Busy doing nothing...

Apologies for the dearth of posts lately... The change to GMT always affects my ability to do more than tread water - it being dark when I finish at 4.30pm, it's all I can do to cook and keep the house sanitary of an evening. So far my sleep is ok, but I seem to get tired earlier. Though handknitting is happening - it's a much "cosier" activity in front of the tv, don't you think? I think I need to drastically reduce the contents of the knitting room. I seem to have amassed a lot of books and patterns that I'll probably never get around to using, many of them from estate donations. This has a two-fold effect - I can't locate the patterns I DO wish to knit (the Posh Frock cardigan that seems to hide a lot is currently missing again), and then I end up getting sidetracked looking at other patterns and disheartened when I can't find something that matches up with either the yarn I want to use or the mental image of what I want to produce. I've got a large green ringbinder full of self-published patterns that I "might want" to make at some point, but clearly I don't want to enough! I think I may scan the "maybes" and donate the rest to TWAM. Consequently, after an hour of sensory overload and a bit of tidying up / sorting, nothing much gets done! Ugh!

I was recently lucky enough to buy a hardly-used Brother KH965 which had been upgraded to the KH965i (it means it has a port I can connect to DAK). For various reasons, it's been haunting the living room ever since, whilst I found the time to dig out the KH950i acquired in 2009, steal its spongebar and check that that machine is complete enough to be donated or sold on. Surprisingly, the KH950i is MUCH heavier than the KH965i. As the main difference between the two is the lack of a mylar sheet reader, I can only assume they fashioned the reader out of a house brick! As the KH950i arrived ignomiously smashed, wrapped only in a refuse sack (yes, the seller was at fault, not the delivery company), it's lucky it's working at all. It's been a great little machine and I hope to find it a loving new home. In the meantime, the new addition was put through its paces with a little patterned "air knitting" and all is well, so I will assume the rest of it is fine too for now. Of course, now I want to get it set up, despite having done a bunch of swatches on the 260K machine which is currently up, because I found a bunch of garter stitch patterned jumpers. Argh! Oh, for a proper workroom where I could have more than two machines up at once! 

Asides from the crafting, xmas preparations are underway here. I jacked in the netball, because it didn't turn into a social thing in the end - more a being run ragged by thirty-somethings who learned not to throw the ball to me because I'm slower and rubbish - and am looking for something else to expand my social circle. Last night it was a very wet hike around the local area, which is apparently rich in history - I learnt none of it, alas - I think the lead walker's notes dissolved! I guess most of us were grateful to keep moving and warm. Today we awoke to falling snow. I may try joining a local choir next. After all my failed attempts to meet new local like-minded people, I'm beginning to think it's not meant to be. I feel somewhat bereft that my almost-sister-in-law moved away, but we rarely saw them anyway. Oh well! Perhaps I need to accept my lot, and hibernate in GMT. 

Current mood: lethargic

Electronic knitting machines for beginners

There seems to be lots of confusion regarding electronic knitting machines, so I figured an article explaining what it's all about would be a good idea!

First and foremost, an electronic machine does NOT do the knitting for you. You will still have to move the carriage side to side manually. If you want to automate that process, you need a drive or motor. They are like hen's teeth to get hold of, and they mount above the machine on a big frame, and you hook the carriage handle up to them. I've only ever seen the Silver one for sale in person once, and it was £1000. Brother had something similar but they're only rarely available second hand. The Passap E6000 can have a drive fitted which extends the machine by a good 600mm on the right hand side, and the back lock plugs into it. I'm thinking of the Electra 4600 here, there are other earlier models I'm not familiar with. Again, it was sold seperately, and is very hard to get on its own.

An electronic machine is identical in every way to the punchcard machine except that it can knit pattern repeats other than just the usual 12st, 24st, or other mechanical variant (depends on your machine). So if you wanted to knit a stitch pattern that was a 5 sts wide repeat, you could do it easily electronically - it doesn't divide easily into 24. If you want to knit a design that is 200 stitches wide, you could do it as long as you have that many needles (and that much patience - I'd be using Designaknit here). Obviously, the next question is how to program this in.

