Monicello, Illinois - Crankers of Wonderful Socks 2021 report

 I just returned from the COWS seminar in Monicello.  I was so happy to see my friends Julie and Dorinda from Michigan again!  

I made a few new friends also.  This is Jan, and the back of her sister's head.  I sat across from a lovely woman named JoAnne who teaches at a local yarn shop in Noblesville, Indiana.

I observed this abbreviated pattern posted on a yarn mast. Short and sweet!

There were a few men in attendance, including one who brought his spinning wheel. 

Here is a skein of Kroy sock yarn on my bobbin, ready to knit. 

I took a photo of the yarn label, resting on the door prize I won, a tool caddy.  It is a wooden disk with a hole in the center, made to fit on top of a bobbin. 

Here is another take on a visual pattern.  I may adapt this one for my use. 

The room was pretty packed with crankers. 

There were a lot of variations on tool chests and caddies.  Dorinda suggested I adapt my Auto Knitter wooden box that I use to tote yarn and tools to put a lid on it, with a hinge, to make something like a gateleg table, or sewing table extension,  so that I have more surface area to work with. 

I made a pair of matching socks using my sock yarn, spun by Zeilingers from my "free" Craigslist wool.    It is a little heavy for the 72-cylinder, but that is the only cylinder I have for my Master Machine Home Profit. 

This is the cone of my yarn on the bobbin, waiting to be knit. 

And Jan took a photo of me.  That is Julie, Dorinda, and JoAnne in the background. 

I took two classes, both from Jenny Deeters.  The first was on tension and measuring your socks so that you can make them to fit all sizes of feet.  The second was knitting a lace cover, including sparkling Crystalettes, for a  4-inch glass or plastic Christmas tree ornament.  The Crystallettes are available from Jamie Mayfield or from Yadasi Beads.  

There were many more classes available, but I wanted to concentrate on making friends with my machine again.  I have not used it for two years prior to the seminar, since we moved from Michigan.  My pattern is not written down, (at least not in a portable form) and I was trying to do it from memory.  The pattern aids I saw on other's machines will help me. I made three good socks, 1 mistake sock, and a tension swatch. 

The hotel was doing a great job dealing with soooo many guests (I think it was full every night) while still coming out of COVID-19 restrictions.  

I had a great time, thanks to the meeting hosts Peg Wileaver and  Pat Lane.  I managed to come home with less than 10 new skeins of yarn, and I left some there.   

I also got to take some fabulous bike rides around Monticello.  See my blog on bicycles http://brightmeadowbicycle.blogspot.com for more info. 

The Seville Shawl

 I've been exploring Seville, Spain virtually recently. You can find related posts on my blogs for bicycling and kitchen gardening.  I visited Seville in the spring of 1977 for Semana Santa (Holy Week) during my junior year of college.  It was a whirlwind tour through Toledo, Granada, Seville and Valencia, and I am sure my friend and touring partner and I didn't see even one hundredth of the sights we should have seen.  

My memories of Seville are the quintessential images of Spain.  Flamenco dancers, whitewashed villages with trailing flowering vines, colorful geometric tiled walls, narrow streets with ironwork balconies, and orange blossoms.   

The shawl is dramatic in the photo above.  Mantoncillos are woven shawls with fringed edgings that are typically embroidered with flowers. Mantones are the lace shawls that women wear on their heads for weddings, bullfights, and funerals, which are typically worn with a peineta (comb) for the full effect.  

These shawls are somewhat more formal. Knitted and crocheted shawls seem to be a little less formal, although they can still have dramatic fringe. 

 

Fourty-five years later, I set out to find out what is going on in the knitting world in Seville.  La Merceria (lamerceria.com) shows a few free patterns on its web site.  

An online-only shop for yarns is Lana y Telar.  In a residential neighborhood, fellow blogger Chain Twenty posted about her visit to the dye works.  

Devanalana is a Sevillana knit designer and blogger.  Her blog is in Spanish, but using google translate, I was able to understand that she is interested in ethical fashion.  She offers knitting classes.  

There are 14 patterns with "Seville" in the name in Ravelry, ranging from a macrame wall hanging to a shawl to a bolero to a cabled sweater.  The one that most embodied the feeling of Seville for me is the one featured on the cover of Simply Knitting September 2010 with its lace borders.  And, as a plus-sized person, I was grateful for the large size range.  

