CSM practice

This is the first pair of matching socks I've managed to knit.   It was with a fairly thick sock yarn, with only 150 yards per 50 g.  It was only $3 per 50g, and there was no choice in colour, and as you can see, the patterns don't actually match.  I first thought it was a tension issue, but I redid the one sock and it was the same.   This sock yarn though, is insanely soft. I've never wanted to just fondle a skein of yarn as much as I'd have liked to do this stuff.   They are too small for me but they'll fit my daughter, except that I think they may be too wide.   They are just sitting there waiting for me to decide whether to rip them out and redo them or finish them up for her.  Except of course that I changed to a different cylinder with more needles, so one way or the other, they'll have to wait.

I've started knitting several socks a day over the past week.   I've learned to remind myself to rehang the weight before cranking after starting to hang the hem.  I can't believe how many times I did this, only to have stitches drop and tangled yarn, leading to taking it off the machine, ripping it out and starting again.

Then I got the hem hung and the leg of the sock knitting and halfway through the heel, some stitches would drop, usually on the left side.   It turns out that sometimes the brake doesn't quite tighten the yarn up all the way, leaving a loop which is too large to make a stitch.   If I'm slow and watching carefully, it's avoidable.   

Then I realized that I was using cheap sock yarn and it had little recovery or stretch, which made for difficulties in itself.  I don't know if it was because I was reusing the same skein over and over, or if it's all the yarn from that company.  It was $5 /100g, so it's super cheap, but maybe not the best to practice with.   I bought a bunch to make practice socks for my kids, but I'm not so sure if it isn't yarn that I might need to wait a bit to use, until I have more experience.

socks are different heights - but otherwise good!

Today, after a false start, I made a whole sock.  I'd done the math to hopefully get it to fit.   When I got to the toe, I was a  little leary, because yesterday I also made a sock which made it to the end, and them my waste yarn didn't catch and I'd ended up casting off the whole sock.  No waste yarn means that stitches drop and you can't graft the toe together.   But the waste yarn was fine.  Then I put some crochet yarn in for a separator and knit the second sock.  Somewhere in there, hubby started talking to me and my brain, which was counting rows went AWOL.  The results is 2 socks which are almost the same.   Sock 2 is just a tad too long for my foot but it's also 1.5 inches longer than the first sock!

This yarn was mid priced, and I'd tried to hand knit a sock from it, but it wasn't my favourite because it's a bit splitty.  However, it knit up on the machine quite nicely.

There aren't quite enough hours in the day for all the things I'd like to accomplish sadly.   

This weekend we're doing a cooking class about hearth cooking.  I set the menu as Vegetable soup with forcemeat balls, waffles, carrot pie and lemonade.   Forcemeat is sausage, and little balls were made and either cooked separately or just popped into the soup to cook, to enrich it.   Waffles because I got a cast Iron waffle maker and haven't had a chance to use it yet, and carrot pie to show how to bake in a dutch oven.  Carrot pie is like a pumpkin pie, but using carrots instead.  It's surprisingly good.

 

Legare 400-

 It's here!   "It", is a Legare sock knitting machine my husband purchased for my birthday.   It's a newer model, but I don't really have a date for it, just that it was one of the later models.   It's mostly complete.  It doesn't have the box and is missing a couple of tools, but otherwise, it's functional.   It's heavy!  I knew it was heavy, since it's cast iron, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so heavy.

Unpacking it was fun.   It was packed into this tiny box, with lots of paper, bubble wrap and tons of packing tape was securing everything.  I know what most of the pieces do and where they go, but one is still unknown.  It's a tiny little key thing.   The manual is in french, and my francais isn't good enough to understand it.  My French  is good enough to say that "My French isn't good enough to understand the manual in French" though.   

Legare - was a company from Quebec, although the Creelman company in Ontario actually made the machines.    It's a closed cam machine, which means it's pretty quiet.   While I'd have liked a new machine, because they are really state of the art and lovely, the cost is just too much right now.   This one works though and I've assembled it, learned to make a tube, hang a hem, make a picot, make a heel, and right now working on the toe.  It's a bit confusing to me, that since the toe is the same as the heel, that I should be having issues with the toe.  I also learned to cast on 3 different ways: with a web, using the cast on basket, and then with a cast on bonnet, which was the first project I made.

The first day I assembled it, and worked on trying to knit a tube.   I managed to get the yarn stand assembled backwards.   I found a video which showed the proper way to assemble it which was nice, since while it did work backwards, it was confusing to me because I couldn't figure out how the heel brake worked.   It's all good now though.

I've been running through all my little partial balls of leftover sock yarn in playing with it.   Then I used some yarn which I had a full 100g of, but it got crunchy after a short while, so it's been sitting, waiting for a project.  It was lovely stuff when I purchased it, but I've no idea why it changed.  It's never happened before, but it's now harsh and icky.  This is what I made the cast on bonnet with.  It's never going to touch a foot, so it doesn't matter that it's a bit harsh.

I took the rest of the crunchy yarn, after I'd made the bonnet and practiced some heels.  I actually made a tube with 7 heels on it.   I was having issues, and then I managed to look at a diagram of the cylinder from another company's manual ( maybe Creelman?) and saw where I should put the heel hooks.  I am currently using just the one V hook which was original to the machine.   Once I figured out where to place it when making the heel, it was a game changer.     It's supposed to be the same for the toe, and since the toe is exactly the same as the heel, I'm not sure why I keep dropping stitches.   