Brother (aka Knitking / Compuknit in the US)

Some Brother electronics came with built-in mylar sheet readers. This is a plastic sheet, usually 60 sts wide, that you colour in using a special black ink pen. The machine itself would read this sheet in and memorise it to its memory or RAM. You could put more than one design on the sheet if you wanted to. You could also split larger designs into columns and rows, and program it in a particular order. As long as the machine has enough RAM, you can program pretty large patterns. Early machines only had these readers, and they could be quite temperamental. The mylar sheet reader read black or white squares.

Any Brother electronic with i in the model name, has a special port which can be used to connect to both the Brother PPD (a programming device) and the modern Designaknit (DAK) software via a special cable. The KH950 and 965 came in both variants, and an upgrade kit could be bought to convert them to the i (replacing the whole electronics part and adding that extra port). 

The Brother KH950i socket

A PPD

PPD onscreen display

Floppy disk drive

Some Brother electronics came with cartridge ports. These are along the lines of the old console game systems - you could use the PPD to program the cartridge which has some memory in it, and then plug the cartridge into the machine. The PPD itself is basically a very early computer, with cursor keys and black and white buttons. It connected to a TV via the analogue aerial port, so you could create patterns on screen and save them to the cartridge - there are even rudimentary copy and paste functions, though it's very tricky without a mouse. There was also an additional disk drive (FB100) which used a very early 3.5" floppy disk format. I think it may have been possible to connect the FB100 directly to the knitting machine if it was an "i" model, otherwise you had to load the floppy disk designs onto the cartridge via the PPD. You could read designs TO and FROM the cartridge using a command line style screen, and you could also transfer patterns TO and FROM the knitting machine memory itself.

The KH965 is also on-the-fly programmable, ie black and white buttons and cursor keys. 

All of the later Brother machines had built-in libraries of stitch patterns, and they are programmed as if on a sheet of graph paper, exactly how they appear in the Stitchworld books. This means you can use part of a pattern, or even some of the pattern and the white space around it, to generate new patterns. These machines also had pattern variation buttons, allowing you to mirror, change the height and/or width, or invert the colours, and it's also possible to split a 2 colour pattern for double-bed jacquard. 

Silver (aka Knitmaster, Studio, Empisal, Singer depending on locale).

Silver machines were a lot more modular. They never came with built-in stitch libraries. Early ones had pattern variation buttons, eg reverse direction, double-width/height, mirror etc, that would work with mylar sheets that are very similar to the Brother ones except they are printed in red, not blue (and the start line is slightly different). The later ones (eg SK840) are completely "brainless" - the only electrical part about them is a cable and its socket on the carriage. This means that they need other additional devices to program them, otherwise any patterning is manual. 

The EC1 looks like an old dot matrix printer, except it reads 60st wide mylar sheets marked in pencil (this device reads shinyness). You ran it, powered, alongside your knitting machine. It has the variation buttons as above, and it's basically an electronic version of a punchcard, reading line by line as you knit. This could be further extended with the addition of a PE1 (Pattern Extender). This took a special memory card, which you could read and write to, and has a 5 line LCD display that meant you could double-check any pattern read into it from a mylar sheet. The PE1 is no use on its own, it only worked when plugged into the EC1. A later development was the short-lived PC10, which combined the EC1 and PE1 in one box - it also contained all the original Silver mylar sheets programmed in. However, a major downside was that there was no way to connect it to anything modern data-wise (eg USB or DAK) - the only media it took was an old compact flash card format. Needless to say, it flopped!

EC1

PE1

PC10

You can opt to send patterns only with a Silverknit box - this uses a small piece of software to transmit stitch patterns ONLY directly from your computer. You can also purchase a Silverlink cable - this is the cables to talk to DAK, plus a silver box which is the memory needed to store the information. This is why the Silverlink cable is more expensive than the cables for the other machines. 

I'm not going to cover Superba, Toyota or Passap/Pfaff here because I'm not familiar with them. The electronic machines can all be used with DAK as long as the correct cable is purchased; most punchcard machines can also work with DAK but only for garment shaping, the patterning remains mechanical. However, if you don't want to take the DAK route there are other options such as the AYAB board, arduino, Img2track and other "hacks". 

