Maybe a new loomer

I had to take my sister to the doc today so I took along my loom that I have the wedged piece on. I was sitting working waiting for her to get out when a lady asked what I was doing.

So I told her it was loom knitting and showed her the loom. I actually handed it to her. I did explain that the one I was working on was a more expensive one but that there were cheaper ones available for people to start out on. I told her that I advised people to get the cheaper looms to try before putting a lot of expense into looms.

She was holding the loom with such a look of surprise. Then she told me that she had lost the site in her right eye. As a result of that she couldn't handle crocheting any more, but that she thought she could do this.

Just before she came to sit down, while she was checking in, I heard her say that winters here were bringing her down. She said that it is so dreary for seven months and if she had the money she would move.

After she sat down and talked with me for a bit. Examined the loom I had they came to call her to the back. She got up and said, I think you just saved me from another long boring winter. She looked at the nurse and said I think this lady just saved me.

You see I also had a brightly colored loom in my bag. You know one of those from Craft Etc. I had pulled it out to show her as it is like the knifty knitters. She got excited as she remembered seeing them at Walmart.

I think I see another loom knitter in the making. She left me in such a different frame of mind then when she had first sat down.

I have from time to time had some interest, people ask questions, and I have even given advice on ones to buy, but this was so different. It left me with a feeling of having done such good with out even trying. Ah the wonders of the world.

Bad moments

Going through one of those stubborn moments. Bogged down with an innovations scarf. Fighting it every night and it is driving me crazy. Well, not a long drive but I figured I would have a bit more time before I was completely there. This machine is getting me there faster. It drops a stitch, then I pick it up, and as I am doing so, it drops two or three or four more.

Every time I think I have the trick, something new happens. I am stubborn. I want my grand to have this scarf and he will. So will his little brother when the next one is being worked. Maybe the new kind of yarn I bought will work better.

Business under new ownership now. Oh boy what a lot of work in front of me to set up the new database, paper work to do, things to send out and get back. Oh I have a headache, the innovations might be being difficult but it is a piece of cake compared to what I am looking at.

Round wedged piece

I have gotten to the last two rows of the wedged piece. I find that I cannot count. ROFLOL, I have either 1 extra or am missing 1 stitch. So now I have to figure out just how I want to play this out.

First I am going to try adding a stitch. There is one peg left I can use, but if that doesn't work, then dropping the end stitch is possible. Now to just work it out, but that is for later. Then on to the first change in colors for the wedges. I am still trying to decide if I want to go straight to the blue/green yarn, or add a different color first. One thing is for sure, I have read others having to use the shortrow wraps, but I did not and I do not see a problem with this yarn at this point.

Back to the new purple loom with one strand of worsted yarn with a 1/1. All I have to say is, YUCK. This is awful. Maybe two strands but that puts you right back to the large gauged looms, well with a little less stranding between pegs, but not much.to say is, YUCK. This is awful. Maybe two strands but that puts you right back to the large gauged looms, well with a little less stranding between pegs, but not much.

Purple Loom

On my shopping trip on Saturday, I bought the newest purple round loom from Provo Crafts. This is a smaller gauged loom and it says right on the package that it is good for medium yarn. So I started a project last night just to check this.

I am using Red Heart supersaver yarn, and it is a worsted weight yarn. The statement that this will use medium weight yarn I believe is completely wrong. Oh it doesn't create as big of those gaps as the larger gauged looms do but it is still quite loose and not very satisfying.

The hat will definately have lots of gaps throughout the entire body of the hat. That will make the hat good for maybe fall, or spring but not so good for winter. I would use a bulky yarn or still use a double strand of worsted to make a firmer hat. Or you could use a 1/2 or 2/2 or something like that to make a firmer hat. I am using a simple 1/1 for this one as a test.

The doubled hats that are made on the larger gauged looms with two strands of worsted are rather thick. So if you used this loom and did one strand to double the hat, I believe you will get a fairly nice doubled hat.

So not yet Provo. This is an improvement but still not a medium weight yarn loom. The gauge is better but still leaves a lot of stand space with only one strand of that worsted.

At best a medium plus a light weight yarn could be good. Along the way, as time permits, I will try these other weights to see what I get.

The feel of the pegs is very different on this loom. They are much smoother and the wraps move better as you push down, or lift them to knit. I really do like the feel of the pegs better then the pegs of my older sets. At least that is a great improvement over the pegs of the other looms. This makes working the stitches so much easier then the old looms.

Missed blog posts

I have been so busy with other things lately that I have been missing out on things. I completely missed that Susan did some videos on using a Knit Radar. I am going to have to make up some time to watch those.

I also have a couple more videos to watch that Berta did on doing smocking on machine knitted materials. Yikes those only stay up so long for the members to see. I need to finish watching them.

