Linda Jensen Goes PDF!

One of my favorite machine knit pattern writers is going PDF.  I don't mean "pretty darn fast," but that's what it will mean to us machine knitters.  We can now buy one of her patterns and download right now.  In the past you'd buy a pattern and she'd mail you a beautifully printed pattern (when she wasn't on vacation.)  When some of my fellow machine knitters wanted a pattern and I'd say, "Go to her Etsy site, pay for the pattern and she'll mail it to you."  The response would be "WHAT?!  I can't download it right now?"  Honestly, I don't know why it was such a big deal as I have several of her patterns and all were mailed.  Snail mail doesn't take that long.

I guess in this day and age of computers instant gratification runs rampant and one has to adjust.  I think this will be beneficial for all.  We can get a pattern as quickly as it takes our printer to print one out and hopefully she'll get more sales.

Preemie Hats on a Sunny Day

Today was the meeting of a group of machine knitters I've known for about 3 years now.  I really enjoy getting together with these ladies.  We talk about our machine knitting endeavors of the past month.  Share some hand knitting projects.  We have lunch together.  Then we'll either demonstrate a technique or a pattern.  Today the meeting was at Susan's house and she decided we'd make preemie hats for donation to our local hospital.  Susan is great about collecting hats and blankets that we've made and getting them to a worth charity.  Not to mention all the knitting and crocheting she does on her own for charity.  She'll take knitted square donations and turn them into a beautiful lap blankets for charity.  So, when she asks for knitting help I ask, "What do you need?"

Susan set up 3 standard knitting machines for us to work on.  After lunch we got right on it.  Pairing up and using a pattern she provided.  At first I read the pattern to my friend Desiree as she knitted a hat.  As she sewed up her hat I knitted my hat.  Desiree helped me knit on a Brother machine.  I have zero experience with them.  It was a lot of fun picking out a pattern for an electronic machine.  She showed me how to zero in on the part of the pattern I wanted to knit.  Then helped me fix a mistake that was probably made by me, but we blamed it on the electronics.  It doesn't talk back.

After about 2 hours our group had 7 hats ready for some precious preemie baby heads.  My son was a preemie and I still have the little knitted hat he was given in the hospital.  Saving it for Grand kids, but now that I think about it I hope none of them are preemies.  I may have to rethink that and just keep it as a memento.  A remembrance of a serious time in my child's life and the good thoughts sent my way by a sweet stranger.

See my Ravelry project for details on how I made this particular hat.

Kool-Aide Dyeing on a Beautiful Spring Day

Carolyn invited Bonnie and I over for a day of lunch, machine knitting discussion and Kool-Aide dyeing.  Lunch was wonderful, but before we ate we got our yarn dyeing.  Carolyn gave me some yarn as I didn't have any wool to dye.  Thought I'd just watch them dye.  It really was a lot of fun to participate.  Her thoughts were to get the yarn wound and tied into hanks.  Add dye and water to the yarn in 1 quart Mason jars.  Then set the jars in her solar oven to make sure they got hot enough.  We all didn't do any reading up on what to do, but we all had a little bit of knowledge and vague memories of doing it in the past.  So, we all went about dyeing our hanks in different ways.

After soaking my hank in a vinegar solution I laid my hank on the lawn (didn't want to mess up Carolyn's kitchen) and I sprinkled a package of Grape Kool-Aide and a package of Ice Blue Berry Lemonade Kool-Aide on both sides of my hank.  I didn't randomly come up with these flavors.  I used a chart on the Dye Your Yarn website.  Then I stuffed it into the Mason jar and added hot water until the jar was full.  Shook it up until I thought all the Kool-Aide was mixed.  It was interesting as the yarn quickly turned purply pink and the water around it was blue.  Very pretty.

Carolyn and Bonnie mixed their colors in water before adding it to the jar with their yarn in it.  They then topped off the colored water with more hot water.  Their color choices were completely different from mine. It was getting very exciting to think about how things were going to turn out with our little experiments.

