Over the years, I've come to admire Kris Basta's commitment to machine knitting. She's the lady who manufactures and sells the nice Kris Krafter garter bars. She makes them in gauges that we can't get anywhere else.
Kris now has a new product. It fits right into that same category of needed but very difficult to find machine knitting gadgets.
This one is called the Needle Beetle. What the Beetle does is select needles on your LK150, LK140, LK100 or GK370 knitting machine so you can more easily make pattern stitches. You pick out the first 8 needles on the right, you slide the Beetle along, and it picks out the needles on across the needles in work, copying those first 8 needles accurately. I found this was much easier and more accurate than hand-picking all the way across the needles in work.
The Beetle works on 6.5 or 9 mm gauges. You have to unscrew and flip over the cam inside to go from the 6.5 gauge to the 9 mm gauge. I haven't done that myself, as I don't have a Studio 9 mm plastic machine. I do have an LK150, though, and I had a blast playing with this new toy.
You can use this for tuck, slip, lace, tuck mosaic, slip mosaic, and fair isle. I tried quite a few stitches, but not wanting the video to go on forever, this video shows a tuck stitch and a slip stitch.
Here's my video:
Things I learned along the way:
1. The Beetle goes from right to left, only. You'll move it into position on the bed each time you want to select needles.
2 The Beetle does not work on other machines besides the ones Kris named. It's a slider, folks - it has to fit the needle bed size.
3. If you want to not tuck end stitches, you've got to move them back yourself. If you want to not slip end stitches, you need to move those, too.
4. Hold the knitted fabric against the bed as you slide. Fabric can come toward you if needles are being moved toward you!
5. Use your row counter to help you keep track of charts.
6. The Beetle would be fantastic in conjunction with the Fair Isle carriage, but those are rare. I don't have one of those. For Fair Isle, I did it a color at a time.
7. Have you got two LK150 carriages? I do! You can feed one color in one and one color in the other for color work.
8. The Beetle does 8-stitch repeats. You'll be amazed at how many 8-stitch charts you can find. In particular, Kris sent me to machineknittingetc.com to download some of the old Jones 8-stitch pattern books. You'll also be surprised how many of the stitches in the newer pattern books use a 2-, 4, or 8-stitch repeat.
If you want one of these, go to www.kriskrafter.com and have a look. Kris has an introductory price right now, so if you want a deal, you need to get your order in before that special ends.