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KNITTING MACHINES
Before you get yourself a
knitting machine ask yourself a few questions. Can you decipher a
manual and come to teach yourself on what is required. Ask yourself what
weight of yarn you plan to use? Accordingly you can select your knitting machine.
It took me 6 months to learn to knit on the machine.
For machines with plastic beds
there is a
video with the manual. Punch card machines are simpler as the ‘how to’ manual
for the punch card and other accessories is accompanied by the video.
The two main brands of knitting machines are Brother
 and Passap.
Singer also makes a machine.
Machine gauge
Itself is different than stitch gauge and refers to how many mm there
are between needles.
A standard gauge, the fancier electronics like Brother and Studio's
non-hobby knitting machines, have 4.5 mm between each needle.
Standard gauge machines offer
machining of fine yarn to 4 ply or light double knit.
Besides standard machines (for finer yarns) you
have the mid-gauge and the bulky gauge machines.
Bulky gauge machines
are for the chunky yarn. However it also offers a range from worsted
yarn to the thicker categories. (for hand knitting yarns - 6
stitches to the inch or less)
The mid-gauge machines take the yarns
that are left between these two machines.
Midgauges have anywhere from 5 mm (Passap
which was also called their standard gauge) to 6.5 mm.
(Studio) to 7 mm (Bond's long discontinued Elite) between the needles.
The most common is 6.5 mm.
The bulky ones (Bond, Brother which is discontinued a few years now and
hard to find, and Studio) run 8 mm (Bond) to 9 mm (Brother, Studio).
There are also bulky machines
and extra fine machines, less common than standard 4.5 mm, and much more
expensive. There are also double bed machines (ribber is built in) which
have 5 mm needle spacing, such as Passap.
Plastic "hobby" knitting machines don't have ribbers available. Hobby machines
vary greatly in cost.
Studio went out of production in the US for a few years, but when
Brother decided to stop making them, they came back.
Passap went out of the Knitting Machine business everywhere and no
longer make parts to fix their knitting machines.
Mid-gauge knitting machines, those are more
primitive than what you can get in a standard or bulky.
That is, they often don't have the option of having a ribber attachment,
which means you have to do the ribbing by hand, or by "latching up",
which is time consuming.
There are several types of knitting machines.
There is the fine which is no longer
sold and you would have to buy used.
Home knitters tend to use the mid gauge and standard more.
The bulky is usually a 2nd knitting machine,
some only own a bulky and are quite happy. ( Like me )
You just need to determine the weight of yarns you knit with the most
and then get an appropriate knitting machine for that range.
The standard and bulky, as mentioned
above, and the mid gauge.
The mid gauge comes in all sizes from a knitting frame
(no options - everything has to be hand manipulated) to fancy electronic
models sold by Studio.
The Bond Elite (mid gauge) has an option of a ribber.
The Brother 350 and Studio LK150 are plastic bed modes that don't.
The studio 860 is a fancy electronic mid gauge with lots of options that
cover the range of everything from electronic patterning, knit contour,
links to design programs and, of course, a ribber.
If you are a learner then start
off with a simple machine. A simple knit machine is quite versatile. It
offers simple and fancy knit styles. At the beginner level the common
stitches like Fair Isle, tuck stitch, thread lace, double skip are
mostly available.
If you are looking to buy a
second hand or used knitting machine then look into newspapers or on the
web. There
will be hundreds of ads. It is a better bet if you get to
try the machine before you pay. Don’t restrict your
checking to the simple knitting condition. Look further if there is extra
rust. Try a few styles and check out the knitting of the needles to its
full length. Ask the seller to show you what the machine is capable of.
Than you know if everything is knitting fine. Electronic knitting machines are very agile and fast but
they are very difficult to understand. That is also the reason why so
many knitting machines are sold. The owners of the knitting machine give
up learning or can't knit on the machine. What a pity, you have to be
patience and understand it can't be learned in a few weeks. But when you
get the hang of it, it is great.
The main part of a knitting machine is the main
bed, and is the real heart of the machine.
The ribber attachment
 allows you to
do ribbing, and also double-bed knitting, which makes the garment look
like it has knit stitches on both sides of the fabric.
It's a method used for multi-colored fairisle, so that you don't have
floats across the back.
Also for multi-colored afghans. It requires finer yarns.
