Free pattern: Passap DBJ scarf

I realised I never actually shared the pattern for this. It makes a scarf approximately 23cm by 176cm long. A motor is recommended, otherwise maybe work it in sections to give yourself a break, it's quite the workout! 

Yarn: 2 ends of 3ply or equivalent in two colours
Machine: Passap E6000 or Duomatic

Program your E6000 as follows:

Pattern A: DBJ technique*
Pattern B: Desired stitch design, DBJ technique as before
Pattern C: DBJ technique same as pattern A

DBJ techniques: some time ago, I knitted a big swatch of techniques 180 to 194, an interesting exercise to see how different techniques alter the pattern's proportions and appearance. For this scarf I like tech 180 (birdseye backing) or tech 182, vertically striped backing. You will need the back bed pushers in work for this technique also. I found a plain backing had a tendancy to create holes / pockets in the front design, exactly like the issue with single motif knitting if the motif is not "bound in" with yarn of the same colour, so single colour backing techniques are to be avoided unless the stitch design is an overall random one with no large areas of contrast colour - in other words, don't use tech 181. If you want a larger, more holey scarf, you might also try tech 186, fantasy fairisle, which is N/KX - there's a faint reversible effect with this, but I feel it's overrated myself! 

Tech 180 = BX, both arrows in on back bed / LX (slip) on front bed (BX for Duomatics)
Tech 182 = BX, left arrow in, on back bed / LX (slip) on front bed (BX for Duomatics)

Cast on 2 over 60 sts - this is the tubular K/K or full needle rib cast on, so handle must be down. You should have both end needles on the back bed in work, so 61 needles on the back bed - this is to ensure that the edges are correctly sealed up. When casting on, the first row is ss 2/2, circular rows ss 3/3, final row is ss 5/5

Knit 8 rows pattern A ss5/5
Knit 1600 rows pattern B (first two rows are the background colour, second pair are the contrast colour ie the black squares in the pattern book). So here colour 1 is black, colour 2 is white.  
Knit 7 rows pattern C
Set locks to N/N and ss 8/8 - pulling down on the knitting as you knit this loose row. Don't let go, whilst changing to waste yarn or the other colour and resetting to ss5/5, knit 8 rows of waste yarn then scrap off. I use the latch tool to latch through the last row before unravelling the waste yarn. Weave in the ends and you're done. 

Although you could knit the first and last sections in plain K/K, I find this is thinner and tends to flare out a bit. Knitting sections A and C in self-coloured DBJ maintains the same width and density of the fabric. 

Productive weekend

Passap toque - I've made two of these now, and I suspect on my machine they'd be better worked over 152 sts and 150 rows.

Third time lucky hat - love this, worked really well!

Quick ribbed hats - another good pattern!

Scarf worked over roughly 80 sts with EON rib, ie ...I...I on both beds. Knitted until I ran out of yarn. Yarn ends have since been darned in!

I've been knitting these and claiming that they are from my pattern, but I think it's actually loosely based on a pattern from the Metbury Bitty book. In which case, my apologies! Because I love this heart and bird pattern, I made them a bit longer so that it's three full repeats. I also felt sure I'd knitted the three colour one a bit wider, because the red yarn was 4ply and made them a bit stiff, but alas I didn't write down what I did...

I had a good sort of yarn this weekend and discovered a massive box of yarn I'm never likely to knit with that can be donated to Ruddington next weekend. I've only about 4 or 5 cones of yarn that are big enough that I should think of a jumper-sized project to knit with them. I still need to do a proper inventory - one box seems to be chock full of fancy yarns, another is weaving yarns, and one is just a big patchwork blanket of samples I never finished.

Does anyone else find themselves going out just for the sake of it lately? I'm in two minds - part of me wants to stay home and avoid any chance of catching COVID, and part of me is desperate for a return to normality. This weekend we popped into town to replenish some supplies from Rugby Unwrapped, return some machine knitted items to a friend, pick up my favourite photography magazine and get some lunch. I couldn't talk the Cog into coming out again to partake of the local real ale festival. Yesterday evening we took ourselves into Leamington, hoping to sample a Japanese restaurant, but it was fully booked - ended up at a rather nice Chinese instead, so it wasn't all bad (plus there's more for tea tonight!)

Current mood: energetic

Experiments with double jacquard

If you are lucky enough to own a Passap E6000 you'lll know there are about 15 built-in variations of double jacquard, all of which produce a different texture and proportion of patterns. I thought I'd experiment and document my samples here, for future use. I love the fact that there's such variation in them - chequerboard backing, plain backing, vertical stripes, bumpy tucks.

