brightmeadowknits: Hats, Hats, Hats and Bicycles

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

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!