I also found numerous patterns containing "Sevilla" in the name or description, and I especially like this shawl pattern incorporating various types of lace.  However, I would want to rewrite the pattern to allow it to be knitted on the knitting machine, as I would be driven crazy trying to handknit such a large piece.  

Slider Lace Poncho and other projects

 Diana Sullivan Facebook Seminar

I am attending a virtual seminar with Diana Sullivan on Facebook over the course of the next two weeks.  She sent the materials list in plenty of time with instructions to be ready for the seminar.  Knowing I've got thousands of cones of yarn available, I procrastinated on choosing my yarns till the seminar began.  

The first session was for two projects, a Slider Lace poncho, and mukluks.  I cast about for a suitable yarn and found a random beige cone which I think is cotton, and decided to spice it up with a lace-weight skein that has been calling to me every time I walk past saying "knit me, knit me"!  The lace weight is by Premier Yarns and it is wool-free Lace.  The color is Limestone Glow.  It was in my sock yarn basket, so I assumed there were two skeins. 

The two yarns complement each other very nicely. I knit a gauge swatch and found that the "slider" in the stitch pattern tended to slide a lot with these smooth yarns, losing the definition.  Diana had warned us that this could happen, but she also encouraged us to use our stash yarns.  Her yarn choice was "shawl in a ball", which I've used before.  It has a "hairy" texture.  The original technique was to leave two needles out of work between each vertical column of stitches, and move edge stitches from one column to the next.  Here's my swatch. 

Swatch for slider switch using generic cotton and Premier Wool-Free Lace. 

I decided to modify the stitch pattern.  Instead of just moving the stitch to an empty needle, I "pegged" it to another stitch by hanging it on the needle that already had a stitch on it.  I knit a row, then "made" a stitch by lifting the top loop from the butt of the adjacent stitch.  

Slider 2 lace with anchored stitches. 

I am pleased with this stitch.  The poncho should not take too long to make, as it is two rectangles.  Unfortunately,  now that I am half done with the current rectangle, I realized I cannot find the second ball of Premier Wool-Free Lace that I thought I had in my sock yarn basket.  Did I only buy one? It's possible.  I have begun a search for another skein of this yarn.  My first place to look was on Ravelry.  They have a feature where people can enter their stash and indicate whether it is for sale or not.  I did find several people who have this yarn stashed.  I sent off messages to them, in case they are willing to part with their stash,  but to date I have not heard back from anyone.   I also did a google search, and found a listing for WalMart.  Unfortunately, no stock.  Same with Mary Maxim, Herschnerr's, Yarn Barn, JoAnn Fabrics, Michael's, Hobby Lobby, and a bunch of other yarn stores.  I looked on ebay and Etsy.  I looked on Craiglist.  I looked at Letgo, only to find out it has been acquired by another company.   

In the process, I discovered a few sources that had the same yarn but in different colors.  I ordered three skeins of lavender-colored yarn.   If all else fails, my poncho will be color-blocked, or I may decide to frog what I have done and re-knit a solid color, use this yarn for something else.   

Bicycling in the Mountains Hats

In the meantime, I have completed my etsy orders for hats.  This one was inspired by another Ravelry user, but I used my own hat shape and her stitch pattern. 

This hat used a 20 percent angora, 80 percent acrylic.  I love this yarn!  It is so soft.  And I really like the color.  I have it in sky blue, teal, and this raspberry.  I don't think it is produced any more.  I am thinking of making a sweater for myself with this yarn down the road. 

  I am working on the pattern for this one, which I plan to release on Ravelry and Etsy. It uses the same shape file as the other one, which is my own design.  It is very simple design, so if anyone else has already made a hat in this way, my apologies, but I did design it.   My pattern will include four colorways, one for each season.  This version will be "summer".   

I was asked to knit a sweater in this pattern.  There are a lot of possibilities.  I did a few designs in Designaknit, with a bottom border, a top border, an all-over pattern, and also gave the person a photo of a similar round-yoke sweater.   I worked up some pricing.   We'll see if anything comes of the request.  

