Sunset Carousel: done at last!

 This shawl was done a while ago.  I finished the knitting and washing and blocking in early February, actually!  

I love how it turned out.  It's slightly ruffled along the curved edge, and looks nice when worn over the shoulders or around my neck.  

The shawl is surprisingly warm for how thin it is. 

Before blocking pictures, featuring my landlord's very cute and curious dog.  

You can still see the markers on the border.  I was tracking how many border repeats I did per day to keep my motivation up. 

Hard to tell, but it's very scrunched up and in need of a nice stretch!  

Looking suspiciously like a starship...

Sunset Carousel: the shawl that still isn't done

Well.  It's been a week and I'm still knitting away.  By my estimates, I still have about 12 hours of knitting!  I am doing a different border than the pattern calls for, but after adding a whole new section to the shawl, swapping in a different border doesn't seem all that heinous. 

 

 

This new border is being knit on perpendicularly to the shawl body.  

It's an 8-row pattern that I kind of made up by smashing some other patterns together and tweaking them.  

 

Originally I was just going to use the border from Renewal.  But I got about 30 pattern repeats in and realized I was going through yarn too quickly.  I would have run out about halfway through the border, unfortunately, so had to change my plans.  

 

I did really like how it looked!  

 

It's a very pretty border, and I want to knit it onto something later.  Just didn't have enough yarn this time round. 
 

This is the border I settled on*:

 

 *I actually shifted the first portion by one row so the YOs line up a little nicer.  

Anyway, as I was unraveling the first border, I had a lot of time to think about the border design.  I really liked the triangle-shaped edging on the border of Renewal, and decided to preserve that.  I also switched to a YO-bind off instead of the standard cable one, and am happy with that decision.  

Since I knew I was short by 40% or so of the yarn, I decided to see if I could come up with a border that used 50% of the stitches that Renewal's border used.  Which meant I had about 6 stitches to play with.  I settled on a narrow band from The Japanese Knitting Bible, but made it fully stockinette instead of having one row of garter.  

I ended up having to also twist a stitch between this narrow band and the triangles from Renewal.  

A rough chart: 

 

I think this could be simplified, ie some symbols could be combined with a clearer guideline on if this chart is to be interpreted from RS only or row-by-row...

Anyway. 

Some quick math told me I had 931 live stitches on the main body of the shawl.  I "bind off" one of those stitches on every other row of the border.  So I need to knit 1862 rows to bind off all 931 stitches.  1862 divided by an 8-row pattern means almost 233 pattern repeats. Every 8 rows takes me about 4.5 minutes to knit.  Let's say 5 minutes for simplicity of calculations... 

5 minutes times 233 pattern repeats = 1,165 minutes = 19.4 hours.  

I have currently knit 90/233 pattern repeats.  143 repeats to go!  715 minutes or 11.9 hours of knitting! 

My current average over the last three days is about 25 triangles.  So that's just about 6 more days of knitting.  

I am still enjoying the knitting, at least.  Haven't gotten the urge to cast on a new project, though I did order some Turkish spindles that I'm excited about! 

Sunset Carousel: the shawl that never ends

Semi-circular shawls are a beautiful trap.  They start off with 8 or so stitches per row.  Not bad at all.  Very quick rows lead to a certain sense of accomplishment.  Then the number of stitches per row increase, of course, to create the half-circle shape.  But you think to yourself, "ahh, this is fine, I am a patient person, I am enjoying the knitting process!" 

And then the rows start taking five minutes to complete.  Perhaps even ten.  Then twelve...  I am currently up to a 25 minute row.  I am not going to count the number of stitches per row right now, as it would just make me sad.  And the stitch count will double at least once more before I'm done! 

On the bright side, I'm using quite a lot of yarn!  

This pattern is very good.  I like how the lace looks, and the charts are very reasonable (speaking as someone who previously did not enjoy working from charts). 

I was hesitant to start this pattern because I have never knit from a chart before.  I have literally sat down and hand-written instructions from a chart rather than read the chart as I knit.  But I decided this would be a good project to just learn to knit from a chart.  And it wasn't that bad!  

I have learned to love charts.  I am even adding an entirely extra section between the second and third charts to extend the shawl and use more yarn.  This chart was easy to visualize and adjust because it was a chart.  A written pattern would have been a nightmare to adapt. 