Aside from choosing between a standard knitting machine or bulky, you need to
choose between a totally electronic
machine or a punchcard machine.
For fine knitting machines there are lace carriages,
 not
for bulky machines.
Features on knitting machines tend to be more extensive on the standard than on
the bulky.
The new electronic knitting machines can be programmed to do a pattern as wide as
the knit bed (that is a 200 stitch pattern with no repeats).
My Brother 270 has 114 needles, so I have to use bulky yarns to get the
correct size.
The punchcard knitting machines, and older electronic machines, are limited to a
24 stitch repeat.
Do not discount the more manual knitting machines like the Studio LK150 which is a wonderful
machine.
There are 2 options of carriages,
the one sold with the knitting machine and an optional fair isle one.
This machine does a lot, plus you love to hand manipulate yarn to create
new and interesting designs.
The only thing this machine is missing is a ribber, but you can do lots
of things like lace borders, hung hem, picot hems, etc.
There is so much you can do on a simple frame and it is well within most
people prices, unlike punch card or electronic knitting machines.
Actually Studio is a competitor to
Brother and they have a wide range of knitting machines.
Also, there is the Bond which makes the ISM (incredible
Sweater Machine) and the Bond Elite.
These are also popular knitting machines and have their own mailing list of users
who love them.
YARNS
 on
cones
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Baby yarn doesn't knit quite as well
on it as a "midgauge" machine like Studio's LK-150, which is a lot more
expensive than a Bond.
But it's possible for most purposes using the #1 Key Plate. Ultimate
Sweater Machine/Incredible Sweater Machine Key
Plate#4, or appropriate tension setting
Sport yarns knit great with the 2
and 2.5 Key Plate.
Worsted weight knits great with the
2.5, 3, and 3.5 Key Plate depending on how tight you want the fabric.
The #4 is for bulky and super bulky.
I use Tamm Nordic, and used in the
past Bramwell Texas Chunky and Mary Lue Chunky, both discontinued
yarns now. Knitting machines
don't cast on for you, nor do they cast off. You do that manually just
as you would for hand knitting. (The manual shows you how.) When you're
knitting the rows to make the fabric, that's when you get the speed. The
garment pieces are created so quickly that you won't mind a few minutes
casting on and off and sewing the pieces together. Machines are not
magic, and this is still a hand craft. Your time and effort goes into
design and beautiful finishing of the knitted pieces.
You can produce multi-coloured
fabric without floats using a machine
Knitting cashmere yarn on a knitting
machine?
Use a light silicone spray on the yarn to help it slip and cut down the
fuzzies.
TOOLS and Accessories
For aran, you get some tools that come with your knitting machine.
The 3 x 3 transfer tools, which
means you can make a 6, 9, or 12, etc stitch cable.
The 2 x 2, There's also 1 x 1, which is used not only for very tiny
crosses, but also twisted stitches.
The 1 x 1, for instance pick up a dropped stitch.
In addition, it came with a "latchet"
 tool that you can use for doing
stitch reforming to turn a knit stitch on the right side to a purl.
Most of the knitters finds it splits the yarn or snags it and use
crochet hooks instead.
The 1 x 1
and 2 x 2 needle pusher for open/weave cast
on
and cast on with double bed 
There is a double ended "latchet"
(aka tappet tool according to other knitting machine maker's terms),
which can make things like seed stitch, but I seldom use it, because in
the middle of a big piece, it's hard to reach around both sides of the
knit to reform stitches.
A "bodkin", which is a double eyed needle,
 eyes on both ends, which is actually used on a double bed knitting
machine to transfer stitches from one bed to the other.
The most useful of the special tools is the
stitch picker.
If you drop a stitch, you know how they tend to shrink up and are very
hard to rescue without running?
This tiny hook looks like a dental cleaning tool, and knits like a charm
to grab those stitches before they run if they drop.
Knitting machines have a row finger
or
for the row counter.
For intarsia, you can get a special tool, the
intarsia "CARRIAGE",
which is the plastic thing that forms
the stitches as the carriage goes across the row.
This Intarsia Carriage is specially designed for easy intarsia knitting
on the bulky punch card knitting machine.
With intarsia knitting there are no long floats at the back of the
fabric and several colors can be knitted in one row.
