Sponge Bar Refurbish... Do It Yourself

Of course the first thing you do is pull the sponge bar out. Didn't think to photograph that. I know they make these fancy dancy sponge bar removal sticks, but save your money and get a pen or pencil from the drawer. They work equally as well. I like to use a pencil with a nice eraser on it. I put the pencil in the sponge bar slot eraser first and push the sponge bar out the other side just enough so I can grab it. Then I gently slide it out keeping it level with the floor. One doesn't want to bend it or get it caught on any of the needles.

Once it's out I bring it to an area I have covered with newspaper to catch all the creepy old sponge bar mess as you scrap it out. I use a large flat head screw driver. I've done 3 now and they scrape out pretty easily.

If there is any residue left of the sticky strips from the old sponge bar I squeeze in some Goo Gone to soak.

It doesn't have to soak long. I start scraping up the old glue pretty quickly.

Here's the finished cleaned Sponge bar minus the old sponge. After Goo Gone give Sponge Bar a good cleaning as the Goo Gone is oily and you don't want it to stop the new foam from adhering. I use some regular household cleaner. As you can see I'm doing this outside in case the Goo Gone and household cleaner cause any noxious fumes. One can never be too careful mixing chemicals.

I buy Frost King Rubber Foam Weather seal 3/8" X 5/16" at Home Depot. All three of my knitting machines have used the same size. You might measure yours just in case.

Starting at one end remove the waxy strip to reveal the sticky strip and start centering it down the middle of the sponge bar. I like to hold my thumb and forefinger on each side of the sponge bar to assure it is going into the channel and sticking straight. Take your time it goes fairly quickly and you want it on right the first time.

After weather seal is applied glue a strip of ribbon on the exposed side of the weather seal with plain white glue. I used yellow ribbon as it was what I had in my stash.

It is now finished and waiting for glue to dry on the ribbon.

At the very end of the sponge bar on each side. Take a small piece of tape and wrap it around the ends. I usually forget this until I go to push in the sponge bar on the knitting machine and foam starts to peal back. The tape wrapped around the ends keeps it on the sponge bar as you slide it in. Now I just have to clean up my mess.

Any questions feel free to contact me.

Can Life Get Any Better?!

Welcome to the "Spinning and Weavers" guild meeting for May. This is not a group I belong too. Not that I don't want too, but I came as a friend of a member. Way out of my realm of knowledge. I just haven't gone there...yet. I don't think I've ever met a more creative group of women. Not only do they spin their own yarn, but some of them raise their own sheep for the wool. I am very impressed.

The gal 3rd in on the left in the blue shirt with the long dark hair is named Barbara. She invited us all to entered the "Sheep to Shawl" contest at the Sacramento County Fair in May. She said she needs some competition. Then she got flustered saying not that she's tooting her horn, but that no one enters and sometimes wins out of default.

The gal on the far right of the picture in a blue sweater has a Knitting Machine set up at work. She machine knits as part of her work. I'm SO jealous. We got to talking about machine maintenance and she wanted my info on how to refurbish a sponge bar since I have done 2 successfully. Felt so good to be able to contribute to a group of such creative experience ladies.

Isn't this a gorgeous place to meet. It is Horton's Iris Farm. We were surrounded with Iris everywhere! I'm not exaggerating. We sat and did whatever fiber art we brought. Lots of spinners, some knitters and I brought some crocheting. Then we had lunch. We all packed a lunch and the gal hosting provided tea and Cinco de Mayo cupcakes. I never wanted to rejoin the real world. I just wanted to sit amongst the flowers, spinning wheels and crochet forever.

The Iris farm isn't far from my home and I didn't even know it was there. I'll be back to probably buy some Iris. Or maybe they'll see me sitting in the middle of the Iris crocheting some time. They'll have to run me off with a stick.

My favorite Iris were these 2 Iris right by each other. The colors were glorious. It had rained the night before and everything was SO fresh and beautiful.

Knitting and Driving

A policeman spots a woman driving and knitting at the same time.


Driving up beside her, he shouts out the window...... "Pullover"!!


"No," she shouts back, "a pair of socks!"

My Knitting Machine

Here is my Toyota KS 650 Bulky knitting machine. When I first saw people knitting with knitting machines I knew I wanted to get into it. I really didn't want to spend the money to buy a machine and my crafty friend Julia came to the rescue with a donated machine. She taught me how to clean and oil the machine and how to refurbish the sponge bar.
I've been VERY fortunately in that this used machine was in relatively good condition. The carriage (piece with the handle) did have some yarn tangled in it that I couldn't get undone. I sent the carriage to Needle-Tek and they fairly quickly and at a reasonable price sent it back ready to go. Another fortunate thing is the machine came with it's original instruction book. That has helped me tremendously. I'm really surprised at how I've taken to the machine. I've done a few simple projects. Basically anything I can make with a rectangle I'm good. I gearing up to brave making socks.