Carolyn placed all our jars into the solar oven.  We had lunch and talked every thing fiber for several hours before they thought to check on our yarn.  When we peeked in the oven the water around our yarn was clear, so we knew it was done.  We needed hot mitts as the solar oven had gotten up to 200 degrees F.

I drained my jar, rinsed my yarn and hung it to dry on a near by tree.  My yarn came out the most variegated in color.  Probably due to my sprinkling technique.

Bonnie's yarn from the left was purple and the next hank a beautiful tan with yellowish highlights.  She had a little bit of variegating.  Carolyn's roving on the right was a mint green color.  Sorry the sun wasn't helping with the photographing.  I'm curious to see what we all do with our lovely colored and great smelling fiber.

Fingerless Gloves by Karalyn

Karalyn Rainey came to visit our guild (MKGSFBA) last month and had wonderful projects to teach.  I loved her enthusiasm for machine knitting.  When there were left over patterns I asked if she minded if I shared them with the Sacramento Guild (SMKG).  She said, "No, I love to share."  After I got back to Sacramento and started sharing everyone loved the patterns.  I started getting emails for me to share the patterns.  I felt I should check with Karalyn one more time.  Sharing here in Sacramento is one thing, but putting it on the internet just seemed like something I wanted permission for.  She emailed me back, "Hi, it's fine please share my patterns they are free to all, I just want people to knit and share our love of machine knitting with everyone."  I think I love you Karalyn!  That's exactly what I like to do.  I like empowering machine knitters of all levels with patterns they can be successful with.  Nothing makes one want to knit more than getting a project done that they are proud of.

Here is a picture of Karalyn's fingerless glove on my hand.  Back of glove.  Can you believe she does this on a bulky knitting machine?!

Here is my glove using the double gate peg bind off for more stretch for the fingers.  Bonnie found out that the bind off where the glove goes around your hand is a little tight for her liking.  She felt her fingers were confined.  I tried them on and could see why it would be bothersome.  I didn't mind, but I think my daughter wouldn't like it either.  Carolyn from our guild had an idea to bind off around 2 gate pegs.  I did this on my glove and it does give a stretchier edge.

Cabling requires some concentration for me.  There are a couple places where I've gone wrong.  I've added cheat sheet notes on my pattern to keep me straight.

Here is the pair she gave to our guild member Bonnie.  Bonnie experimented with doing a Bickford seam on the side.  The seams looked great.  Now to weave in the ends.  The Bickford seams create the flattest seams frequently used for socks done on a flat bed machine.  Several tutorials on how to do this online.  One here done by Marg Coe.  Another one here at Knittsings.

Here is Bonnie's glove just getting past the thumbs.  Cable looking beautiful.

Here's my glove off the machine.  See why Karalyn calls it the Cactus glove?

Without further adieu here is Karalyn's pattern.

Cactus Fingerless Glove

Instructor, Karalyn Rainey

2010

Bulky Machine

Tension 6

Lion Brand Wool-Ease 2ozs.

Left Hand

Chain cast on 27 sts (LI3-RI4)

If you are putting a cable, knit 2 rows and twist the first cable

Cable needles are right needles 5,6,7,8, after the first twist you are going

to twist the cable every 4 rows

Knit to row 26 twisting the cable every 4 rows

On row 26 start increasing on both sides every other row (EOR) by

moving one st out and filling up the empty needle with the heal of the

inside st

Continue increasing to row 38 you now have increased 6 sts on each side

COR set the machine to hold, put all st except the 6 st on the right to

hold, knit 7 rows on those 6 st, RC46, bind off, move carriage to the left

COL put the 6 st on the left to work knit 7 rows, bind off

You should only have 27 st left, knit 13 rows don't forget to twist your

cable while you are knitting the 13 rows, bind off

Right Hand

You are going to make another one just like the one you did except cast

on 27 st (L14-R13) and the cable needles are going to be on the

Left side, left needles 5,6,7,8.

Sew up the side seam and the thumb seam.

If you haven't seen the flat seam that we do on the flat sock you need to

have me show you that seam it looks great on the fingerless glove!

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.