You can do intarsia by hand, but the intarsia carriage, certainly does
speed it up.
What it does is knits the row after you lay the yarns, and it pushes all
the needles all the way forward, open and ready for the next lay of
yarn.
Doing it by hand, you have to push all the needles forward yourself.
There are other accessories you can get, such as a garter carriage,
 which is an electric
powered carriage that allows you to do knit purl patterns without a
ribber.
It basically knits for you, very slowly, but you can let it run all
night while you sleep.
Only the Brother Standard can use
the garter carriage. The bulky or other manufacturers knitting machines cannot.
PROBLEMS
One problem is space if you need to leave it set up for any period of
time.
Mistakes often make is they are quite often trying to move the carriage
across the row too quickly. This causes needles to jump up and quite
often jam.
Another common mistake is either holding the carriage down too hard, or
not hard enough.
knit falling off the needles;
*Check to see if the knitting machine is on a level surface.
*Check to see if the retainer bars are secure and quite flat.
*Make sure the seams of the machine are aligned where you put the pieces
together.
*Any variances in this, however slight, can cause problems when you are
first using your machine.
*Check carefully to see if any needles
 look bent. Just run them forward
as if you are going to be hanging the hem, and see if any of them look
out of alignment.
*If none of the above are the problem, then quite possibly you are using
yarn that is not good for the Knitting Machine.
*If it's novelty yarn with slubs or nubs or bobbles or whatever you call
them, it could be the cause of the problem.
*If it's not novelty, but it splits easily, then it could be getting
incorrectly caught by the needles, causing them to not knit properly,
and thus they fall of on subsequent rows.
*If not that either, then you may not have enough weight on the ends.
You could try using claw weights.
*One last possibility is you may be either pulling the yarn loop up too
tightly or not tight enough before knitting the row.
Either can cause knit to not knit properly and fall off the needles, and
while one is hard to catch, after 4-5 rows of this happening, that could
be when you are noticing the problem.
Dropping stitches; (ISM
 and USM)
Make sure that you have the correct key plate.
To much tension will also cause the stitches at the end of the rows to
fall off.
Also, to much tension will cause the keyplate to stick, it can make the
needles get out of line and that will jam the carriage. When you feed
out some yarn, make sure that it doesn't get caught on anything.
It must move smoothly.
Make sure that you have both hands on the carriage,
 and that you move it
with an even pace across the needle bed.
One of the toughest things to get down with any knitting machine is the
speed to move the carriage across the bed.
It's pretty hard to bend a needle.
If you have a needle that is regularly dropping stitches, you can
exchange it for one of the end needles that aren't used a lot.
If a needle is bad, either the latch will be broken or it sticks. You
can try fixing a sticking latch but the best thing to do is replace it.
The carriage gets stuck every couple of
stitches, or the end falls off.
Check the underside of the carriage when you are pushing it across the
bed.
If the little plastic flaps that are supposed to guide the fabric catch
the needles on the underside, that can be causing jams.
As for the end stitches, you might be pulling the yarn too tight on the
end stitches at the beginning of each row.
If you're going across the row and your knit is
popping off, chances are that your yarn isn't going thru the
keyhole or is going thru it then winding around the guide on the bottom
of the carriage.
Then, as you go across, no new yarn is being laid into the hooks, but
the needles are still moving so the knit on the needles is pushed off
the knitting machine.
Always make sure that the yarn isn't wrapped around the bottom of the
carriage and if the knitting machine starts to sound funny, stop right away and
make sure the stitches under the carriage are still attached to the
machine.
If just the end stitches are falling off,
you might want to try putting more weight on the ends.
Put them in the 2nd or 3rd row down in the end stitches and move them
every 5 or 6 rows or when you notice the ends getting loose again.
If your cones are falling all the time, put a weight
 underneath
the cone, no more tumbling down.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAND KNITTING AND MACHINE
KNITTING
In hand knitting, you can pretty much use whatever combination of colors
and textures you want in any particular row, but with a knitting machine, you can
either do knit/purl OR you can do color.
Not both, unless you do a lot of manipulation after the row has been
knit.
The main difference between hand and knitting machine is the stitch by stitch or
row by row design.
With the Knitting Machine you must decide what you want to do on that
row before you knit and do it.
With hand knitting you can change mid way or wherever. It is just a
different way of thinking.
