860 machine and ribber

In still working to having the craft room finished I have set up machines, and been testing to see that they work right.

I got the Brother HK860 machine set up with the 850 ribber. When I checked the alignment of main bed to ribber it was really off. So I set out to figure out how to align them. Wow, the only written instructions I could find were not very clear. So that wasn't working so well for me.

Then I remembered that I had some videos that starts you out on setting up the ribbers and their use. These are by someone named Ann Kite. There are actually a series of these and I have the 7-A to 7-D. Most of it is quite boring to me (sorry to Ann if she is still around), as she goes through a series of different machines, not just the brother. At least I know that if I wound up with other machines I would have these to help with set up.

So I managed to set the alignment both vertical and horizontal as both were off. I continued on to watch a little of the cast on. I have worked a little ribber work on the Brother KH 230 with its ribber but the setup of the knit and ribber carriages are somewhat different, not a lot but knowing the difference is a must. I do have the 850 manual, and Kite does show things a bit differently, sort of backwards to my manual.

Then I ran into a problem. During the third row of a tubular cast on my carriage jammed. It jammed hard and I wasn't even moving the carriage fast. At first I thought a needle had gotten out of line and caused the jam but nope all needles were in line. So I gave it another try. Jammed again, only this time I had more expectations of it happening and was going even slower.

I couldn't even figure out what carriage was causing the jam. So I separated the carriages and and moved each by themselves to test, it was the main bed carriage. So now to try to figure out the cause of the jam. The needles looked good, the carriage seemed to be fine as far as I could tell, but that jam was happening so it was something, just what?

I decided to test to see if my 930 carriage would work on the machine. It did and knitted beautifully. OK, so something is going on with the 840 carriage. I got the 860 machine without a carriage and only managed to get the 840 carriage, which is the same carriage, for this machine. I have knitted before with this carriage on this machine as single bed knitting and haven't had a problem till now, and only during this cast on.

I also have an extra 910 carriage. So I pulled it out in hopes that it too work work on the 860 machine. Wouldn't even know till I tried. Before I tried though it needed a bit of cleaning and some oil. I turned the 910 carriage over and started fiddling with it to see just how gummed up it was. That's when I discovered something. There is a spring from one side of the carriage to the other at both ends, and that spring moves one of the levers. I picked up the 930 carriage and see the same thing, but on the 940 carriage one of those springs was gone. At least I though so.

You see I have a very mechanical hubby. He doesn't think he is but I have seen different. He might not be trained in things but he can look, see problems, and many times fix them. So I took the two carriages to him last night and showed him the problem. My intention was to discover just where I could get a new spring and have him fix the carriage if he could. Low and behold he says the spring is not gone. It is still attached to one end but came loose from the lever. He fixed it. WOW! It works. I went back and started over and not only did the tubular cast on but knitted about 30 rows of ribbing. Neat, he is so awesome.

The only difference this time is that I was using Berta's DVD on using your ribber. Berta is a lot easier to listen to. She doesn't do that stiff, monotone teaching and is easy listening. I do so like Berta's DVD's. I just bought her latest one, using the Knit Leader, that should be winging its way in a week or two. It would be on its way but Berta is waiting for a package of seed stitchers to get to her so she can send them with the DVD. That's ok, these are much needed for one of my machines. I have large ones, but not the smaller ones. So this will be great. (no Berta is not selling them, they are a gift to some of us from another machine knitter, she managed to snag a huge lot of them and is passing her great luck around to members of the group we are in).

So now the machine can knit with the ribber, now on to learning how to use the punch card unit. Seems I might have to punch a few cards also. I don't really have many sets of punch cards that came as packets for the machine. Most of what I have are pre-punched from patterns others have done or ones that people have punched themselves. I do have the punch card file to print off what I want, need, or will want to use, and I have plenty of blank cards to do the punching.

Well, that is all for now.

Oh I have talked about the hubby's greenhouse and did take a few pictures yesterday after he put many of his plants in there for the start of their fall/winter season. So as soon as I can get them loaded to the computer I will place a few on here for people to see. It is not a large greenhouse and was mostly built for his tropical plants and his cactus, but he does have a couple of tomato plants in there. The hope is that even though he doesn't keep it really warm these plants will produce for a bit longer to give us a little longer picking season.

One last thing. I now have to set out to figure out why the end needles on the little I did last night, don't want to knit off. They hold that new stitch and I had to manually knit almost every time. I know I read about this somewhere, so later it will be a search for this. My brain keeps saying not enough weight so maybe, we shall see.

I got tired of playing machine time, so left the whole thing for my crochet project. I don't have many done but I am working on daisy squares to make a small afghan from them. I am using two colors, a pink and a yellow, edging them in black. They are so pretty. You can see the link to the pattern on the left side bar of this blog. Just scroll down a bit. Such a lovely pattern. It seems complex at first but really is easy to do. Krystal, the designer, also has a group at yahoo now for those who need extra help. She has some awesome files in there showing how to do these squares. To get the pattern all she asks for it a square or two from you sent to her for her charity work and you can take your time sending it. She trusts that people will and that is a fine thing she does. Then she puts those squares together to donate. Take a look see at her site and glance at the map. You can see she has squares coming from all over.