It's Been a Long Time

This morning I got up and went back to work full time for the first time since mid July.   And for the first time in more than two years it is at a job that doesn't require brute force and a strong back.  I'm happy to have a full time steady job, where I can use my brains rather than my muscles to do the work.  I spent the day doing online learning sessions and the list of classes they have given me to complete over the next few months is long.  I'm earning a paycheck again and that's a good thing.

On Heather's 11 minute project, I worked on rehanging stitches when they decided to fall off while I was knitting jacquard on my machine.  Got that done, started knitting and realized about 5 rows later that there was something else seriously wrong.  The pattern was not symmetrical and it should have been.  A quick look at the pattern showed the problem and it was fairly easily resolved.  Now I need to rip out 18 rows of jacquard knitting.  Sigh...   This work thing is going to seriously cut into my fiber addiction.  hahaha

Not a bad day

My sister woke me this morning, after a late night trying to finish something.  We had a large series of thunderstorms on Sunday night.  She had asked me to check her house for damage as she is on vacation.  I had sent her pictures of the high water in her gardens.  This mornings call was to ask me to go over and use a sump pump to get the worst of it out of the way.so her perennials didn't drown.  I took advantage of the down time to work on picking up the borders of my Stonington Shawl.  It took over three hours to get the worst of it out of the beds.

When I got home I managed to get the back of my \Whistler sweater finished and off of the machine.  I need to do some duplicate stitching to finish it off. 

I got a call from the HR manager at Home Depot, asking me when I was available to come in for orientation.  This has been the fourth winter that I spent at home and I am so happy to have the opportunity to work full time again.

All and all this has been a good day.

Work space

Work continues on the back of Whistler.  I've completed about 135 rows out of 200. As of this writing I'm halfway through the ten rows that have to be knit using a jacquard technique.  This is a more complicated knitting than I'm used to doing with my machine.

I'm finding myself really grateful for the large whiteboard that I hung next to my workspace when I re-arranged the room last year.  I find it really convienent to be able to make notes on the pattern as I go along, or looking at the black lines on the board, work out details of another design or two.  Under the whiteboard is a rather pretty tackboard that my sister gave me for Christmas.  On it are laminated cards with the most common charting symbols and what they look like for machine and  hand knitting, plus crochet.

On the wall above the desk with the knitting machine is a warping board that I find very handy to hang yarn samples from.

On my old drafting board, I have installed my Silver Reed.  It sits on the front edge and that leaves most of the work surface available for my computer, tools, yarn, swatches, and to be honest collection of debris.  I have an Ott lite installed to one side of the machine and have run a power bar and network connection to the desktop.

To the other side of the desk are my bins of stash.  Many bins...  SABLE is really what it probably should be called. 

A chair covered with a sheepskin, a television, bookcases and the components of my entertainment system round out the room.  Cozy and warm, especially in the winter. 

Swatch part 2

Today's knitting was re-swatching the jacquard portion using a double bed technique.  I called a friend with several machines and asked to borrow a tension mast and tensioners to make the jacquard knitting easier.  It went a lot faster this time.  And it looks quite a bit neater. 

Swatching

After spending some time figuring out how to separate the jacquard portion from the fair isle patterning, and then correcting all of the color change and color errors that DAK found, I started knitting my jacquard swatch.  I quickly discovered that re-threading the tensioner every couple of rows really bites.  And I'm not half done with the swatch yet.

So I found my pdf of the parts manual and emailed Lea-Ann at Knitting Today  to see if she could order me the parts. One of the pluses of becoming gainfully employed again is the ability to buy the tools I need to correctly solve a problem.

The other thing this swatch is showing me is that I'm definitely going to have to come up with a plan to deal with the LONG floats on the back of the jacquard portion of the pattern.  This book, Jacquard for All arrived in the mail earlier this week.  Written for Silver Reed and Brother machines, both punch card and electronic, I'm finding that I have several options available.  And that's what swatches are for too.

DAK and Whistler

I have long loved the Nordic ski sweater patterns from Dale of Norway.  For several years I worked at handknitting the Salt Lake City team sweater.  While the original goal had been to wear it during the SLC Olympics in 2002, it was finally finished as my Christmas sweater in 2006.  I ripped back the yoke about 4 times trying to get the gauge/tension to work.  So I know exactly how much work goes into handknitting one of these sweaters.