This is a brief explanation of various options, the dotted line is because the PE1 is optional. Cables don't neccessarily download AND upload, it depends on the model.

FO: mobile phone sleeve, Etsy and other things

This probably looks pretty underwhelming but it fits the 'phone well (and I'm too lazy to dig out another camera just to take a picture of it in use, sorry!). 50 stitches on the Brother KH950i at T6 with some hand-manipulated cables. This was knitted during a one day event I organised at the Alex on Sunday just gone. I helped E knit a penny sock and C did a bit of fairisle and tuck. If you're local you can subscribe to my local events on the right hand side of this post, and even if you're not local I run a monthly machine knitting zoom and a whatsapp group, please sign up and join us!

Nobody will have probably noticed, but I've taken my three machine knitting crash course leaflets offline for the time being. Apparently I've made more than 2000 sales or too much money - neither are true, but I suspect Etsy has just sent a blanket email to everyone rather than do any maths - because I now need to register as a sole trader and get a tax code, even though I doubt I made more than 15 sales of £1.30 in a year (Etsy gets the extra 30p). As I've no idea how or if I want to go to the hassle of setting myself up with a tax code, it's all parked for now. I might well offer the leaflets for free anyway. Not sure yet! I've nothing against paying tax (I already do, being in full time employment), it's just a hassle I could do without right now because presumably once I register I have to do an annual tax return (even though I'm well under the £1k a year threshold). So, well done HMRC - though to be fair, this is an international thing - nobody seems to be in a hurry to chase down anyone big (with the exception of Apple). As the Etsy market was already flooded with lots of sellers selling scans (many of which are already available for free from the MKmanuals site), and the rest being copyrighted material that shouldn't be legally resold in such a manner, I was already swimming with the scum, so what is the point? I give up! As for selling the socks online, well, people would much rather buy store-bought and short-lived alas.

The weather seems to be mirroring my mood - wet, grey and grumpy!

Current mood: cynical

Playing with cables, and pyjamas for a rhino

So not a title I ever thought I'd use, but there you go! I think I purchased Bill King's excellent book all about machine knitting cables not long after it came out, and thought I'd have a bit of a play with it. As always, I had the urge to jump in around page 30, which probably explains my initial lack of success, but I did get there in the end!

First up was what I'm going to term "missing needles" all over cables. The sample above is worked over 20 needles at T8 (MT+2 for this yarn, which is a 4ply acrylic). It's worked by moving stitches 3 and 4 (I counted from the end nearest the live yarn and carriage) onto the empty needles immediately outside the knitting (and towards the carriage). Then move stitches 8 and 7 into the gap left (which crosses them over stitches 6 and 5), repeat all along the bed. Knit 5 rows, and then do the same crosses but in the opposite direction. This produces S cables, because 20 divides by 4, so you are always moving the same stitches back and forth.

My second attempt was over 18 stitches - same again, but at the end of the cross you will have two stitches and a gap of two needles. I just moved them in so as not to generate a ladder. Knit 5 rows, and cable towards the carriage every time, and then your crosses will always be in the correct direction. This produces an attractive celtic braid, and because 18 doesn't divide by 4 you are now alternating the needles you're moving.

I decided this might make quite a nice hairband, if I crossed every 3 rows instead of 5, so made this - somewhat pressed, to make it lie flat, it's now waiting for some elastic! I started and ended with about 20 rows of stocking stitch at T6 and then cabled for 108 rows - luckily I can figure out my three times table this high, though 81 always feels like a prime number to me for some reason...

This was a short attempt to work a 6 x 6 cable, using the ribber "press off" technique to generate extra localised yarn before the cross. In the book one is supposed to move six stitches over 2, knit 2 rows, and repeat a further two times. I think perhaps I didn't add enough needles on the ribber bed (the book indicates two isolated stitches, perhaps it should be read as 3 stitches together?) because there was no way I could cross 6 over 2, but I managed 6 over 1, 6 times. I think the technique needs another attempt, because clearly it was working! I didn't take a picture of the back but you get horizontal "floats" of the poor, tortured stitch that is moved.

