Good Morning, Pumpkin!

Ribber Lesson 24 - Drop Stitch Lace

This is a kind of knitted lace, made on the ribber.

If you were handknitting, lace like this is made by doing two yarn-overs, or wraps, in one stitch and then you would drop the extra wrap when you come back. It's the same effect - a larger stitch that makes a hole.

This is very simple to do on the ribber, especially if you have a cam for dropping stitches. If you don't have the gadget, you can drop them with a ruler or even your hand.

Try it out - the video is below. Click on the arrow for Ribber Lesson 24, Drop Stitch Lace.






Here's the chart -

A Very Nice Tuesday

Today, I was feeling much better, and at work, after looking at information on old tax returns back in the 70s and 80s, and getting advice from our audit and tax firm and our super-smart CPA/attorney treasurer (he's handsome, too, girls), I finally understand how to present some of the details on the new version of the 990 tax return for non-profit entities.

When you work someplace that's been in operation almost a hundred years, nobody really knows all the history. It's strange looking at old, handwritten tax returns that show pennies and old carbon-tissue copies of letters!

The new 990 is challenging to prepare completely and accurately. I will feel so good to have our two 990 returns done and filed!

A high point in my day was getting an email from the TSCPA that had the list of next year's nominated officers, and my friend Donna Wesling is going to be recommended to the membership for next year's Chairman-Elect. She has wanted this, is willing to do the tremendous amount of volunteer work and travelling involved. Donna has volunteered at both the local and state levels in just about every area, and I am elated for her. We're lucky to have her to lead TSCPA. Assuming the membership ratifies her nomination, Donna works for a year as Chairman-Elect and then the following year is Chairman.

Another highlight was scheduling a lunch with Gail Neely, whom I know from our Austin CPA chapter and have been hoping to get to know better.

Also, I got the drop stitch lace video done this evening and I'm uploading it. It was tedious for me because there weren't any built-in patterns for it and I had to fiddle until I got something that would show up on camera. I like how it turned out, once I finally got it done. Ribber drop stitch lace is very interesting, and if you haven't tried it, you need to!

Monday Miscellany

Another week means another Weight Watchers meeting, and I'm down another pound. My total lost is 19.4 pounds 14 weeks. I didn't bother to count points this weekend, while my mouth hurt. I ate soup, scrambled eggs and the like, and figured I wasn't eating much. Getting back to normal and eating some crunchy vegetables will certainly be nice.

I went to see the dentist today, who explained that I have a gum infection. I am supposed to take the rest of the penicillin and use Peridex with a syringe. Between the pain of her probing around, and the amount of bone damage on the x-ray, I was pretty miserable.

On the other hand, I felt better by the end of the workday. I had balanced the operating cash account and gone to a CPA luncheon, where we listened to a very interesting talk about Texas prosecutions of securities fraud.

Best of all, I got about 800 hits on the learn-to-knit videos in the last 24 hours, probably because the garter bar videos were mentioned on the Machine Knitting listserve.

It's time to finish up the beginning ribber course. I have been working on a slip stitch ribbing video and a drop stitch video. They're not ready to put up yet, though. I am debating about double jacquard - to do it efficiently, one uses the double bed color changer, and this class is just about ribbing. I think I'll do a little, but change the color by hand. The color changer needs to have its own lessons.

After that, do you think a few knit-with-me projects are in order? I've got some very easy ribber project ideas.

Reading

On the Kindle, I'm reading "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," by John Bunyan; "Getting Things Done" by David Allen; "Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stores 1902-1903; and "An Outback Marriage;" and "Shopping for Time" by Carolyn Mahaney.

Normally I only read a couple books at one time, but this weekend, with my sick tooth, it certainly has been helpful to skip around between books.

I struggle tremendously with time management with all my activities, so I'm always interested in time management ideas. The two books about time management, Allen and Mahaney, couldn't be more different in their approaches. Allen has an efficient look-at-everything-and-see-what-needs-done approach that works extremely well at the office. However, Mahaney makes very important points about putting devotions first and then deciding what to spend time on - any time at all.

John Bunyan? you wonder. Well, a friend recommended it, and I am finding Bunyan's personal journey toward grace honest and beautiful.

Ribber Lesson 23 - Tuck Stitch Ribbing

Lesson 23 is how to do ribber tuck stitch - using the machine's patterning capability:

Ribber Lesson 22 - Pintucks

Here's how to make ribber pintucks:

Ribber Lesson 21 - Short-Rowing in Ribbing

I'm willing to bet that even a lot of very experienced machine knitters haven't done short-rowing in ribbing! Come on, give it a try - it's in all the machine ribber manuals I have seen, and it's fairly easy, if you get the weight right.