Enter DAK, the first thing I did after I bought my Silver Reed 860, DAK and my laptop was draft the Nagano charts into DAK.  I already had the yarn and I really wanted the sweater.  Problem was that I didn't know how to use the software.  So the pattern stayed on the computer while I kept learning to use the machine and program.  Last year I decided that I wanted the Vancouver sweater for my Christmas sweater.  It is a fairly simple sweater for Dale of Norway so I put it into DAK and started knitting.  Starting it on December 24 wasn't the brightest idea for a Christmas sweater, but I did finish it in time for my birthday a couple of weeks later. 

This winter I decided that I would actually get Nagano knit.  So I looked at the yarn I had stashed for this project, decided to make a Small rather than a Medium to best use the yarn I had, reviewed the stitch patterns for errors, swatched to match the gauge needed, and started knitting.  It took about 2 weeks to knit on the machine, and looks amazing.  If I would get the finishing done so I could photograph it I would be really happy.

So now I want to make Whistler.  I have the shape pattern complete and the stitch patterns too.  Problem is that there are parts of it that are 3 colors per row.  So I'm thinking 3 color jacquard is the technique to use for this one.  Or at least for the rows affected.  So I read my manuals.  Not a lot of help there.  I go online to the Machine Knitting boards on Ravelry.  Some one else is asking the same questions, but I'm not seeing anything that really helps me.   I'm frustrated because the majority of the pattern is plain stockinette or setting O, most of the colorwork is 2 colors per row, basically fair isle, setting F, but about 10 - 12 rows are 3 color or jacquard/J.  The sound options on the interactive module imply that there should be a way to combine multiple techniques on one pattern piece but I can't figure it out.

So my best solution is to create 2 versions of each piece, one will be fair isle and stockinette with the jacquard section cut out and blank.  The second version will have the jacquard pattern on the appropriate rows of the pattern blank.  The plan is to knit the fair isle until I get to the jacquard rows.  Then load the jacquard piece, zip up to the appropriate row and knit the jacquard rows, then switch back to fair isle.  And this has to be done on all 4 pieces of the sweater.  I'm thinking a lot of swatches to get this worked out correctly before I start the big pieces.

Meme

If you’ve read it and you are a knitter…consider yourself tagged!!!!
Instructions:
for stuff you’ve done, italics for stuff you plan to do one day, and normal for stuff you’re not planning on doing.
Afghan/Blanket (in progress)
I-cord
Garter stitch 
Knitting with metal wire
Shawl
Stockinette stitch
Socks: top-down
Socks: toe-up Knitting with camel yarn
Mittens: Cuff-up
Mittens: Tip-down
Hat
Knitting with silk Moebius band knitting
Participating in a KAL
Sweater
Drop stitch patterns
Knitting with recycled/secondhand yarn
Slip stitch patterns
Knitting with banana fiber yarn
Domino knitting (modular knitting)
Twisted stitch patterns
Knitting with bamboo yarn
Two end knitting
Charity knitting
Knitting with soy yarn
Cardigan
Toy/doll clothing
Knitting with circular needles
Knitting with your own handspun yarn
Slippers
Graffiti knitting (knitting items on, or to be left on the street)
Continental knitting
Designing knitted garments
Cable stitch patterns (incl. Aran)
Lace patterns
Publishing a knitting book
Scarf
American/English knitting (as opposed to continental)
Knitting to make money
Button holes
Knitting with alpaca
Fair Isle knitting
Norwegian knitting
Dying with plant colors
Knitting items for a wedding
Household items (dishcloths, washcloths, tea cozies…)
Knitting socks (or other small tubular items) on two circulars (done it, but never completed them)
Olympic knitting
Knitting with someone else’s handspun yarn
Knitting with DPNs
Holiday related knitting
Teaching a male how to knit
Bobbles
Knitting for a living
Knitting with cotton
Knitting smocking
Dying yarn
Steeks
Knitting art
Fulling/felting
Knitting with wool
Textured knitting
Kitchener BO
Purses/bags
Knitting with beads
Swatching
Long Tail CO
Entrelac
Knitting and purling backwards
Machine knitting
Knitting with self-patterning/self-striping/variegating yarn
Stuffed toys
Baby items
Knitting with cashmere
Darning
Jewelry
Knitting with synthetic yarn
Writing a pattern
Gloves
Intarsia
Knitting with linen
Knitting for preemies
Tubular CO
Freeform knitting
Short rows
Cuffs/fingerless mitts/arm warmers
Pillows
Knitting a pattern from an online knitting magazine
Rug
Knitting on a loom
Thrummed knitting
Knitting a gift
Knitting for pets
Shrug/bolero/poncho
Knitting with dog/cat hair
Hair accessories
Knitting in public
Now, what’s your list look like????