And finally, the rhino - Bertie (Roberta), a colleague's daughter's toy, needed some pyjamas, so I ended up drafting a pattern for some by hand. Not quite the rever collar I had hoped for, but she's a very strange shape and "modern" jersey pyjamas would have been permanent, owing to the size of her head!

I've also got a new definition of annoyed - knitting up to the second buttonhole on a top-down cardigan (Drops Agnes), some 4", only to realise that said buttonholes are on the "wrong" side for a woman. Oh well, it was a good test run of the pattern I suppose!!

Current mood: annoyed

KCG AGM 2024

Well, time is gradually healing my mood, though grieving for a friendship so cruelly dropped will take a little longer. So... work is tricky at the moment, as I teeter between anger and avoidance, distrust and pity. But my sleep has improved and I guess time will cure all in the end, one way or another. I get more independance to travel to work with better music (and I actually get in on time now, which I prefer!) so I'm focussing on the positives! I did accidentally talk myself into getting a new laptop, although in terms of RAM it's identical and so far it's refused to let me install anything on it beyond Teams and Outlook so I'm not hopeful! 

I took a friend down to the annual Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM weekend, this year in High Leigh Hall, Hoddesdon. The drive down was ok until we got to the M25 and the A roads in London during rush hour. I had forgotten the insane and impatient car drivers seem to congregate further south! Anyway, we made it with about half an hour to spare before the opening meeting and then off to the dining room for a very nice dinner (I had beef curry). The after dinner speaker was Vicki Haffenden - alas we were both very tired so made directly for bed afterwards, which is when I discovered I'd be using my ensuite without a lightbulb! 

Saturday morning we had a keynote speaker, Sue Maton, and then the AGM. After lunch, I had a class with Vicki all about holding position - we had a two-sided handout but alas I could really have used instructions for some of the samples she'd brought. It was interesting, but I may skip machine knitting classes next year because I'm not sure I learnt anything new (I managed to mess up anyway!). We were interrupted by enthusiastic crafters wanting to pick over the yarn amnesty (leftover knitting and croche items donated to raise funds for the Guild). After dinner another talk by Lily Kate France. Again we were too tired to hang around for drinks, which is a pity.

Sunday morning (having slept badly) I did a quick walk around the lake, after being waylaid for various other reasons. It's a very nice site (though I never did find the cave!). After checking out and loading up the car, we had a show and tell which was amazing - so much inspiration! After lunch I had a go at "lacis crochet" with Helen Jordan, a very interesting circular crochet pattern that would make amazing shawls, and after lunch there was a raffle. I didn't win anything but I was quite relieved because a few of the prizes were tickets to Ally Pally and I've already got a ticket for that! All too soon it was over - we decided to take A roads back, which may or may not have been a good idea. At one point the heavens opened so heavily that people were pulling off the road. I kept going (but slowly) and after twenty scary minutes we were back in full sunshine. Yep, it's definitely autumn!

Current mood: moody

Black dog

Apologies for the lack of content on here lately. The situation that started my mental funk didn't improve any (to be fair it's with a work colleague's behaviour, so not within my control) so the black dog has been snapping at my heels a bit lately. Never fear, I'm getting the help I need. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon using my overlocker (US serger) turning an old but frayed bath towel into floor and general cleaning cloths, and managed to successfully rethread with black after one attempt. It looks like a black animal has been shedding fluff down one end of the living room, but hoovering is for another day.

I will be back, never fear, but would appreciate your thoughts and hugs in the meantime. 

Current mood: cynical

Just press play

Well, it's been an interesting few weeks, none of which had to do with my creative side - it does stop my creative side from happening though. And no, Anonymous (previous post), I didn't invent the Ravellenic games just for fun. Someone at Ravelry came up with it quite a while ago. It was originally called the Ravelympics until a ceast and desist from the IOC meant a name change (though they did later apologise, you don't want to mess with outraged crafters!). For my part I'm sure the Greeks would be on our side, Mount Olympus being a place, but rules is rules, and Ravellenic was voted the most popular alternative title. It's now all rather ironic seeing as Tom Daley shared a post of another lovely sweater he made during the games, though I do think he needs to learn the difference between intarsia and fairisle. The floats he gave himself around the lower edge of that sweater for the various flags are just begging to get snagged on fingers and pulled out of shape! So anyway, the Ravellenic games run alongside the Olympics; the idea is that one casts on during the opening ceremony, should it concur with your time zone, and to challenge oneself to complete at least one project before the closing ceremony. No monetary prizes are awarded, it's all just a bit of fun, and the "medals" for tagged events (eg sock heptathlon, sweater long jump) and "laurels" (for specific techniques eg beading, cables) are just fun pictures to save, download and share. The machine knitting team named itself Team Rise of The Machines after the Terminator movie of the same name and it stuck... and I usually design the team logo just because of my background in graphics.  

