Two Completely Different Sizes

Slippers is what I'm talking about.  I knew if I made them on different machines this could happen, but that they'd be so different surprised me.  I made one at the SMKG with my bulky Toyota KS650.  The other I made at home with my bulky Studio MOD. 155.  What a difference!

Now I know when I made the one on the Toyota I didn't change the tension for the outer slipper.  My question to myself is what tension did I use for that slipper?  OK opened up my traveling machine (Toyota) and the tension I used for the inner and outer slipper was 9.

The pattern has three different tensions mentioned, 8, 9, and 10.

The slipper I did at home last night was tension 9 for the inner and 10 for the outer.  So, I'll have to do some unraveling of a slipper in order to get 2 that are the same size.  I'm anxious to try and felt a pair and see what I get.

The slipper on the left is the one I knitted on my Studio MOD. 155 T9 for the inner and T10 for the outer.  The slipper on the right was knitted on my Toyota KS650 T9 for inner and outer.

Sacramento Area Machine Knitters Guild is alive and well

Just a reminder...

This blog entry is here to assist the Sacramento Area Machine Knitters Guild in advertising their meetings on the Internet. I hope you will stop by one of our meetings and share your latest project with us!

Meet with local Machine Knitters. Chat and discuss the art of machine knitting. All machines brands users are welcome, from the Brother, Bond to the Electronic Passap.

Sacramento Machine Knitters Guild, meets on the 2nd & 4th Thursdays 10am-noon (we meet throughout the summer at our normal days and times if there is enough interest).

We meet at St. Andrews United Methodist Church, 6201 Spruce Avenue, Sacramento, CA (off I-80 at Greenback exit, turn right at first street, up about 2 blocks, bear right at the curve and the church is straight ahead).

Contact Marilynn (pronounced Mary Lynn) Wright at 916-331-2309 for more information about the Guild and upcoming training topics.

Karalyn's Machine Knit Felted Clog Slippers

This past weekend at the MKGSFBA guild meeting we had Karalyn Rainey from San Diego come and teach us some of her favorite patterns.  The first one we all just loved was the Clog Slipper.  She made it sound so simple.  Really it's not difficult, but it's just knowing how to do it.  That's the value of these guild meetings.  The pattern can be found at the MKGSD website in their free patterns section.

 

OK first off so sorry for the blurry photo.  Sometimes the photos look so good on the little screen then I get them home on the big computer screen and BLUR!  You get the idea though.  This is what the slipper looks like right off the knitting machine.  I thought it was valuable to know this.  Yes, this is Karalyn Rainey holding the project up fresh off the needles.  She is from the San Diego area and does a lot of machine knitting teaching down there.  Their Guild (MKGSD) can be found here.  We were very lucky to have her for the day at our guild (MKGSFBA) this past weekend. 

 

I took photos of her machine knit slipper in it's prefelted stage and felted.  It makes a size that will fit a woman's size 8 foot.  I'm about that and it was a tiny bit shorter than I'd want.  Karalyn says when felting keep and eye on it.  Different washers and yarns felt differently.  After it's felted like you want shape it to your foot and let it dry.

 I took photos of the slippers thinking I'd never see them again until I made my own.

 To my great surprise Karalyn raffled off many of her machine knit examples.  Guess who won the pair of machine knit slippers?  ME!  Below is a picture of Karalyn's slipper on the left.  My first attempt at following the pattern and my notes is on the right.  I was so surprised at how well I did.  My slipper is pretty rough and had a few mistakes here and there.  I made it at my Sacramento Machine Knitters Guild meeting.  My fellow knitters said not to worry about it that once felted no one would be able to see anything wrong with it.

Beanie on a Mid Gauge with Roberta

Just watched a youtube video by Roberta Kelley about doing a hand knit beanie on a midgauge machine.  She's got great tips for all projects as she works up her hat.  I really liked the idea of using a magnet to make sure latches are open when needed.  I also liked her solution for yarn that splits.  For me it's just realizing this is splitty yarn and accept it and take measures to make my project easier.  Her suggestion just close the latches!  Rather than me correcting the split stretched out stitches each and every time.

49er Silly Hats On The Bulky

I bought some Red Heart yarn last year called Team Spirit.  This was the Burgundy/Gold combo that made me say "49ers!" when I saw it.  Then like most fiber artists I forgot all about it, but when the 49ers made it into the Super Bowl I thought "where's that yarn."  Fortunately, it popped right up in my craft room.

 

My first thought was to try the Beanie on a Bulky pattern now that I have a working ribber or so I hoped.  I took my Toyota KS 650 set up down last year as I couldn't figure out why the ribber stopped working.  I got a Studio MOD.155 and ribber for a song off Craiglist.  The machine has been cleaned, tuned and new sponge bar ready for over 6 months, but just never used the ribber. 

 

Since my last Beanie on a Bulky was a bit big I decided to reduce the number of needles in work to 80 and of course it threw the count off on the instructions I had.  I learned a lot doing this pattern a 2nd time.  First off my ribber works great.  Secondly, using my garter bar for doing the decreases was really hard at first.  STEEP learning curve and a bit of what I found out was loud cussing I was able to operate the garter bar for decreases.

 

 

Disappointingly the ribbing wasn't stretchy.  Could be the stiff Red Heart yarn?  Could be that the ribber doesn't do quite as nice ribbing as done by hand.  Don't get me wrong we loved the hat and wore it until the end of the Super Bowl and then some.  I think my daughter still has it on today as she wouldn't return it to me.  I was going to put it away until next football season.

I still had over a skein left of the Team Spirit yarn left and thought why not try and make one more hat.  I wanted to do something that had a completely different look than the first hat.  Something that would show off the color changes.  I really liked the idea of Diana natters on... Short-Rowed Baby Hat.  Could doing it on the bulky make it an adult sized hat without having to do many changes to the pattern?

I cast 26 needles and proceeded just like she says in the video.  When I got to 8 wedges done I measured the hat and thought it would fit.  BUT Each color represented 2 wedges of short rowing.  I would have had to Kitchener a gold wedge to a gold wedge and I didn't like the idea of what that would have looked like.  I didn't like that there would have been a large gold blotch on the back of the hat.  So, I did 10 wedges like Diana's video said to do.  I've been asked did I plan the color changes on the hat?  What kind of math did I use to get the colors to turn out so perfectly.  I'd love to pretend I was that clever in the planning of this hat, but honestly this is how the colors can right out of the skein.  Even I was surprised the color came out this way.  Fortunately, I just love it.

 The band for the hat was 80 needles. I knitted 24 rows no picot edging, because we ain't no babies. :D

My daughter liked the design and made suggestions on what to do for a 2nd hat.  So, my experiment was a success.  I got to thinking today of a hat I think was Diana's hat.  Kind of a beret.  Will have to look around.  I'm computer challenged today and running out of battery power.

49er Faithful!

I'm back and powered up.  It was Diana's Tam.  Not quite the shape I'm looking for at this time, but if you do a search of her site you'll see a lot of fabulous Tams with variegated yarn.