Swatching about

I often demonstrate my knitting machine in places where folks won't be familiar with its capabilities, and I realised a book of swatches would be good. I don't often keep the garments I make, as they go to charity, so I don't always have samples of particular techniques. The lace workshop last week got me started - I mounted all of the samples on paper, with labels. I dug out a few more samples of other things I've had pinned up for ages in the knitting room. So saturday I decided to fill in the gaps, which meant carefully removing the current lace project from the machine. I had great fun trying out some patterns from Stitchworld. I've never tried thread lace before (a kind of fairisle where a fine yarn is knitted in some places, and both the fine and main yarn is knitted elsewhere). I've never done intarsia using that machine, nor plating, nor plated tuck. I also ironed out some bugs with my colour changers. Turns out you are supposed to make an adjustment to the KRC if you are going to use it on the machine when the ribber is engaged - and yes, it's in the manual, I just never spotted it before. Also, my KHC does not like the tuck brushes. You are supposed to add tuck brushes - but doing this just picks up massive loops of yarn which get snarled around the brushes and leave you with the carriage jammed in the middle of the bed. So I tried leaving them off - and it works just fine. So sometimes you can't just slavishly follow the manual!

Also sometimes you need to start a pattern from the opposite end of the bed to where you'd think - it doesn't help that sometimes this is at the back of the manual, and I have both punchcard and electronic brothers where it's not always the same. I'm going to work up some simple "cheat sheets" for both machines, and if they are any good I'll share them here. A lot easier than wading through the manual.

No pictures of the swatches yet, because I haven't taken any. I will try and take some tonight and modify the post.

Yesterday I went to the Big Textile show, and within moments was making a Morsbag - what a great idea! I had never even heard of them. It really made me want to dig my sewing machine out again, too. Lots of lovely arty stuff to look at, and excellent cake in the cafe. Thanks to C for taking me along, it was a fun day!

Oh, and turns out my blog only made a noise to me, some kind of malware on this computer. After a quick clean up of Chrome, it seems to be fixed now.