Picture of reverse brimmed hat

Ok I got my old iRider to work with blogspot.  What a bother.

The picture is not so good.  I just popped it on the scanner and that doesn't do so well with thicker items, but I am being lazy.  I do not want to grab out the camera. 

The hat is actually all burgundy.

Blogger dismay

I have been using this blog with the opera browser for quite awhile now. I have really had no problems.

Just now I opened this window and I find that I can do very little with my browser. I have no options for loading pictures or even using the compose function. It tells me that I need a different browser.

Hum, maybe I need a different place to blog at instead.

I was trying to upload a picture of the reverse brimmed hat, but that isn't going to happen. I completely refuse to use ie. I hate that browser and firefox is not on my list of favorites to use either.

I shall have to see if I can still use iRider or if they have disabled that also. What the heck is safari? I do not even know that one. I wonder if blogspot has something against opera.

If I didn't have my own spell checker I wouldn't even be able to do that. Bummer.

A Reverse Brimmed hat

It has been some time since a member posted about doing a reverse brim in a hat in the round. I never got around to trying this till today and I love it.

I wish I could remember who first posted about doing this type of brim but I cannot, and searches are finding nothing for me.

The brim is made by casting on ewraped, please do not do other cast on's as it makes it harder to do this brim.

Now knit for as many rows as you would your normal brim.

We are now at the point of doing a turned up brim for a cuffed brim, but with a little twist. We are going to reverse it.

So start at the first peg, take the stitch off the peg, I let it untwist from the e-wrap so it is easier to handle and place back on.

After untwisting the stitch continue to hold it on your pick, but pull it inward so that it is away from the peg, reach down to the bottom cast on row, there should be the end yarn at this point, pull it up between the stitch you holding and the peg to place it, the bottom loop on the peg.

Now place the stitch you removed back on the same peg. Move to the next peg and continue this process all around the loom.

When you have picked up all the stitches from the bottom row, and put back all the normal stitches, the un-twisted e-wrap, knit off the two bottom stitches.

From there continue with the rest of the hat making what ever size you have chosen.

What you will have is a cuffed brim with the purls on the brim and the top of the hat with the e-wrapped stitches. It is very cute.

I made this one today for my daughters business. She normally doesn't like a cuffed brim but she said she did this one.

So just to bring up a reminder of something past that is still a great idea.

Oh the first stitch I picked up seemed a little awkward but after that it was a breeze to do.

You do not have to use the ewrapped stitches for the hat if that is your choice, but can use the knit stitch. The body of the hat can be done however you want it to be done. That too is a personal choice, but do try one with the ewapped stitches. Like I said it is cute.

I started this hat while shopping with the daughter yesterday and managed to get most of it done while we were driving around. I finished it off last night.

Shopping

Went shopping with the youngest daughter and grandsons today. What a long day but we had a very good time. We went to Medford Oregon.

She was looking to do a bit of grocery shopping and getting Halloween costumes for the boys. She got the baby a penguin costume and got Mason a dragon. Oh how cute the both of them look.

Me I had decided to go for the time to spend with the grands but while I was there I decided to look for the new knifty knitter loom and the peg sections for the longer looms. I tried Michaels but no go, but I did find them at JoAnn's. I bought three of the ends sets and one of the looms and a couple of skeins of pink simply soft.

At Michaels I did buy some more yarn. It is for hats for the daughters business. I have made several for her in looming and there are a couple more I am working on, but she also wants some crocheted ones.

I had worked last night trying to get the red baby afghan off the knitting machine but I didn't get so far. I wanted to give it to my daughter today, oh well, in a few more days she will get it. Those stitches on that standard machine are just so small to work with it takes me extra time working the bind off. Oh I am doing a back stitch bind off on that one.

Cleaning

I managed to get a couple of rows done on the loom wedged piece last night, but only about three or four of them. It was slow as I was tired.

I needed a place to put the canning goods I am doing. So yesterday I decided to rearrange the outside closet and put in the plastic shelving I bought. Oh boy did that start something. I took out the old metal shelf that is on wheels, but because of the way it is built doesn't allow for putting much on it.

So I got the shelf out, and the two new shelf units in. These do not have wheels so I decided to place them on some appliance rollers I bought a few weeks ago. Now they can be wheeled out if we need to do so and we will not have to unload those shelves to do so.

The hubby came home and saw what I had done and said oh this is not going to work, what if I have to get to the water heater. I told him about the wheels and he looked and then said that would work. So he stopped worrying.

One thing lead to another and I continued by moving things from one cabinet to another, then an inside closet stuff to a cabinet. What started out to be a couple of hours project turned into one of those all day and half the evening marathon projects. I put stuff used a lot in places easier to get to, and stuff that is the not frequently used in places that we don't go all time.

