I Am Still Machine Knitting!

Admittedly, I don't craft as much since getting fit.  Staying active became my main focus in 2012.  I had a lot of weight to lose.  I got it off and I've kept it off!  What losing weight did was reinvigorate my desire to knit clothing.  I often felt nothing would fit or look good on me.  This steered me to making accessories and toys.  Don't get me wrong I really enjoy making hats, bags, shawls, scarves and toys.  I think they may get used more often than a garment, but I'm looking forward to making some clothing for myself.  I have a couple patterns planned this year.  Sometimes getting the pattern and yarn matched up takes some time.

Right now I'm working on something that I wonder if I could take to the machine.  First I have to figure out how to hand knit it.  You know I'm not very good at hand knitting that's why I machine knit!

This is a Dragon Scale Mitt.  My scales are already upside down and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.  I have an email into the pattern maker.  Hoping she's seen this a million times and can get me straighten out.

This is a cocoon scarf again I knitted it by hand, but it made me think like the Sashay yarn I could do it on the machine.  Instead of 4 hours I could do it in maybe an hour.  It wouldn't run through the regular carriage and I can't think of what that other carriage is called?!  It will come to me as soon as I post this then I'll come back in an correct it.  What I want to do is put this on the standard gauge.  I would knit 2 stitches between each cocoon as I did by hand; then flip the whole thing using the garter bar.  When I did the Sashay yarn on the machine like this it worked like a charm.  I would get into a rhythm.  I often didn't even use the carriage of which I can't think of the name.  I am seeing the letter "I" though.  It's coming to me.... Intarsia!  I have two more skeins of the cocoon yarn in gray and would love a fluffy warm scarf to go with my long gray coat.

Well, I'm off to take another look at the scale maille knitting and see if I can figure out what I'm doing while I wait for Collette to email me back.  Things sometimes look easier in the light of day.

Discovering My Intarsia Carriage

It's been sitting in a box in my craft room for years calling me.  I didn't really know what intarsia was until I hand knitted a hat as a Christmas present for my daughter.  I was having trouble getting the pattern to work and sent a picture to an experienced hand knitter friend.  She sent back "Oh you're doing intarsia you need to twist the yarns."  I looked up videos on what the heck I was supposed to do and it was simpler than I thought.

When I had a bag to do out of the same book as the above hat I thought why couldn't I do it on my knitting machine.  OH!  I have that intarsia carriage let's get it out and see how to use it.  Meanwhile, looking online at a YouTube video of a machine knitting pattern done by a Russian gal I came across a video of her using the intarsia carriage to knit my arch nemesis yarn Sashay.  I was quite excited that I recognized that it was an intarsia carriage and I gave myself a V-8 forehead slap, because why didn't I think of using it myself.  It made making a Filly Scarf on the knitting machine that much easier.  I had gotten it down to 2 hours.  Greatly faster and greatly less frustrating than doing it by hand.  If I could do it faster that would be even better as I had 3 skeins of that stuff left that I was very tempted to throw it in the trash.  Yes, it's aggravated me that much.  So much so that one skein was on my craft room floor.  Every time I saw it there I didn't think "Oh I should pick that up."  I thought, "Oh that's right where you belong."

Today with the intarsia carriage I made peace with Sashay.  In one hour I had knitted a Filly scarf easy.

 I found out the weight I used was too much.  Took it off when scarf was about 12 inches long and the weight of the scarf was plenty.  The needle set up was from the video.  I could easily hang the Sashay skipping every other hole with the needles that far a part.

 Can I refind the video on YouTube?  No!  It's in Russian, so I can't even search for it.  When I come across it again I'll post it.  It gave me such a wonderful idea.

Big thank you to my commenter Misha Moon for giving me the link to the youtube video:  Video Lesson "Curly" scarf.