Incidentally, the title is a sideways tribute to one of my favourite songs, by one of my favourite bands. I was sorry to learn that Aerosmith is no longer touring due to ongoing problems with Steven Tyler's voice. There's a price to pay for being the Demon of Screamin', alas. 

Anyroad, thanks to the mental funk, I've just not felt up to doing much - couple that with a 10 day heatwave, and manhandling yarn in an upstairs room that feels like it's doubling as a pizza oven just isn't my preferred way of spending time. 

My good friend C recently gifted me with one of her Ebay purchases - a Knitmaster 260k machine. It was naked of everything except its empty accessories box, so I'm gradually putting it all back together so it can become a second workshop machine. I discovered to my chagrin last week that Brother and Knitmaster C clamps are NOT interchangeable - the latter are thinner, so the Brother ones literally won't slide into the slots. I scrambled, as my monthly club meeting was about to start, and used the ribber clamps from my SRP60N in the end, mostly because accessing the ribber box was quicker than trying to dig out the SK840 itself (and one of those clamps keeps falling off anyway, I think the thread is worn beyond repair). So after last week's disastrous attempt to demonstrate machine lace (the lace carriage drums were seized, all good again thanks to one of Ask Jack's great videos!), I thought it was time to put the machine through its paces. Alongside all that, I rediscovered a box of punchcards acquired from an estate sale. They're in one of those old vinyl boxes, very similar to the much beloved cases of my late father and his audio cassette collection. Reading the manuals (something I fail to do as often as I should), certain devices call for the ribber clamps anyway - my YC6 seems to have a single ribber clamp in the box, no idea where the other one is! 

Anyway, the first card up was a hand-punched card that just said chunky slip 901. It was mostly holes but with some unpunched alternating strips. It knits a very striking slip stitch fabric, somewhat akin to holding position in random places (but holding creates tucks, slip just means the stitches stay hanging on the machine whilst knitting happens around them). I think there's a version of this called "tea cosy stitch", which was how those old traditional striped tea cosies were knitted. It works well as long as you never have end needles slipping, because things hanging up on ends is a bit of an issue for weighting reasons.

Second up was a mystery card - it said two colour single bed slip, but other than trying to read the pattern or enter it into DAK, the quickest way to read it is to knit it. After about 20 rows being one row out, I discovered someone had attempted to replicate a fairly standard dogtooth check pattern - alas the pattern had errors, so went into the bin. Single bed slip like this is a not-often used technique, only Passaps have to do fairisle like this because they've only the one yarn feeder in use at a time. 

The third card was a bit of fun - I've two very long cards punched with dragons and yin-yang symbols. I'd like to transfer this into DAK and do some float control. Or this could be a great technique for ladder back DBJ - something I need to explore more! This would make an amazing sweater, I do wish I had some provable Welsh or Japanese ancestry!

Pulling the leading end needle out forces the second yarn to knit to the edges and eliminates tangles and other problems. 

The final card was a bit of a punt. The machine in question came with no punch cards, and although I've got a set which will work with the main bed, the lace cards I thought I'd found for it turn out to be for a two carriage lace system, and I couldn't find any Knitmaster lace cards to try. I eventually found a card someone had punched which at least proved that the lace carriage is now working. I've a dodgy needle to remove, and all of the needles need removing and soaking, but it was, all in all, just what the doctor ordered in that it got my crafting mojo back a bit, even as far as filing some of my new samples into my lever arch collection! :) Next task, asides from the needle cleaning, is to test the machine with the ribber!

So, if you're in a crafting funk - just push play. The clouds may lift sooner than you think! 

Current mood: okay