Knitting cables,
 you have to do the
crossings by moving loops by hand, and the yarn can end up too tight and
cause problems. Not a particularly fast process.
Intarsia is time-consuming but still
faster than doing it by hand.
E-wrap cast on, stitches dropping off;
The yarn was putting on too tight for the beginning rounds.
You have to leave enough play in the yarn so that the needles will go
thru. Start your piece and look at the yarn before you start knitting.
The yarn should hang down just a little between the needles, not tight.
Another way if this is the problem is to knit the ribbing by hand to
include two rows after the ribbing.
Just place on the needles and continue to knit using the knitting machine. This
is because most ribbing is done in a smaller needle and the tension will
bind the machine up.
Ribber sponge bar is giving trouble;
Fixed by some self adhesive foam draught excluder in place of the flat
sponge. (in a magazine some years ago).
Although I must admit it is not a job that I would do myself, you need a
handy friend or husband.
Actually it is part of the design of the knitting machine and ribber to
have the sponge bar.
It gives the needles just enough flexibility to move enough if the yarn
is causing a slight pull etc.
The sponge bar - if properly treated should last for several years.
When not using my knitting machine, put an old sponge bar in and keep the good
one out to "breathe"
Also when you are doing a lot of knitting, slightly move the sponge bar
so, that a different part of the sponge is in use. That helps also.
How to find that sponge bar.
Look closely at the ends of your needle bed. You should see a little
plastic-tipped finger projecting out from either or both ends, about as
near to the front of the knitting machine as you can get and still be on the
side.
Take your latch tool and push on that projection with the blunt end of
the handle.
The thing will start to stick out further on the opposite end of the
machine and you'll be able to grab it in your fingers and slowly draw it
out.
Pay close attention as you do this, noting whether the spongy side is
facing up or down, and whether it has been riding above or below the
needles.
The sponge will be squashed quite flat with ridges where it has pressed
on the needles.
A new one will be much thicker.
You'll see that the ends where it wasn't squashed against the needles
are thicker and springier.
If they're nice and springy, not crumbly, you may be able to revive this
sponge bar and use it in alternation with your new one.
I like to keep 2 on hand, so one is recovering while the other is in
use.
You can do a quick and dirty recovery on a squashed bar by steaming it
gently from a safe distance with a garment steamer but make VERY sure it
is bone dry before it ever gets near your knitting machine again.
Much better to get a new sponge bar and alternate between two decent
ones so the "fallow" one can recover slowly at room temperature.
If you want to knit with 2 ends of cotton
properly, leave the weaving brushes down (up),
 anyway weaving set to on.
HOW TO START KNITTING on your
machine;
Once you get it cleaned and oiled, make sure to run a couple of inches
of waste yarn through the machine.
As there is bound to be leftover oils on it, and waste yarn will get
dirty with oil and dirt coming off the knitting machine.
If once you clean it, you still have problems, you may need a new sponge
bar (AKA needle retainer, needle retaining bar), the thing that holds
down the needles, especially if the knitting machine sat for a year or two before
you got it.
First you can try moving the sponge bar a little bit, as it may only be
mashed down where the needles have sat on it, but if after trying that
it still won't knit easily, you probably need a new bar.
Passap isn't made anymore, but you can still find sponges on the net and
info on how to properly change needles without damaging your machine
spring.
If you are trying to force the carriage over the needles, some of them
may have gotten bent, so if you change the sponge bar and still have
problems, check for bent needles where the carriage gets stuck.
There are all sorts of ways to start knitting, and several different
ways to hold down the fabric, but you can't just start to push the
carriage across the bed and get knitting on the needles.
Some of the instruction books do give an open end cast on, but it
doesn't have much relevance to making a garment as it will simply
unravel as soon as it has half a chance.
Make sure your knitting machine is attached the right way to the table.
The easiest cast on it the 'weaving' cast on.
The way that every knitting machine can do this, is start with
 alternate stitches
in knitting position and knit one row.
Bring the out of knit needles forward over the top of the yarn and knit
back.
Bring all the needles forward, pressing the yarn back against the
machine bed so the stitches slide behind the latches, knit across.
Repeat the bringing forward of the needles for several rows until there
is enough knitting to hang on the weights and for the brushes on the
presser plate, the detachable part on the front of the carriage, to hold
the fabric against the bed.