Setersdal Sweater

This week I photographed some punchcards from Rowan's book of designer machine knits for the Setersdal pattern.  I knitted this sweater long ago on a punchcard machine,  in Yeoman Yarn 50-50, a blend of 50 percent acrylic and 50 percent wool.  This yarn DOES shrink.  Especially if it gets washed with a bunch of jeans in the washing machine and dryer.   And because I made it a cardigan, with a zipper, the zipper buckled.  So although the design makes me happy, I cannot wear the sweater, at least in public.  I really should just take out the zipper for recycling and throw the sweater away or use it for a dustrag.   

This time I intend to knit it in a  Wool-rayon blend I purchased from Made In America yarns.  The design is classic and timeless.  Here's a link to a photo published in Ravelry.  Setersdal Sweater 

I was able to successfully use the graphics import feature in Design-a-Knit to import these photos into stitch designs.  I had to do a little touch-up editing.  Because my photos were not 100% flat, I had to use the checkbox to "move corners independently" to capture the dots.  I corrected the third punchcard, which I believe is missing a dot in rows 1 and 2, the XO row of the design.  My original sweater also had this mistake, because I was faithful to the punchcard as given in the book.    If you look carefully at the photo from the book (shown in the Ravelry picture) it appears that possibly these stitches were duplicate stitched after the fact.      But I have them now!  These stitch designs may be useful to incorporate into other designs sometime in the future. 

Translating hand-knitting to machine

My final project this week was to pick up a request from a few months ago to translate a hand-knit pattern for a child's bunny toy to machine knitting.  My initial reaction, when I was asked and saw the hand-knit pattern, was that it would not be very good pattern for machine knitting.  The reason is that there were increases on almost every row in the middle of the row.  The client asked to proceed anyway.  

I picked it up and realized there was no way to get that many increases (for the head) on the machine.  There wasn't enough yarn to stretch between the needles.  So I turned the head around, cast on with waste yarn and open stitches, and knitted it using decreases.  Then I re-hung it on the needles and proceeded to the back.  Again, there were both increases and decreases in the middle of the row.  I attempted using the garter bar,  but because of the way the increases were mirrored on each side of the rabbit's back, it was quite awkward.  I tried to use a lace tool I had inherited, which is similar to a transfer tool, to move twenty stitches at a time.  Unfortunately the quality of the tool was bad (or perhaps it was a slightly different gauge?), the prongs to transfer stitches did not line up with the needles of my machine.  So that was out.  I tried using the 7-stitch transfer tool, but this required multiple moves within the row.  I looked ahead and found that the upper thighs of the bunny required short rowing on each side of the body.  It could be done, but since it only used a few body stitches, I thought perhaps it would be easier to take the body off on waste yarn and rehang, using a sew-as-you-go technique. 

Then I took a deep breath.  The body of this rabbit was only about 70 stitches wide.  It would be so easy to knit it by hand.  And so hard to knit it by machine. And frustrating! 

I messaged the client and told her it was not going to be a fun knit, and I really did not recommend going forward.  She accepted my advice!  So I'm off the hook.  Yay! 

Hats, Hats, Hats and Bicycles - and Knitting Machine

Winter Occupation - Machine Knitting

Someone asked me what I do in the winter time since, in Ohio, there is too much snow to cycle outside.  My answer was that I dream about cycling, I plan cycling trips, I read about cycling, I maintain my bike,  and I knit cycling designs.  Well, this is actually the first year I decided to knit cycling designs. 

A few weeks ago I posted the process for creating a manual punch card with a bicycle design.  I have been using DesignAKnit with my electronic machines, too.  

I've been knitting hats.  Lots of hats.   I am planning to publish the pattern on etsy and Ravelry when I have kntted enough hats to test the pattern out.  

Mountain Biking hat designed with DAK 9

Joy of Bicycling Hat Available in etsy shop

Non-bicycling hat made for grandson

Hat with 20% angora

Sold! Joy of Bicycling Hat

Cap to match "Elsa" coat for granddaughter - contrast yarn is sock yarn. 

My lovely mannequin wearing one of the sold hats

Joy of Bicycling Hat Available in etsy shop

Joy of Bicycling Hat Available in etsy shop

Joy of Bicycling Hat Available in etsy shop

Hi-Vis hat - available by special order

Bundle of Joy! Hats

20% Angora hat

Knitting machine maintenance and repair issues

These are all made using the fairisle technique.  I have broken two carriages on my KH-930 in the process of making them. I have one KH-930 set up with a garter carriage, and the other is set up with the ribber and a motor drive.  Since I can only knit at one machine at a time, when the first one broke, I borrowed the carriage from the second machine.  The first carriage to break lost a cam.   I have not found it yet, in any of the hats, on the floor, in the yarn, on the top of the machine, stuck to a magnet.  It's just gone.