Tech 180

Tech 181

Tech 182

Tech 183

Tech 184

Tech 185

Tech 186

Tech 187

Tech 188

Tech 189

Tech 190

Tech 191

Tech 192

Tech 193

Tech 194

Not much else to report lately. Easter went from pleasantly sunny to freezing cold, seemingly in the space of a day. I attended an in-person First Aid requalification course, and was never so grateful for my "cozy prison" having kept my coat on for two solid days - they had to have the windows open for covid reasons, and it was trying to snow outside. Not fun! I was lucky enough to catch up with a work colleague in a park that happens to be roughly halfway for both of us. 

Shops are reopening on the 12th. The enforced break in consumer habits has made me realise I don't actually really need much. Though I may treat myself to some more paintbrushes...

Oh, and I am knitting jumper number 4 from the black chenille - a variation on an old Kangamoo pattern, but on the standard gauge. I'll blog about that when it's finished. 

Current mood: amused

Lockdown staycations and birthdays

Last week, the Cog and I had a nice "staycation", mostly visiting the parks in local towns, and popping to the odd farm shop. There are a few nice ones in the area.

Some finished objects:

I couldn't make head nor tail of the assembly instructions for this, so fudged it as best I could. This is rather snuggly!

This needs a bit of steaming to set the hems, but is otherwise finished. Alas, as I continue to WFH, getting the iron out will only happen if I start sewing again!

The weaving came out again, leading me to lust after a folding floor loom that I do not have room for. This has been packed away for seven months, as this is the table the Cog has been working from.

I finally had a go at programming letters on the Passap. These are photographed in the order they were attempted - I misread the code for N because I didn't have my glasses on! If you program one letter wrong you have to start again I think. Anyway, it really tickled me that I figured it out. Next step is to figure out how to stop it repeating, if that's possible.

I originally got into machine knitting because I was inspired to knit double-bed jacquard scarves; I forget where I saw them now, but a designer was selling customised ones and that just tweaked my interest. I can confidently say, dbj isn't for the faint-hearted, and it's still not a technique I do a lot of on the Japanese machines. But the Passap does at least make it pretty easy.

Yes, my birthday is now associated with the day the lockdown started in the UK last year. Meh, as if the Act of Enablement wasn't bad enough. I had lots of lovely cards, flowers by post, lovely meals and some nice gifts. It would be so nice to do something normal for a birthday, that could include friends. Never mind, at least everyone's in the same boat I guess. 

Current mood: loved

Using modified double bed jacquard to control floats in a design

When the knitting machine manuals talk about double-bed jacquard, it's always full needle rib, which tends to mean finer yarns. The more colours you use, the thinner the yarns have to be - 4 colours requires 4 ends of 1ply - otherwise the knitting will be so stiff it won't knit off correctly. But there's a technique using only limited needles on the ribber bed, which allows you to convert fairisle designs with lots of floats into designs backed with a contrast yarn web - ideal for keeping fingers away from floats and damaging the knitting. Because you're using a lot less needles on the ribber bed, 4 ply yarns can be used, and the resulting tension is very similar to stocking stitch. I've seen it described briefly in "The Machine Knitter's Design Book" (Hazel Pope), and with a diagram in "Machine Knitter's Guide to Creating Fabrics" (Weissman, Lewis). It's something that's been on my "must-try" list for ages. Of course, doing it when I am pushed for time only ended up in a lot of knitting hitting the floor, and dbj being what it is, it's easier to start again.

The principle is this - you have all needles in work on the main bed, but only certain needles on the ribber bed - every 4th needle, perhaps. The ribber needles knit up the floats, and keep them under control. Because you are only knitting a few needles on the ribber bed, you can use your 4ply yarns and the tension is pretty much the same as for standard fairisle/stocking stitch, so you can use this for small areas of patterning on a plain sweater. You tend to get faint lines on the public side of the garment - if you are knitting a pattern with lots of verticals you can place these in such as way as to emphasise the verticals.

These instructions are for Brother electronic machines, but it would work on other machines I'm sure. Punchcard machine owners will have to repunch the pattern card for DBJ.

Method:

1. Get some stocking stitch established on the machine (MT=8), and end with the carriage on the far left (on the rails, beyond the turn mark). Replace the sinker plate for the ribber arm connector and ribber carriage. Set ribber to slip in both directions, and set to half pitch.
2. Install the colour changer. Set the machine to KRC not KH so it will convert the pattern to double bed jacquard.  Load your pattern. Press the orange button, this will show you which yarn feeder you should be using. Install the contrast yarn in feeder 2
3. Set the carriage to KC1 (3pm) (end needle selection ON) and knit one row in main yarn (MY), COR
4. Push both part buttons in, and knit back to the right.
5. Select contrast yarn (CY) and set ribber to knit both directions, RT = 4
6. Put every 4th needle on the ribber into work (ribber must be at half pitch) - when selecting needles, it's best to work outwards from the centre, and ideally you also want a ribber needle near both ends of the piece; knit 1 row carefully, hang ribber comb and weights, knit 1 row
7. Select MY and set ribber to slip in both directions, knit 2 rows
8. Select CY and set ribber to knit both directions, knit 2 rows
9. Repeat rows 7 & 8 until pattern is completed. Use the 7 hangers as necessary to maintain the weight on the ribber stitches. 
10. Hang ribber stitches onto corresponding main bed needles, ensuring that they stay IN FRONT of the main yarn stitch so that they do not show through on the front. Drop the ribber bed and replace the sinker plate for stocking stitch and carry on with main yarn only. 