How do I know I'm having problems with the toes?  I found a formula for making socks to size.   I knit a tube to check the tension of this yarn, and then followed a formula to work out how many rows I'd need for the foot.  Everything is good until I get to the toe.   I'm guessing that I just need to figure out where the weights should go for the toe to make it perfect.

Yesterday my V hook fell apart and one of the very sharp hooks fell out of the brass tubing.   Hubby re-crimped it into place and it's working just fine now.

This sock yarn is a bit thicker than most,  It's lovely and soft though.    I will rip this one back and try again tomorrow.  Everyone has told me of the really huge learning curve to making socks.  I've only had my machine for a week, so I'm pretty happy with what I've accomplished so far.  I'm even keeping notes!   I've a book in which I'm writing down my steps/patterns, so I can make a matching second sock, and then duplicate them if I like the yarn and can get more of it.    I'm also keeping a running list of tension settings and stitches per inch/gauge, so that I can also have a starting point.

I've been reading blogs, forums, articles, books etc, and it seems some people use only specific yarn brands, which would definitely make it easier to keep your tension and gauge even.  However, I do enjoy a good sale, so some of the yarn I have is off brand yarn, and sometimes name brand stuff,  that I got at bargain price.   I recently got some yarns to practice with that were $4.99 for 100 g.   That's a very good price for sock yarn.  This will make practice socks and I'll save the good stuff for when I know what I"m doing.   I've gotten all my kids shoe sizes, so I will use their feet to practice getting different sizes.  :)   Now to find a 60 needle cylinder, a buckle and some heel forks.   And.. yarn, lots more sock yarn.

Summery projects

 I'm waiting for a parcel.   It's my birthday present and is supposed to arrive next week.   I just got the tracking number so the estimated delivery date is probably correct.   However, once in a while when I order things, they come early.  My fingers are crossed that this is one of those times.  We're also taking a family trip to Dundurn Castle.  I've been before but it was a number of years ago.  This time we'll be taking my daughter and her husband, so it will be fun.  I bought the tickets online.   I got a barcode for a ticket.   I used to be able to save my ticket stubs as memorabilia.   Barcodes just don't evoke the same memories.

I used an old sheet to fit the bodice pattern of Sew Liberty's Hinterland dress.   Then I found this piece of fabric which was enough to cut out the dress for a wearable mockup.  I've no idea why I purchased this, except that I remember it being crazy cheap on sale.  It's nice enough but not normally my style.  I do however, have a similar fabric but in blue stripes which I do like.   Once I know of any other changes need to be made to the pattern, I'll use the fabric I really like to make a second dress.

The Hinterland has been pretty easy to fit and assemble.  One of the hints was to use masking tape to mark the right side of the fabric.  Usually I use tailor's chalk, but it hasn't stopped the occasional  mistake.  But with the masking tape, I've had no issues at all.  It's now my new go to for making sure I have the right sides of the fabric marked.  Because it's green low tack painters tape, it hasn't left any residue yet.

My old but really nice Pfaff sewing machine is being cranky.  I haven't been able to get the tension set properly.   It probably needs a tune up, but since I have several old black Singers and an old Kenmore which all work well right now, I'm just using one of those instead.  This is mainly because I need some new socks, so that means a trip to the yarn store.

I found a skein and a half of this Paton's Lace yarn.  It's acrylic and a little fuzzy, so it acts a bit like mohair, getting caught up on itself.   I made a scarf on the floor loom a while ago, and had no problems.  This one though, I put on the rigid heddle loom and had to fuss about a bit to figure out how to weave it without having to unstick the shed every throw of the shuttle.   I found it needed a lot of tension and very easy beating, just gently placing the weft rather than pushing it down.   It's much faster now and I'm enjoying weaving it.

The rippenkopper cotton/hemp tea towels are still on the table loom.  I'm still not enjoying the 3/1 twill and having to use a stick shuttle..  But if I can weave them off, I have a fun tea towel project to do next.  I'm not sure I have allowed enough loom waste to do them on the floor loom, but that would be even easier.

The weather has been either hot and dry, or cool and wet.   Our pond almost dried up because we had no rain for so long.   Then it rained, and rained and rained.  The pond almost overflowed!   When conditions get hot and dry during the summer, our grass goes dormant.  It may look like it's dying, but it's just turned off until it rains.   And rain it has.   We even had a whole day of steady rain.  We couldn't remember when we last had a rain like this.  So after days of rain on and off,  the grass is green and the garden has gone wild with growth.

These are slicing tomato plants that my son in law started for me.  I don't think we've ever had fruit starting so early in the season.  The cherry tomatoes or maybe grape tomatoes are also fruiting already.   I've been harvesting zucchini already.  I staggered planting the green beans to hopefully have a continuous harvest.  However with the rain and heat, the second planting has almost caught up with the first.   I have space for a 3rd row of beans.   The potatoes I forgot to dig up last fall, have survived the winter and are growing like crazy too.   So yay for that! 

We found a fly strip that works.  It's a sticky paper, but it's not gloppy, doesn't drip and actually catches the flies.  Since we live in a rural area, there are flies.  There are so many fewer in the house this summer because of this new fly strip.   That makes me happy.