My sock journey continues.
After knitting quite a few (as in I have no idea now how many I've made) pairs on flatbed machines and having to seam them, then knitting a couple of pairs on a flatbed/ribber combo, and even having knitted Three. Whole. Pairs. by hand, I finally bought the perfect thing for making socks: a circular sock knitting machine.
My machine is the Speedster, from the Erlbacher Gearhart Knitting Machine Company in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. It arrived in mid-March, beautifully packed in its reusable box.
I had a bit of a rough start, because the part that trips the row counter was loose and got caught. Once that issue was corrected, it was a bit of a learning curve - but as of today, I've made eleven pairs of socks with it, including two pairs of tabbed footies that I absolutely love as they stay on all night in bed and work great in my walking shoes.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
The New House
Pictures, from the listing, of our new house.
Front
Formal living room
Dining room
Kitchen
Another kitchen view
Sunroom - located off kitchen
Family room
Laundry room
Deck
Back of house
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Week Two
It's week two of the garden, and the peas are coming up like ambitious little weeds! It's amazing to see how far they've already com.
Here are this week's pictures:
Here are this week's pictures:
Sunday, April 29, 2012
The 2012 Garden is IN
Last weekend, while I recovered from a work-related trip to Franklin, VA, Danny put in this year's garden. No pots this year!
The lemon balm we got by accident a few years ago, and which we have grown to love, comes back every year with no help from us. In fact, the only thing hard about growing the lemon balm is keeping it cut back so it doesn't flower! Here's what that patch looks like just now.
Some morning glories have been planted alongside the lemon balm patch. One or two have sprouted so far.
Here's a shot of the bed that has tomato and stevia plants, along with peas that are starting from seed.
Same bed, another angle.
And Danny's pride: the pepper bed!
I love where he put this bench. So peaceful:
Last year, we tried planting ornamentals in the big box under the trees along the fence. It was a total fail. This year, Danny moved the bird feeders out there so that our patio will now stay clean. It is a big improvement.
More next week...
The lemon balm we got by accident a few years ago, and which we have grown to love, comes back every year with no help from us. In fact, the only thing hard about growing the lemon balm is keeping it cut back so it doesn't flower! Here's what that patch looks like just now.
Some morning glories have been planted alongside the lemon balm patch. One or two have sprouted so far.
Here's a shot of the bed that has tomato and stevia plants, along with peas that are starting from seed.
Same bed, another angle.
And Danny's pride: the pepper bed!
I love where he put this bench. So peaceful:
Last year, we tried planting ornamentals in the big box under the trees along the fence. It was a total fail. This year, Danny moved the bird feeders out there so that our patio will now stay clean. It is a big improvement.
More next week...
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Not Dead, After All
Last April, Frank Sanders from Northtipton was in Raleigh and helped me with my Brother KH-212. At the time, it seemed like it was functional, but when I got home and tried to cast on and knit, I discovered that several of the channels for the needles had gotten deformed, with the end result being that the machine would not knit.
Or so I thought.
Further research and an "oh well, there's nothing to lose" attitude led me to try changing the shape of the channels with a screwdriver. After testing to make sure all of the needles could freely move, and doing a fair bit of investigative "air knitting," today I finally got up the gumption to rethread the machine.
And guess what.
It's ain't dead, after all. Here are a couple of pictures of my very first swatch.
Or so I thought.
Further research and an "oh well, there's nothing to lose" attitude led me to try changing the shape of the channels with a screwdriver. After testing to make sure all of the needles could freely move, and doing a fair bit of investigative "air knitting," today I finally got up the gumption to rethread the machine.
And guess what.
It's ain't dead, after all. Here are a couple of pictures of my very first swatch.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Eure....Whoops!
Everything doesn't always go according to plan. I had a clever idea for having ribbing on top of the kind of socks I made a couple of days ago: make the sock, take it off on waste yarn, then make a section of ribbing, take IT off on waste yarn, and then attach the two together using the main bed. Yes, there would still be a seam to make, but only on the ribbing part. Well...here's what that looks like:
Even with safety pins marking dropped stitches (I clearly need practice on picking stitches up that have been "saved" with waste yarn!), it looks pretty good. And it is very lovely, making the disappointment all that much sharper:
The cast-on for the ribbing doesn't stretch enough so that I can get my foot into the sock.
I'm not sure at all what to do about that. This is, in fact, the first time that I've made ribbing for anything on the ribber. There must be a fix...I guess I'm off to do some research!
 |
| It's "upside down" for no special reason... |
Even with safety pins marking dropped stitches (I clearly need practice on picking stitches up that have been "saved" with waste yarn!), it looks pretty good. And it is very lovely, making the disappointment all that much sharper:
The cast-on for the ribbing doesn't stretch enough so that I can get my foot into the sock.
I'm not sure at all what to do about that. This is, in fact, the first time that I've made ribbing for anything on the ribber. There must be a fix...I guess I'm off to do some research!