Once you have got this first piece of knitting on the needles you have
got something to anchor the rest of your knitting, and you sometimes
make the cast on in one yarn, then change to the yarn you intend to use
for the garment.
This is useful if you don't have a ribber, as you can do all the knit
you wish to do by knitting machine and then finish off by hand.
There was always a strong opinion that once you bought a knitting machine you
should forget about hand knitting,
but there really is every reason to bring all that you know about hand
knitting to use on the knitting machines.
There is no reason at all why after finding out the right tension on the
machine you should not knit a rib by hand and put it onto the needles.
This is what I do, all the time, the ribbing on the Brother 270 chunky,
is too chunky. IMHO.
The learning curve for machine knitting varies with your experience at
hand knitting.
I did not found it quite easy to master. I started with the manual on my
knees, and tried and tried again.
There was nobody around to give me any tips or tricks. After 6 months of
blood, sweat and tears, I could knit on the machine.
I still prefer to do ribbing by hand
since I often use a decorative ribbing.
You need to know the pitch to know what types of yarns you can use. In
general, try to get a knitting machine with a metal rather than plastic bed. They
stand up to the wear and tear better.
Problems when you are first using your knitting machine.
*Check carefully to see if any needles look bent.
*Just run them forward as if you are going to be hanging the hem, and
see if any of them look out of alignment.
*If none of the above are the problem, then quite possibly you are using
yarn that is not good for the knitting machine.
*If it's novelty yarn with slubs or nubs or bobbles or whatever they
calls them, it could be the cause of the problem.
*If it's not novelty, but it splits easily, then it could be getting
incorrectly caught by the needles, causing them to not knit properly,
and thus they fall of on subsequent rows.
*If not that either, then you may not have enough weight on the ends.
You could try using claw weights.
*One last possibility is you may be either pulling the yarn loop up too
tightly or not tight enough before knitting the row.
Either can cause knit to not knit properly and fall off the needles, and
while one is hard to catch, after 4-5 rows of this happening, that could
be when you are noticing the problem.
WHAT YOUR KNITTING MACHINE CAN DO
The Artisan midgauge knitting machine
 can knit popcorn
stitch.
If you mean to do it with a tuck stitch, this is done manually by moving
certain needles to hold position and then setting the carriage to tuck.
The midgauge is a manual knitting machine which means it does not select the
needles ( other knitting machines might use a punchcard or electronic patterning
to select the needles).
Another method of doing popcorn stitch
is to pull certain needles (2 or 3 usually) to forward position and wrap
those needles a few times by hand, then manually knit them before using
the carriage to knit the row.
This method can be used on any knitting machine.
You can also manually knit 2 or 3 stitches repeatedly before knitting
the row with the carriage.
This is closest to hand knitting popcorn stitch. This can be done on any
machine.
The Artisan midgauge can knit circular by setting the knobs and buttons on the main bed carriage and the
ribber carriage (which are connected) to a certain setting so the main
bed knits when carriage is moved to the left, and ribber bed carriage
knits when carriage is moved to the right (or vice versa).
Each carriage will knit a row then slip (not knit) on the return row.
They knit alternately.
Two passes of the carriage makes one circular row of knitting.
This knits a tube which looks flat when on the knitting machine, but like a tube
when off the machine.
By using short rowing techniques you
can knit the heel of the sock too. The toe is usually decreases and bind
offs.
I have an electronic bulky (uses yarn from sport-weight to bulky) the KH
Brother 270.
To do ribbing (and add a lot of other capability) you need a ribber,
 I have the KR Brother 260,
essentially a second knitting machine. And there are other add-on's available.
Some less-expensive knitting machines might be able to do some fancier stitches,
*if* you hand-select the needles to do whatever.
Some knitting machines have punch-cards and
mine has a computer instead - the punch-card is limited to 24-stitch
repeats and the computers aren't.
That being said, my personal experience is that there are some things a
knitting machine does very well, that a hand-knitter would do only very slowly,
and some things that can be done on a machine only with considerable
effort. And there are a few techniques that really are only doable on a
knitting machine.
Knitting machines are very good and fast at doing what's called a
"tuck"
pattern
 (I believe this would be a "yarn-over" type for hand knitting),
and slip stitch
 .