My hubby does most of the placing of can goods when we go shopping and his mind just doesn't work the same way mine does. In fact neither does his body. You see he has no problem putting can goods on this shelf over here, or there. He can reach any of those at any old time, but me and sis, well a totally different story. The hubby is 6'4", I am 5'2", and sis is 5'1". Can we say lots of step ladders? ROFLOL

Now I have all the can goods in places that we can reach them (me and sis) without ladders and my things like seal a meals and my food process stuff, plus my vacuum sealers in places where I have to have a ladder to get to them (all except the one I use the most), but they are not an every day use item. I use them maybe once a month but more often it is every two to three months. So why do I need them right to hand.

The hubby said he won't be able to find anything now. I did take him on a guided tour, but he will need reminders till he gets use to the new areas. Oh well, he is not the one that mostly has to go find these things.

Yea, yea I know, housework type of stuff, but you know if things are in easier places, then it is faster to get to them and then you are done faster and you have more time left over. Well, at least that is the general idea.

Machine Project

I have the round piece on one 350 more then half way done. I was further but I had to pull out an entire section as I made, well the machine made and I didn't catch it, a boo-boo. One hundred rows pulled out, I learned a lot about frogging on the machine.

Then canning came along and I haven't had time to think over the last couple of days. Tonight I hope to get back to that machine project and think about canning more tomorrow.

I am also working up some quick hats on the innovations machine. The more I use it the more I learn how to make it work the way I want it to, but I still cannot figure out how to make it accept a different cast on. I do not like the one it likes. There is the waste cast on, and that is ok, but not what this lady wants.

The loomed round piece is going slow. I have only had a few minutes here and there to give it my attention. The daughter wants hats for projects and I have been looming some of those for her. I figure that she can make each hat look a little different by adding some flowers to them for her. So I am also crocheting up some different flowers to add to the hats.

Wow, so much to do, so little time to do it.

Knit, flat knit, u-knit, pulled down knit

Someone emailed me to ask me what was the difference between these (see subject line). What is really a knit stitch and then what are the others. I had to laugh a bit about this. They are all knit stitches. Just because you make them holding the yarn different ways doesn't make them not knit stitches. The process is the same you know, you are pulling a stitch over a strand, be it wrapped around the peg U shaped, laid flat on the peg, or pulled down through the stitch to make it a bit longer, it is still a knit stitch.

So how do you know that, well take a look at them, they all go up and down, where the e-wrapped stitch goes slightly sideways.

There is a bit of a difference in the height of these different ways to do the "knit" stitch. So if you need less rows per inch then you are getting, try doing swatches in the different methods of making the "knit stitch" to see what fits your design/pattern rows per inch the best.

Just don't try to make them something they are not. The method of doing them does not make them any less then what they are, knit stitches.

The Bratz Knititng machine

I bought one of these little machines just because it was said to be a couple of needles bigger then my other small machine, the Barbie one. Well, I have to say that was a total waste of money. It has to be the worst machine I have used so far and I thought one or two were worse, wrong.

The machines gate pegs have rough plastic that catches the yarn preventing it from being pulled down under the gate peg where it needs to be. So it hangs up and if you do not catch that hung up yarn (and sometimes when you do), the stitches do not knit right.

The not knitting right causes a build up of stitches on a needle and oh boy that is not good.

Let me sort of back up to when I got the machine. I picked it up from Toys R Us online for $14 plus shipping, that was a good deal because it has been $20. It got here and when I went to remove it from its package that was the most frustrating thing I have had to do for a while. It had wires holding it, those wires were clipped close so that you couldn't get a hold on them, over the wires was heavy clear packing tape.

Well, it was finally out of the box and I wondered why it had not broken in the process of package removal. This little plastic machine is so cheaply made. Every time I pick it up I am afraid it is going to fall a part just because I touched it. Yep it is that bad. Cheap, cheap, cheap. The yarn tensioner is the worst I have seen and the yarn doesn't stay in it. The machine is so light in weight it slips and slides so badly that something is needed to stabilize it. The cranking handle has a piece that folds out and it keeps collapsing as you wind the handle.

Can it get worse? Yes it can. Many of the needles also have places that catch the yarn. Sometimes this just rips the yarn, sometimes it splits it so that part of the yarn goes to the back of the machine. Then you have another mess as all the yarn can do is bunch up on the needles, again. Another huge mess, plus when you frog it (rip it back out, you know rip-it, rip-it) the yarn is split and really a mess.

So back to looking for a machine that is slightly larger then the Bratz and hopefully not such a waste of time and money dealing with.

Oh and to you parents of kids thinking about a little Bratz machine for that little one, DON'T. You will give the child a complex about how bad machine knitting really is. It is not, it is just the product. Leave this one to die.