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
My Sock Story
Since I saw a pattern book for socks when I was a young girl (it was a rather complicated book on hand knitting argyle socks) I have wanted to learn to knit socks. A year or two ago, I successfully crocheted several pairs of socks, a pair for my stepdad, two for my mother, and two for me. Sadly, crocheted socks do not have as much "give" in them as knitted socks, and Mom's socks do not fit her - they are scheduled for demolition (I know it's called frogging, but demolition fits my mood about those socks) and then knitting. (If you want to see the crocheted socks, as well as a few other things that I've crocheted in the last couple of years, you can look at my Ravelry page. You might have to log in - I am not sure.)
In May of 2010, Danny and I stopped at a small yarn shop in Longview, WA, Evie's Yarn Emporium. I was looking for some stitch markers for the pair of socks which I was then crocheting, having dropped my last one under the seat in the rental car. Evie, who is a marvelously gregarious person, asked me if there was "anything else" besides the stitch markers - and I asked her about making socks. Nearly forty-five minutes later (during which time, Danny came in from the car because I had been gone so long that he had started to worry), I had a ball of yarn, a set of bamboo #1 double-pointed needles, a pattern, and a handful of handwritten notes and advice from Evie. That ball of yarn became my first handknitted pair of socks.
It was tough going, my first experience with double-pointed needles, but I wouldn't be stopped. I tried again, with #3 dpns and some sport weight yarn from KnitPicks. The second pair of socks came out better than the first, but I still felt that it took F O R E V E R. I wanted faster.
Fast forward to spring of this year, when I had my Bond. I made my first pair of machine knitted socks on it, from Liberty Wool purchased at DownTown Knits in Apex. Danny liked them so well that I promptly made two more pairs. (Only two pair, the first and last, are shown below - the blue pair that were made between these two appears in another post, but you get the general idea...)
And then...I got a Studio SK-301. My next two pairs of socks were made on it, from KnitPicks' Felici Sport. These socks feel great on the feet, so great that I almost didn't give Danny back the pair he loaned me when we were flying to Oregon this year. But...the problem with these, as with the ones made on the Bond, was twofold: the toes had to be Kitchenered, and the flat-knitted socks had to be seamed up the side. Yuck. Yes, you don't notice the seam when you are wearing the socks, but YUCK for having to make the seam.
So...now I have moved up to knitting socks in the round, as I mentioned in my last post. Next...figuring out how to put on a ribbed top!
Oh...if you do go to my Ravelry page, you'll see that there are a pair of socks listed as WIP (work in progress) that are called Insouciant Socks. There is no photo yet as I'm not sure what to do with them - they are "complete" but are too short and fit "funny." I might have to taken them apart and knit them on a machine - but I spent hours and hours and hours knitting the darned things. See? Another reason to machine knit socks - if you don't like the result, you probably have at most an hour or two in each sock so it doesn't hurt SO bad if you decide to frog 'em!
That's my story...so far. I have quite a few skeins of sock yarn in my workspace, and now that I don't have to seam, they will probably be socks in short order!
In May of 2010, Danny and I stopped at a small yarn shop in Longview, WA, Evie's Yarn Emporium. I was looking for some stitch markers for the pair of socks which I was then crocheting, having dropped my last one under the seat in the rental car. Evie, who is a marvelously gregarious person, asked me if there was "anything else" besides the stitch markers - and I asked her about making socks. Nearly forty-five minutes later (during which time, Danny came in from the car because I had been gone so long that he had started to worry), I had a ball of yarn, a set of bamboo #1 double-pointed needles, a pattern, and a handful of handwritten notes and advice from Evie. That ball of yarn became my first handknitted pair of socks.
It was tough going, my first experience with double-pointed needles, but I wouldn't be stopped. I tried again, with #3 dpns and some sport weight yarn from KnitPicks. The second pair of socks came out better than the first, but I still felt that it took F O R E V E R. I wanted faster.
 | |
| Blue socks - sport weight from KnitPicks. Brown - forgotten yarn name from Evie's. |
 |
| Top: first pair of machine knitted socks; bottom, another pair. Liberty Wool, Bond machine. |
And then...I got a Studio SK-301. My next two pairs of socks were made on it, from KnitPicks' Felici Sport. These socks feel great on the feet, so great that I almost didn't give Danny back the pair he loaned me when we were flying to Oregon this year. But...the problem with these, as with the ones made on the Bond, was twofold: the toes had to be Kitchenered, and the flat-knitted socks had to be seamed up the side. Yuck. Yes, you don't notice the seam when you are wearing the socks, but YUCK for having to make the seam.
 |
| The Felici Sport socks, knitted on the Studio. |
Oh...if you do go to my Ravelry page, you'll see that there are a pair of socks listed as WIP (work in progress) that are called Insouciant Socks. There is no photo yet as I'm not sure what to do with them - they are "complete" but are too short and fit "funny." I might have to taken them apart and knit them on a machine - but I spent hours and hours and hours knitting the darned things. See? Another reason to machine knit socks - if you don't like the result, you probably have at most an hour or two in each sock so it doesn't hurt SO bad if you decide to frog 'em!
That's my story...so far. I have quite a few skeins of sock yarn in my workspace, and now that I don't have to seam, they will probably be socks in short order!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)