This is just about like main bed short-rowing. The big difference is that ribbing requires more weights, and as you take needles out of work, the part of the work you're still knitting gets baggy and needs more weight.

Just a few posts ago I have one called "Knitting Weights," with pictures of all my knitting weights and weight hangers plus how much each one weighs.

You can feel the fabric forming underneath the machine and tell that the part that's getting longer than the rest needs a weight. Use a narrow weight-hanger for a situation where only a few needles are still in work and a longer weight hanger for a situation where there are still a lot of needles knitting. Remember, it's the needles that are in work where you need the extra weight!

As you keep short-rowing, you can adjust the weights by removing the weight hangers and re-hanging them.

Here's the video. I hope you'll try it out!

Ribber Lesson 20 - Racked Pattern

I have always found racked ribbing very cool. After all, if you were hand knitting, it would be very tedious to cable all those stitches to create the fancy zigzags. The machine zooms through it, though. Lots of impact from such a simple stitch!

I'm a Little Sick

I've got a painful tooth. My dentist put me on antibiotics, but despite that, it's been a hard, painful day. I think maybe I waited too long to contact the dentist - I wasn't sure whether it was a tooth or sinuses at first.

We finished figuring out the budget numbers today, and it's Friday night, so I can relax on the weekend, and then on Monday, I'll have been on penicillin a while, and I'll see the dentist in the afternoon.

Ribber Lesson 19 - Casting Off Part of a Row

An easy lesson, how to cast off a few stitches at the beginning of a row of ribbing:

Weight Watchers

Weighed-in tonight at 1.4 pounds less than last week, for a loss to date of 18.4 pounds in 13 weeks. I think I can reasonably say now that I've recovered from that week I ate all the restaurant food because we were travelling.

Knitting Weights

Weights are very important in machine knitting. Even with Passap machines, which were advertised as requiring no weights, weights can be very helpful at times.

If you watch my videos, you see me use clothespins and weights quite often. This weekend, my husband and I photographed all the knitting weights I could find around my house, thinking this might be helpful for someone who is wondering what how heavy they are and how they're used. We weighed them all, too. You certainly can improvise and add more weights to your collection.

Working from the left, let's start with the lightest items - clothespins. I use them for the loose end of the yarn as I begin to knit. With a clothespin holding the yarn, I can use my hand for something else. From the left - a small plastic clothespin, 5.2 grams, 2 ounces. A plastic covered red clip, 9.8 grams, .3 ounces. A bigger blue plastic clothespin, my favorite, 10.3 grams, .4 ounces.

Then, a "heel fork." It's a cheap fork from the dollar store, and my husband bent the tines so it can hook into knitting. It's good for holding down heel stitches as I short-row. He also drilled a hole in the handle so I can hang a weight. It weighs 22.4 grams, .8 ounces.

Next, a garter carraige weight, 24.1 grams, .9 ounces.

The next object is a triangle weight holder. If you don't have a set of these, you could sure use 'em! Mine are from Silver Reed company, and they're great for holding hefty weights on ribbing. For just the holder without a weight, it's 38 grams, 1.3 ounces.

Next photo, from left: a typical claw weight for machine knitting, 108 grams, 3.8 ounces. Next, a Passap heel weight, long, white, with prongs on one end and a hole on the other (it can be used as a weight hanger), 165.5 grams 5.8 ounces. Next item - a brass weight, wonderful for main bed work, because the weight is spread a little horizontally, 214.9 grams or 7.6 ounces.

Now, for some more serious weight. First, a Passap weight from the comb and weights set, 351.5 grams, 12.4 ounces, then a Japanese small ribber weight, 210.5 grams, 7.4 ounces, then a large ribber weight, 500 grams, 17.6 ounces (about a pound), then a fishing weight (you can buy them in all kinds of different weights, and they normally have a hole. The hook was homemade, from a coat hanger), 460 grams, 16.2 ounces, including the hook (about a pound).

Finally, on the right, two sock machine weights. These are industrial weights, and you can stack more of the hockey-puck type weights on the one with the stick and hook. The one with the hook is 545 grams, 19.2 ounces, and the stackable one is 484 grams, 17.1 ounces (about a pound each). Sock machines use a lot more weight than the other machines.

In fact, now that I've gotten three antique sock machines working well, I learned that a key issue is to have NO tension on the yarn as it comes in and LOTS of weight on the knitting as it comes out. As you can imagine, I cringed at putting a whole pound of weight on a little sock toe, but I actually use two pounds on a sock toe now and two more pounds on the rest of the sock.

