Monday, March 23, 2015

Anyone Have A Good Method of Weaving in Ends???

I had a customer ask me to make a longie for her baby that was striped with 7 different colors. Usually I stop at four colors as knitting more than that on the machine is problematic.  I have a four color tension guide from my standard gauge machine set up on my mid-gauge & it works well. Using more colors means having to hand feed some of them, & I don't like to do that. When I do multiple colors I run the yarn up the right side of the knit if not using a color changer. The mid-gauge doesn't have a color changer so you are changing colors by hand. This particular pair of longies had 7 colors with 4 repeats.
 
 
                         I had so many ends that carrying up the side was not working. Too bulky. After the cover was off the machine I Kitchener stitched the yarn ends on the wrong side. I didn't really like that method but that is what I used. After I finished I did a search on You Tube looking for ways to knit in ends while making the garment. I only found a couple videos including one from the Answer Lady. I haven't tried it but am going to knit up some swatches & see how it works for me. I hope she doesn't mind my uploading her video to my blog. I emailed her but she didn't respond. Let me know what other methods are out there & if you have ever tried this.
 
 
 
I remember that I made several jackets one time & did an e-wrap on the side where I put the zipper to give it more stability.
 
 
 

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

A Moment Of Silence

Let us all observe a moment of silence with the passing of Knitware. As of January 1st of this year, Knitware has been discontinued.

Sponge Bars

As machine knitters we all know that to knit the machine requires a good sponge bar to do it's job correctly. My SR 860 was giving me trouble so I took out the sponge bar to check it. As I feared the sponge bar was shot. I had several sponge bars available & while I didn't have one for the 860 I had one that was close & thought I would use it. Wrong!! I had orders to get out & didn't want to wait for the new one to get here so I stuck in a sponge bar that looked pretty close to the old one. After I stuck it in there the machine knit fine but would not knit on hold at all. It just jammed every time. So then I tried to get the thing out & it was stuck. I tried poking it out with a screwdriver, grabbing it with needle nose pliers etc etc. Finally had to enlist the help of DH & take the bed off to get the darn thing out. I still have orders to get out so I put the old one back in & am knitting slowly with it until the new one arrives. NEVER put the wrong sponge bar in any machine. I knew that but conveniently forgot it but will not do that again!!