On the second carriage, I broke one of the guides for the needle butts.  First I bent it, and I noticed the metal stress when I moved it back.  The second time I noticed it was bent, when I tried to straighten it, it broke off in my hand.  

My first step was to find the parts catalog for the machine.  It was not available for free on the site we find a lot of manuals on, machineknittingetc.com.   I did find it for sale on Sunny Choi's web site, so I downloaded it there.  We found the part numbers.   I tried to find parts at some of the machine knitting dealers, but none of them answered their phone.  My husband, who believes in the power of google,  located a part number at an online office supply store and ordered the parts.  Each part was approximately $10 and the shipping charge for each was approximately $15.  Not surprisingly, the next day they refunded his money because they did not have it in stock.  I located a "parts machine" on ebay in the next state.  It is reasonable to expect that with three KH-930's, I will someday need more parts.  It had been deep-cleaned and reassembled, and it wasn't working, and the seller didn't want to invest any more time or money in it.    Since I wasn't able to knit, and my husband had a conference call scheduled the next day, we jumped in my car and went to pick it up the same day.   

Ed spent a full afternoon, into the evening, last week, disassembling the carriage of the parts machine and installing the needle guide.  I am not going to tell him that yesterday when I was looking for my standard gauge transfer carriage I came across that part that I had ordered in 2010 from Distinctive Knits, also in Indiana.   I did not remember this, obviously.  I also did not find the transfer carriage.  I am pretty sure I have one. 

At any rate, I am knitting again with one carriage.  The second carriage is awaiting disassembly.  He read through the service manual and said that removing the part I need to repair is step 28 of the documented disassembly process, which has something like 32 steps.  He  says it will be an awful job. 

If anyone wonders why these acrylic hats are so expensive.....?  

DesignAKnit hat pattern for KH-930 to be published 

I am having fun with the pattern I created in DAK (DesignaKnit.)  Last night instead of knitting, I "colored" three variations - I used the existing one as "summer", and I will be producing "spring", "winter" and "fall" colorways.  

The pattern I will publish will provide detailed instructions for knitting the hat on a Brother KH-930, the DAK stitch patterns for the four colorways, and garment design files.  As all my patterns do, it will have,  a list of machine knitting abbreviations used in the pattern, a list of the techniques used, and a list of the skills required.    

But before I finished writing the pattern and editing it, I must fulfill the orders I already have for the hat.  I got ahead of myself and posted a photo of the pattern because I was so please with it, and some of my bicycle-riding Facebook friends DEMANDED I knit hats for them. 

Hat progress report 

I am proceeded at about the rate of one a day.  Yesterday I almost got to the end of a second hat, when I started thinking about how well it was going, I hadn't made a single catastrophic mistake.  I knitting to the tops of the mountains by 11:00 pm and I was trying to decide whether to finish the clouds before going to bed.  I made a color change to knit one row of sky before I put the white in the machine, drew the carriage across the bed, and the whole thing fell off the machine.  I was supposed to change the sky blue from the "A" feeder to the "B" feeder, and I forgot.    I spent the next two hours putting two safety lines in the work, one at the edge and one at the base of the mountains above the trees,  so that it doesn't unravel as I put it back on the machine.  So, I got to bed at one a.m.

Does anyone wonder why these acrylic hats are so expensive......??? 

This morning I have replaced all the stitches on the needles and unraveled down to the second safety line or "lifeline."  I decided to take a break and update this blog.... now way past lunch time.  After lunch it will be back to knitting.  I had hoped to mail out a couple of orders today, but now I don't think I'll make it to the post office before 4 p.m.    At least the drive is plowed, I spent a few hours learning how to run the snow plow on our lawn tractor after getting my car stuck on the way back up the hill from the mailbox.   When hubby got home he had to pull my car out with the tractor and clean up the edges where I had plowed.  Then he locked himself out of the garage, and had to walk around the house to my knitting studio for me to let him in.  He left evidence that was still there this morning! 