But now I am currently forty rows from the end, and I am suffering.  I should have been done knitting by now, but because I added another chart, I added quite a lot of knitting for myself.  

I'll have a completed shawl eventually. 

I bought a Silver Reed SK10 and SR10 knitting machine!

I've been considering a CSM (circular sock machine) for a while, but my budget has kept me from buying one.  I really want the ability to crank out sock snakes and hand-finish the heels and toes.  I discounted flat-bed machines because how would you knit in the round on a flat-bed machine?  

And then I stumbled on a post that said you can in fact knit in the round, or, knit tubular as machine knitters are more likely to say, on a flat-bed machine.  The secret?  A ribbing attachment!  (Or a double bed machine, but those are fairly rare). 

So I started the hunt for a knitting machine and ribbing attachment.  I found the perfect machine for me a few weeks ago.  Here it is knitting a ribbed cowl:

My requirements were a machine plus ribbing attachment, in working order, with everything needed to start knitting (minus a sponge bar).  Also something local, because shipping for these machines gets expensive and can destroy the machine.  And of course, something in my price range!  

I searched through Craigslist, NextDoor, Ravelry (the machine knitting group has a great thread to evaluate machines for purchase!), and finally Facebook Marketplace, where I found a listing for a machine that fit all my requirements.  However, it was three hours away from me, and had no built-in patterning ability.  I decided that lace and colorwork were nice things to have, but not requirements for me.  After all, I wanted a CSM for cranking out sock snakes at lightning speed, not fancy patterning.  

So I decided to buy the machine.  The seller was kind enough to demonstrate it working and give me a few pointers while I was there to pick it up.  

I did not set it up as soon as I got home -- I was quite exhausted after driving over 6 hours through traffic.

But first thing the next morning, I set it up and started figuring out how to use it!  This is the first picture of it in my apartment:

SK10 + carriage + cute row counter

One of my favorite parts about this machine is the row counter -- it's seriously so cute.  

My goals were: figure out regular flat knitting, figure out ribbing, and then figure out tubular knitting. I ended up slotting "deep clean" into that list as well.  It may not seem clear from this picture, but it was in need of a thorough cleaning.  I made a video about the process here: YouTube. 

Figuring out the basics of machine knitting were a little difficult since I didn't actually have the right cast on materials.  I ended up using the ribber cast on comb in a way that it shouldn't be used, but eventually I got some knit fabric! (the picture shows some stitches haven't knit off properly -- ignore that).  

Improper use of cast on comb...

My first few swatches:

More and more success, from left to right.

Manually-selected tuck stitch!

 

I was able to figure out ribbing fairly easily, though tubular knitting took a little longer. 

Tubular knitting on this machine is a little different from most modern machines, where the two carriages lock together and move as one unit.  

There are four steps for every row of tubular knitting on the SK10/SR10.  Written explanation below, video demonstration here: YouTube. 

Set up: both carriages on the same side, let's say the right side.  Main carriage is set to slip in one direction -- since we're starting on the right, it will slip from left to right.  Ribber carriage is set to raise needles in one direction without knitting, and lower them in the other.   Since we're starting on the right, we will set the carriage to raise needles from right to left and lower them from left to right. 

Right to left: 

The first pass is the main carriage across the main bed -- the stitches knit as usual.  First half of the row is complete.  The next three carriage passes are how the stitches on the ribbing attachment are knit. 

The second is the ribber carriage across the ribbing attachment -- the needles are raised up but do not knit (if they lowered/were knit here, the stitches would just drop off).  

Left to right: 

Now the main carriage moves across the bed, slipping all stitches.  This lays the yarn across the ribbing attachment's needles. 

And finally, the ribbing attachment carriage moves across and knits stitches, leaving the needles lowered in preparation for the main bed's stitches to be knit in the next round.  

The manual does say all that, but not very well, I think.  

But anyway -- I've now mastered the basics of this machine and look forward to making some sock snakes!  

I've tackled hats already but for some reason I'm hesitating with sock snakes, even though they're pretty much the same concept: 

Machine knit, hand finished

By the way, I wrote up the hat pattern: Ravelry.  It's available for free! 

Hopefully I'll have completed some sock snakes by the next time I post.  I've ordered some very pretty sock yarn from Etsy that I'm excited to share.  Counting the days till it arrives!