They're also very good and fast at fairisle
 (2 colors per row).
More colors per row can be handled by knitting each separately but there
are some pattern limitations due to the fact that you have to knit two
rows of each color in succession.
You can knit with several colors at the same time, with doublebed
knitting and a color changer, there are color changers
 for
4 or for 6 colors, check your ribber / doublebed manual.
Knit-weaving and double-bed jacquard can probably *only*
be done on a knitting machine.
Knit-weaving lays a usually-thicker yarn across the purl side of
the fabric, and it is caught by some of the loops as they are knit.
Makes a nice thick fabric that lies fairly flat.
Double-bed jacquard is a double-faced fabric with twice (or maybe
3x) as may rows on the back as on the front. The front has a design of
colors determined by the punch-card, the back has stripes of the colors
used.
Lies nice and flat and is a nice heavy fabric.
A good knitting machine can do a lot of things and be fun to knit with - however,
something too inexpensive will probably only do straight knitting and
get pretty boring after a while.
Most fairly good knitting machine shops will give you a few free lessons
- they will also probably offer more advanced lessons for a pretty small
fee.
A linker is not needed. But is a
very handy extra tool.
mine is an oldie but knits fine for me
HEMS and EDGES
When making hems on a single bed machine they sometimes roll up.
If you do the first lot of rows (which make the inside of the hem) at
least 1 tension number smaller than the second lot (making the outside)
then this helps eliminates the roll up.
I think it knits by the tighter stitches on the inside pulling on the
hem.
Another thing that knits well is that once you have completed your
garment, lay it on a dry towel completely flat, soak another towel in
*cold* water, place on top of the garment and leave overnight.
The hem should then lay nice and flat. No problem with wool - that can
be pressed, but very useful for acrylics. And also it gives the whole of
an acrylic garment a nice "pressed" look.
This is the old finish from St. John's knits.
It has been widely published by many machine and hand knitting authors
(giving credit to St. Johns) and to the best of my knowledge there is no
copyright issue involved.
St. John's no-roll edge for stockinet:
Seems like a crochet edge, but there are subtle differences that produce
a flat edge.
1. Put a loop on your crochet hook or latch tool. (One yarn on tool)
2. Wrong side of stockinet facing you, starting at right edge of
knitting, put tool into first stitch and then into next stitch to the
left. (Three yarns now on tool - one loop and 2 stitches)
3. Pass yarn over from back to front into the hook of tool (as if to
crochet) and pull that yarn through first TWO of the yarns on tool. (Two
yarns now on tool - one is yarn you just pulled through and one is the
original loop)
4. Pass yarn over again and pull through the TWO yarns. (One yarn on
tool now)
5. REPEAT 2, 3, AND 4 until you have done all the stitches.
Steam and let dry without moving to avoid stretching.
NOTES: When you yarn over in steps 3 and 4, you must do it loosely. For
a perfectly flat edge you may need to pull that loop up as much as a 1/4
inch.
You may need to make a sample first to see how far you need to pull the
yarn in order to keep it flat, not ruffled and not gathered in.
In some cases you may want to make it tighter to shape a piece (some
necklines or sleeve edges will conform to your body better if done
slightly tighter than the edge itself.)
THIS CAN ONLY BE DONE INTO A STITCH. If you want to do it on a side
edge, you must first hang the edge on the machine and knit one row of
STOCKINETTE.
It is helpful to steam the stockinet edge first and let it dry before
moving it.
You can do the edge finish with the waste yarn on it, but if the
stitches are set by steaming first, you can get rid of the bother of
waste yarn in your way.
You can do this in the main yarn or in a contrast yarn.
Try a sample and see if you like this. I have used it so many times and
especially like it for the bottom of skirts as well as sweater edgings,
sleeves and necklines.
A picot hem would be nice on the
sleeve of a baby sweater.
You just make eyelets all across the row (every other stitch is
transferred to the needle beside it, the empty needles are left in
knitting position, and when you knit the next row, you get a lovely row
of little holes)
Knit about 3 or 4 more rows, bind off, and when you turn the hem at the
holes, it makes a nice picot edge.
If you don't like that idea, you could always lay a length of waste yarn
across the open needles at the place where you want to turn the hem, and
it will get knitted in.
Then you can pull it out when you have the hem finished. I'm sure you
will figure something out!
