fingers crossed the carriage can be repaired or replaced - I've insured it for £500, because apparently that's the replacement cost. Have double-boxed it though, so it should be ok.

PS The post title is a song by the Eurhythmics, in case you were wondering!