Using my punch cards

I really had no idea how to use the punch card mechanism of my knitting machine. Usually using the manual I can make anything work, but had trouble with the very simple manuals that come with these pretty complicated knitting machines. I knew my friend Julia could get me up and running if I brought it to the knitting meeting. What I didn't know was our new member that had only been to one previous meeting had my exact machine and loved it. She knew exactly how to make it work. I was knitting this swatch within minutes. AND there was an instruction that wasn't in the book. Carolyn the fellow Studio 700 owner said you had to run the carriage over the needles and back again before knittting to get the machine to read the card. She called it the "free pass." She asked herself several times "Why do I know that?" It wasn't written in the book. Once it was done everything worked great. I spent nearly 2 hours just using different cards and making a really long swatch. I had SO much fun. I felt SO creative.

Here is a picture of what I was doing. At the top if you notice the stitches are singles. Down below they are doubled. Same card just a flip of a switch that elongates the pattern you are already doing.

Marilynn showed us how to switch colors while using a punch card to make a picture in your knitting. She got this pattern from an old English Machine Knitting magazine. SO CUTE. She gave me the swatch to take home.

I am really looking foward to doing more experimenting with punch cards with my machine knitting!

Machine Knitting Stand Issues!

Here is the underside of my machine knitting stand. There are 2 round pads for the clamps inside the legs. My problem is that the space between my clamps is about 19 inches. The pads to the machine knitting stand is 18 inches. That one inch causes a huge problem. It was suggested that I use the ribber clamps as they are in a different places as the bottom clamps.

But as one can see the ribber clamp spot is exactly lined up with the slot for the bottom clamps. All three of my machines are too large for this stand. In the immortal words of my husband, "I'm screwed!" hahaha OK I just need a larger stand. I have used a tilt stand at my Machine Knitting friend's house that works great with my bulky so I know it would work with all my machines. Now I either need to find another stand online, which is proving to be challenging. Or figure out a way to beg, borrow, buy or otherwise wheedle the tilt stand from my friend. hahaha Are you reading this Julia? Don't want to tip you off to my evil plan.

I found a tilt stand on ebay, but when I asked the seller to measure the distance between the legs they sent me a link on how to set up a knit stand. OK thank you that could be helpful if one didn't know that. What I really need is for you to get a yard stick and walk over to the tilt stand and measure the distance between the legs as I asked for to begin with. No response to 2nd query. I guess they must have enough customers. The search goes on.

The Garter Carriage

I really don't have much to say about this as I don't know really anything about it. I just know it was really cool. Amy a very experience machine knitter brought her garter carriage to our regular meeting. She wanted to show how it worked. She was in the middle of making a tank top for herself. She demonstrated how to make a ribbed edging for the neck line. She also demonstrated how to get a V-shaped neckline. I really enjoyed watching the whole process even though it was a bit over my head right now.

Here she hung the neckline on the knitting machine.

Here is a picture of the ribbed neck line after a few passes with the garter carriage. Amy said she doesn't like using a ribber and does everything with her garter carriage. In order to get the ribbed look she did need to do some hand manipulation, but it was much. Then the garter carriage did the rest.

July's Machine Knitting Meeting

This is a new group I just joined. It is a well established group and there are about 20 women in the group. Lots of experience in machine knitting in this group as 17 of the gals are over 60 years old. 3 including me are under 50 and we three are about the same age. I have admit that one of the 3 under 50's has a lot of experience as well. She's been machine knitting for about 30 years. Quite a lot of the ladies in this group also hand knit. I suppose I'll probably learn more about hand knitting some day. Quite a few gals machine knit and then finish their item or garmet by hand knitting or crocheting. This month there were 2 gorgeous hats. They were hand knit, but could be easily done on a knitting machine. I wanted to remember what they looked like. I wanted a reminder to be more creative when making my hats.

The above hat had two rows of the ladder yarn for lack of a better name weaved in. I was surprised that only 2 rows made such a beautiful fluffy ring.

This hat had some beading, which can also be done on a knitting machine. I just loved the fuzzy brim though. Again something I'd like to try.