Stained Glass Workshop Last Saturday

The Model A Club was having a "restoration clinic" for the guys, about compression and valves, such fascinating subjects, and since it was at Tom P.'s house, and his wife Kathy is a stained glass artist, she offered to have a workshop for the ladies.

They live on a hill in the Texas Hill Country, and it's a beautiful, unique place. Tom has built metal sheds for several of his antique cars, and with the false fronts he built, he has a "village." When John, my friend Laura, and I arrived, the guys were heading to those metal garages and we ladies went inside for Kathy's stained glass class.

Kathy had selected a pattern and created the outer frame. She had each of us do a piece or two of the design. The pattern was already cut up and taped on the back of the rough-cut pieces of glass. We scored them and snapped them into shapes, then ground them on a special grinder to get a close fit to each paper pattern piece. Next, we put copper foil around the edge and Kathy fit them into the overall design, grinding off a little more glass if necessary for a perfect fit. In the 2-hour session, all but two of the pieces were fitted for the picture, and those needed a little fine fitting before Kathy can foil them, then soldier the center seams of the picture. I had never seen this kind of work done before, and truly, it was beautiful and fascinating.

I couldn't resist putting up that last picture - it's me with their dog Zeus, who is quite the ladies' man. If you stop petting him, he taps you gently with his paw...

Kathy's work is stunning, and both Laura and I took lots of pictures. We also got some pictures of Tom and Kathy's amazing Hill Country view.

I could see th guys had a great time, too, but in my opinion, the girls came out ahead on this club meeting!

Examples of Kathy's work:

Ribber Lesson 18 - Increasing in Ribbing

Increasing in ribbing is tricky, and will be different for different needle arrangements. But please don't get the idea that you can't shape ribbing. You can shape it, and it's fairly easy!

On this video, I have several different increases in plain old knit 1, purl 1 ribbing:



ribb

Beginning Knitting Machine Lessons - Link List Fixed

If you were having problems with the list of links to the beginning lesson videos, I've just worked on it. It should be fixed now!

Thanks for letting me know.

Decreasing in Ribbing, Ribber Lesson 17

Here's the video explaining how to do side decreases in ribbing:

New Link Lists

Now that I have lots and lots of how-to videos over at YouTube, it can be a pain to try to find the one you want to see over at the YouTube channel.

I am trying to make that easier with my new link list on the left hand side of this blog. First, there's a link to the YouTube Channel, if you want to hunt through everything.

Below that, I have links to special blog posts that contain lists of available lessons in a course with the individual links to go straight to the right video.

Ribber Lesson 16 - 2X2 Smile and Frown Cast-Off

You can use that same "smile and frown" cast-off for knit 2, purl 2 ribbing, and it turns out just fine:

What Yarn to Use for Your Machine

I get the question about what yarn to buy for different machines.

Beginners get horribly frustrated by trying to knit with inappropriate yarn. If you're an old hand with a yarn stash, please treat the beginners you know to some hand-me-down yarns that are easy for knitting!

If you're learning to machine knit, here are some tips on choosing practice yarn:

• Skeins of yarn are labeled with the gauge, usually how many stitches are in 10 centimeters, which is 4", so divide by 4 to get stitches per inch.
• As a beginner, get yarn for a standard gauge (4.5mm) machine knits to a gauge of at least 7 stitches per inch. I kind of like 8 stitches per inch for beginners on standard machines. More stitches per inch means the yarn is thinner.
• Got a 9 mm bulky? Get yarn that knits at least 5 stitches per inch.
• Got a midgauge? Try for 6 stitches per inch or smaller.
• Try to get some cone yarn. It's treated with wax to make it knit more easily, and besides, the people who sell cone yarn can steer you to the right stuff. Also, cones feed the yarn perfectly. Set the cone on the floor.
• Use a wax cylinder. Pick it up off the holder, thread the yarn, and then set it on top. It will turn slowly as the yarn passes underneath. If you put the yarn on top of it, it'll cut a groove in the wax.
• The yarn should be smooth and boring, not bumpy, kinky, laddery, eyelashy, furry or hairy.
• Avoid yarn that breaks easily.
• The yarn should have a little stretch and spring. Stay from limp cotton, linen and silk, for now. It should have more than one ply (strand) and some twist.
• There's nothing wrong with cheap acrylic yarn for practice! I'd like you to enhance your learning experience by making lavish piles of swatches.
• Get light colors.