Notes: 

1. I always changed colour and THEN changed the ribber settings - so background, both switches up, knit 2 rows, contrast, both switches down, knit 2 rows. 
2. KCii works ok for balanced fairisle patterns, but on my machine it would immediately strip the knitting off (from the right hand side) for patterns with large areas of colours. Also, the mesh backing is only attached at the colour changer end, so you would have to catch the right hand side in somehow when making up the garment. KCi works for all patterns so is the preferred "safe" option, plus end needle selection ensures that the mesh is attached at both ends. 
3. You might find adding the fine knit bar helps. I'm not sure about the end stitch presser plates. 
4. Knit dbj fairly slowly - you're asking the machine to do a LOT of work, and going too fast will result in errors in the patterning. When I stopped and visually checked every row, the needle selection was perfect. 
5. The ribber should be set to a higher tension than the main bed - I ended up using T8 on the main and T3 on the ribber bed. It's also worth washing your swatches, because washing revealed some rather unsightly ladders when I was too loose on the ribber. In other words, the knitting had a kind of ribbed effect where the contrast yarn peeked through the knitting in stripes. 
6. I tried hanging the heels of the previous main yarn row on the ribber, and then had to frog back and rehang after a mistake, and ended up with a neat row of holes in my knitting, hence my suggestion that you allow the machine to create the first row of ribber stitches in the contrast yarn. It might just have been that I should have frogged back another two rows and re-knitted them.
7. Another tip - it can be a pain to keep having to restart your knitting when it goes wrong, so consider threading a lifeline through your knitting a few rows before starting this technique. I thread my double-eyed bodkin with ravel cord and thread it through every live stitch on the machine, and then use a clothes peg to peg it out of the way. It can be pulled out later with no effect on the knitting. 
8. DBJ patterns containing solid lines of colour won't work - there's not enough weight on the ribber and it tends to strip off the machine. So avoid solid lines of one colour in your designs. 

Now, this isn't quite the method given in the books. I would have preferred to use that method, because you can keep the ribber set permanently to knit one way, slip the other and you can just concentrate on changing colours every two rows. Every time I tried it, the knitting would strip from the machine from the right hand end. I'm going to have to work on it. It's in the two published books I mentioned above, with pictures of the back - you get ladders where the colours alternate, 1 row black, 1 row white. It's also an industrial technique I've seen on the insides of many supermarket sweaters. So it must be possible - I just haven't quite figured it out yet. My technique gives you a mesh backing made from the contrast yarn only, which keeps the floats under control.

You can see I tried both methods on the swatch below - it's a pre-programmed stitchworld pattern that is unsuitable for fairisle as-is, due to the large areas of white:



If you look at the right side, you can see small ladders in the first few rows (using the alternate colour backing technique). Using the method detailed above seems to remove these ladders.

Experiments with double-bed jacquard

I created a DBJ cheat sheet based on a handout I used to have, not sure who did it originally. I've added two of my own versions - reversible and vertical lined backing. These were all done on the SK840/SRP60N, so I cannot produce the reversible version, as Silver machines do not pre-select for the next row. There are some pictures of a previous experiment with reversible backing here and here.

Two-row backing


Front


Back

Two-row backing tends to elongate the pattern somewhat, so you might have to adjust your pattern to compensate.

One-row backing


Front


Back

Plain backing


Front


Back

Bird's eye backing


Front


Back

Vertical striped backing


Front - went a bit wrong and dropped some stitches


Back

Reversible DBJ - more information

Daria left a comment:

"At first I want to apologize for my bad english. I'm sorry for that! My mother is a enthousiastic knitter with the knitter machine, but she doesn't understand your explanation of reversible knitting. I tried to translate your explanation to her, with no sense. She still doesn't understand it, because I don't have a lot knowlege about revisible knitting, even about knitting itself! I find it hard explain to her what she has to do. That's why I am asking your help. Could you explain everything on an easier way, so she could be able to knit a shawl?"

The original post is here

First of all, you need to be able to create ordinary double-bed jacquard with your machine. You need to familiarise yourself with this technique, otherwise the rest of the instructions will make no sense.

Normal DBJ on a knitting machine either has a striped backing, a plain backing, or if using the KR850 and lili buttons, a bird's eye backing.

I'll list the steps on a Brother machine - this only works on pre-selecting machines, eg Brother and Toyota.