Links to BrightMeadowKnits sites

Ravelry -     Ravelry: Brightmeadow's profile 

Etsy -          https://www.etsy.com/shop/BrightMeadowKnits

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/brightmeadowknits

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brightmeadowfarms/

People working together for fiber arts

 Group memberships that support fiber arts

Local groups and clubs - near Mansfield, Ohio

Malabar Farm Spinning and Weaving Guild

Members of this Guild enjoy a wide variety of fiber arts including spinning, weaving, bobbin lace, quilting, basketry, knitting, crocheting, rug hooking and rug braiding, to name a few. Members are highly active in charity projects for veterans, cancer patients, hospice, the homeless and educating children's groups.  Website http://www.malabarfarm.org/get-involved/spinning-and-weaving-guild

Mansfield Art Center

Central Ohio's Premier Art Gallery & Art Education Facility - does not focus on fiber art specifically, however, occasionally offers fiber art-related classes

 

Warm Noggins

Have you ever heard of a noggin?  I think my dad used to use that word, as in "use your noggin" meaning to use my brain.   I had to look it up in the online etymology dictionary.  Here's what I found: 

1620s, "small cup, mug," later of the contents of such a vessel, "small drink" (1690s), a word of unknown origin, possibly related to Norfolk dialectal nog "strong ale." OED considers that the similar Celtic words are "no doubt" from English. Informal meaning "head" is attested by 1866 in American English.

I could use a small drink today, while protesters are storming the People's House.  

I've been working on a scarf since the beginning of December. It is off the machine now and I am contemplating the finishing I may want to do.  Possibly a row of bind-off stitches (chain stitch) on reverse side to add stability and stop rolling, or possibly a hand-crocheted edging, or possibly a machine trim like a pie crust edge. 

The materials for the scarf were "A box of Goats" from the Fuzzy Goat local yarn store in Thomasville, Georgia. It was an Advent box, with a gift for each day of December. 15 of the days were mini-skeins of Emma's yarn "Teenie-Tinies" in some luscious colors.  I decided to add in a standard-sized skein of 100 % superwash merino in the same weight from Carodan Farms.  You can find the yarn info under my projects on Ravelry - username is brightmeadow.  I absolutely love both of these yarns, they are so soft they feel like a pima cotton T-shirt, and they have a sheen that makes the scarf gleam as if it was gilded. 

The LYS provided a pattern for a bias, linen-stitch scarf.  I wanted to knit on the machine, and linen-stitch is one of the few stitches which can't easily be duplicated on the machine.  After some thought, I decided to knit a tuck stitch scarf using one of the built-in stitches on my KH-930.  

I did not realize when I started how hard it would be to keep track of which row I was on in the event of a yarn snag or fault to record a row properly.  I had to rip out rows several times to get back to a known point. I was not using a color changer, and every two rows I had to change the yarn in the feeder to the main color or contrast color.  By the time I had knitted about 10 of the mini-skeins, the scarf was getting very long and I was getting very tire.  The last few colors were more intense, so I knitted fewer rows.  

I will be using the remaining yarn to knit fingerless mitts when I get some other projects done.  

The reverse of the scarf has no floats, because it is tuck, not fairisle.  It actually looks pretty on its own. 

Depending on how I tie the scarf, the front or back may show. 

Now that this project is off the machine, I have some additional projects in mind.  First is to knit a hat for my grandaughter.  I was told her coat was dark red, like Anna's in the movie Frozen.  I asked her if she wanted snowflakes or an animal knitted in as a design, and she said snowflakes.  

I knitted a swatch. 

 

It turns out, though that her coat is really more purple and pink.  So the swatches above will be for a different garment, and I will have to find some pink and purple yarn and make new swatches. 

 

I also have orders for hats with bicycles on them. Some need to be "Celeste" or Bianchi blue.  Some should be pink. Some should be green and white.  And some are up to me.  

  

I've washed and dried the swatches, and have been renewing my acquaintance with DesignaKnit 9 to integrate stitch patterns with garment layouts.  I want a border of bicycles, not a repeating, tiled, design.   

I was somewhat surprised to find that although all the yarns are 2/24 acrylic, the gauge is slightly different for each swatch.  The blue is actually 80% acrylic and 20% angora.  The white is 80% acrylic and 20 % nylon.  The red and white in earlier swatch was 2/24 acrylic, and the gauge is different than the yellow/gray hats I made a few weeks ago, which were also 2/24 acrylic.