RIBBING
Full needle rib bands for a cardigan.
First ; what stitch pattern and yarn for the main cardigan fabric are
you using?
You need to check that the full K/K rib is not too heavy.
I would never use it on a thread lace or similar summer weight cardigan
or jacket.
Then you need to knit a sample of the band say 100 rows long (finish in
WY) and ease it gently beside the main tension piece. You need to
measure the band sample for length per 100 rows. You may be able to
match row on the band for stitch on the main piece.
Try T2/2 for 4ply, say 18 sts on Main Bed and 19 on Rib Bed.
The extra Rib Bed needle means that you can flank each side with a purl
stitch, to make it easy for stitching on with a linker (if you use a
linker).
Some Shetland knitters call this "applying the strapping".
Fisherman's rib;
I do not know what sort of machines you have, but if your knitting machines have
the ability to do tuck stitch, then you can make a sort of mock
fisherman's rib by punching a card or by manually selecting the stitches
you would like to tuck.
To manually select needles for a mock fisherman's rib, on row 1 select
every other needle for tuck stitch. Example: select needles 1,3,5,7,etc.
Knit the row.
On the second row, select alternate needles for tuck (needles 2,4,6,8,
etc.) and knit the row.
Repeat these two rows.
Even though I have a ribber, I use this fabric quite often instead of
real fisherman's rib, because it's a bit more stable (doesn't stretch
out as much), and it's easier to do shaping on a single bed.
If using a punchcard, the holes punched should resemble a checkerboard
pattern.
Set your knitting machine to tuck.
If you do not have the ability to tuck, then you might try picking up
every other stitch from the row just knitted and putting them back on
the needles.
The pattern to use for picking up the stitches is similar to the
manually selected needles method above.
CLEANING THE KNITTING MACHINE
Never take the needle bed off.
There are all kinds of springs and things under the bed and I've never
heard of anyone getting them all back in again other than a qualified
technician.
There should never be any need to go this far just for a deep cleaning.
Also, I'd never use canned air on a machine.
It just blows dust further into the innards. I know some computer techs
use it but they don't have to deal with the fiber dust and oil that our
knitting machines do.
I regularly take knitting machines to bits for service
etc.
CAST ON;
You don't need a ravel cord to cast on,
you can use a cast on comb
and personally I find the ravel cord
cast on a nuisance and a waste of time.
Beginners often make the mistake of using too thick a yarn to start
with. Very fine baby yarn is about the weight of 4 ply on cone.
You can use crochet cotton instead of ravel cord as long as it has a
shiny silky feel.
The secret with the woven cast-on is
to allow plenty of yarn to lay across the needles in C position (a good
long tail hanging off the needles at the end away from the carriage) and
allow it complete freedom to move when taking the carriage across very
slowly.
You can also make sure that your alternate needle are lined up perfectly
by setting the front levers (the ones for holding) forward and running
the carriage back and forth.
(Remember to return the levers to their usual position before starting
the cast on)
Hang the weights on the knitting before running the second row.
Machine knitting is accomplished by two basic methods: horizontal knitting and foundation knitting. In the horizontal knitting a continuous
thread is consecutively wound into loops of one row, which forms the knitted cloth when it is joined with the previous row; in foundation
knitting the loop row is formed by a system of threads (the foundation), placed simultaneously on all the knitting needles of the machine. The
loops from the same thread are not arranged in one row but move consecutively from row to row. There are single knitting machines (with one
needle) and double ones (with two needles); depending upon the type of needles used they are subdivided into machines with hook, tongue, or
groove needles. There are flat or round knitting machines, depending on the shape of the needles, and one-system or multisystem designs,
depending upon the number of loop-forming units.
There are four basic types of knitting machines, depending upon their purpose: stocking machines (round-or flat-needle machines), underwear
machines, outer knitwear machines, arid glove machines. Each group contains machines of different types and purposes (for smooth or patterned
knitting, for instance). There are also special knitting machines for making such items as berets, corsets, or artificial furs. The most
commonly used knitting fibers are cotton, wool, synthetic fibers, and mixes. Knitting machines can make up to 2 million loops per minute. The
kniter who services the knitting machine only has to control the continuous feeding of thread and the quality of the goods, service the
machine, and correct small faults in its operation. |