Machine Knit Mystery Solved

Mystery solved by machine knitting guru Berda. She gave me the link to these 2 videos. The piece comes with the SRP-60N Ribber that I just purchased. I don't have a book for it, so I ordered one from ebay. In the below videos Susy Ranner demonstrates how to use what I think she's called the P-carriage used for pile knitting. If you want to get straight to the end product view the 2nd video. What I love about watching Susy is she is so genuine. She let's you see all the foibles and aggravation of being a machine knitter. AND you get to see the triumph of getting the end product you desire.

Pile Knitting On The Knitting Machine (Part One)

Pile Knitting On The Knitting Machine (Part Two)

I've taken the 2 videos off the blog, because they both automatically play instead of giving one the option of clicking them for yourself. Please follow the links to the videos as they are very good and make you feel right at home with your knitting machine.

Sheep Shearing

I was invited to come watch a sheep shearing in March. Since I've been really into knitting and crocheting the past 6 months I was very excited to see this. I met women who not only knit, but raise their own sheep for their wool. They take it from the sheep to the yarn. Carding their own wool. Spinning their own yarn. I am not quite that into fiber arts. Don't think I'll ever raise my own sheep or spin wool, but I love watching others do it.Here's where they start wrestling the sheep in for the shearing. It really struck me as funny. Being the owner of a poodle and we groom her ourselves how very much alike the whole process is. First you have to find them and wrestle them onto the grooming area.Then you have to wrestle them into position to start the grooming. With me kicking and wiggling to get away the whole time. Just like a poodle once laid on their back they submit to the grooming with very little wiggling from then on.Oh I'm not saying they don't continue with the "poor pitiful me" look or that "please come rescue me" stare.The big difference in shearing a poodle and shearing a sheep is the sheep takes just under 5 minutes each. I couldn't believe how fast this guy was. It takes about 3 hours to shear a poodle! I video taped one of the shearings to show my husband just how fast it could be if he just sheared off all the poodle's hair. Not very stylish, but sure would save time.Once the fleece was off the sheep it was taken over to this make shift table where the women would "skirt" it. That is removing all edges of the fleece that are too mangled or dirty to be used. This was when I was first enlisted to help. I thought I was just there to watch, but when the experienced older lady says jump one jumps. There was a pile of the skirtings that she asked me to put in a pillow case. They still save them. I asked why, but really didn't understand the reasons being new to all this. So, much to learn that day. Anyhow I had my tiny camera and thought I really don't want to get my hands dirty, but as I said I was a guest and I was asked to help. Not going to say no and risk not being invited back next year. I turned off my camera slipped it into my pocket and reached out to grab the small pile of skirting with my 2 hands cupped together. I knew the wool had dirt, pee, poop etc. on it. Nothing soap and water won't take care of. What I didn't realize was how much lanolin was on the wool. I knew lanolin came from sheep. I didn't know how one got it off them. Squeeze a lanolin gland? Pull it out of an ear? Honestly, I hadn't ever thought about where it came from. I know now right off their wool. As soon as the wool touched my hands I was instantly creeped out. My hands were coated thickly with lanolin, pee, poop, dirt and loose wool. I couldn't believe the amount of oil on my hands. I couldn't believe what a big baby I was being ... in my mind... I wasn't about to let the old sages see me whine. I quietly wiped my hands on the pillow case the skirtings went into and walked to the house to wash my hands. I knew then I wasn't touching any more wool that day. I did help with sweeping and shoveling of loose wool to help keep the shearing area clean. The more I thought about it I just wasn't prepared. Next year if I'm asked back I'll dress for digging in and helping with the skirting. I'll just plan on my hands being coat with lanolin all day. Many of the ladies said their hands were so soft after a morning of skirting.

Getting Started

I was pretty lucky on many accounts when I got into machine knitting. My first machine was given to me. It was donated to a machine knitting guild. It was also in very good shape. Since then I am finding that there are knitting machines in garages, tucked under beds and in attics. Some are sold on ebay or craigslist. If you're lucky you can just ask around and have someone give you one or buy it fairly cheaply.

If you have no experience with knitting machines I suggest you look for people who have experience. I had a friend who knew how to use knitting machines. My friend Julia also had already found groups of people, who also like to machine knit. I have learned so much by having more experienced people help me.

These experienced people can be found at machine knitting guilds or groups in your area. It's fun to knit with other people and their experience can be a great help. Some local knitting stores have lessons for knitting machines. Don't count them out. Call and ask. There are some Yahoo Groups you can subscribe too that have very experienced and nice people to talk to and ask questions of. Subscribe to a few you'll find ones that you like the best.

The internet has also been a great source of info and learning. If you'll check out my links I'm putting the ones I enjoy and find useful on this blog.

If you have a machine and it hasn't been used in a while you'll want to clean it and probably replace the sponge bar. I'll be posting about refurbishing sponge bars soon. I took pictures of the process with the last sponge bar I refurbished. I've done 2 and both work great. So, the method works well.

Search You Tube there is amazingly a wealth of machine knitting videos on there. Here's the first one I looked up when I was in a bind. I couldn't remember how to do a latch hook bind off. This video is for a back stitch bind off. Not exactly the same thing, but you do acheive the same result. I found the video to be very easy to follow. This was a life saver for me. I had done my first project at home... alone... and couldn't remember how the heck to get the piece off my knitting machine. I didn't want to wait until the next day to get help. This video saved the day.