1) Cast on for full needle rib, as per manual: knit 1 row (zigzag row) at T0, hang comb and weights, set main carriage to T1, slip/part left, ribber carriage T1, slip/part right. Knit 2 or 3 circular rows.
2) Cancel both slip settings. Knit a few rows full needle rib, ending carriage on left.
3) Set main carriage to KC (read the card). Put DBJ punchcard into slot and LOCK the punchcard on row 1. Knit 1 row to right.
4) Unlock punchcard, and set main carriage to slip both ways (both PART buttons in).
5) This is where the reversible patterning starts - set the ribber carriage to slip both ways ALSO. Pull up every needle that is opposite a gap on the main bed. For example:



(where I is a selected needle and o is a needle in normal position)

However, the machine must be set to HALF pitch, not full pitch, for full needle rib to work (otherwise the MB and RB needles will jam) - so in actual fact, the ribber is offset by half a needle:

(A) RB needles selected immediately to RIGHT of last selected MB needle in each group



This arrangement would also be valid:

(B) RB needles selected immediately to LEFT of last selected MB needle in each group



It doesn't matter which ribber needles you pick, as long as you are consistent, ie always follow rule (A) or (B).

6) Knit across to left, and into colour changer. Select next colour, and hand-select ribber needles as in step 5. Knit 1 row.

So, once you have got going, the sequence is:

Knit to right, select RB needles opposite empty MB needles.
Knit to left, change colour, select RB needles opposite empty MB needles.


Picture of machine during knitting. I pull the ribber needles fully upwards, so that I can quickly see if I have selected the right needles.

Caveat: This is a VERY time consuming method of producing reversible material. I've only ever done it just to prove it can be done, on small samples. You need to knit 4 rows in DBJ just to get two rows of actual knitting, and having to hand-select the ribber needles will make it take even longer.


Sample - reversible at bottom, striped backing at top.

For truly automatic reversible DBJ, you would need either a Passap E8000 (has computer-selected pushers on both beds) or a table-for-two like Wishknits used to produce - a special table and joining piece that allowed the user to connect two single bed machines opposite each other. I'd put the URL here, but they seem to have disappeared offline, alas.

As always, click for a bigger picture.

Vertical stripes in double bed jacquard

If your knitting machine has lili buttons (Brother KR850) or does the bird's eye backing (Silver Reed/Studio RJ1), you can fool it into knitting vertical stripes on the reverse.

Set your machine up to knit dbj as usual, remembering to have an even number of needles in work on the ribber bed. Set your machine up to knit the bird's eye backing.

Put up an extra needle each end for two rows and then drop them and knit two rows. The colour change would be in the middle of the two rows - so the sequence would be K to the right add one st each end, k to the left, change colour, k to the R, drop edge sts, k to the L, change colour. Repeat all four rows.

The added needles don't actually knit, so you are not increasing the size of your knitting. They just fool the lili selection.

Try not to answer the telephone in the middle like I did, or the stripes could get swapped! Oops!

Thanks to the members of the Yahoo! group knittingmachines for this one!

Reversible double-bed jacquard, and another LR square

I produced this on my chunky machine - you set the ribber carriage to slip both ways, and select all the ribber needles opposite non-selected main bed needles. As the beds are at half pitch, I picked the needles to the immediate right. It doesn't matter what you pick, as long as you are consistent. The coloured sections are technically a tube with one colour either side - the pattern locks them together, as it were.

If Brother were still making knitting machines, a built in "reversible" switch would be top of my wish-list (plus lili buttons for bird's eye backing on the chunky). This is all done by hand, so takes some time. It can only be done on machine such as Brother, which pre-select the pattern. You wouldn't be able to see which needles were selected on a Silver Reed.

DBJ settings:

Brother MB carriage - KC (KCII if available), part/slip both ways

Jacquard type	Method
2 row stripe	R carriage set to knit both ways, colours changed every 2 rows (2 cols only)
1 row stripe	R carriage set to K left, part/slip right
Plain backed	R carriage - K2 rows, part/slip 2 rows
Bird's eye	R carriage set to part/slip both ways, lili buttons and lili slide lever selected if available(can also set r carriage to tuck if required). Note if using lili buttons, there must be an even no of Ns in work on the ribber bed. If hand-selecting, ensure to select odds one row, evens the next.
Reversible	R carriage set to part/slip both ways, hand select RB needles opposite non-selected MB needles to D position

Another Lizard Ridge square - this is a gorgeous colourway! I'm tempted to start steaming some of these squares and sewing them together. But then I'm worried I won't like the arrangement when they're all together. Checked back on the handknit pattern, and you're only supposed to do 4 repeats of the pattern and not 5. Never mind, it means I can make the afghan wider and use less squares in the height (4 squares JSH style = 5 squares Knitty style!)