Swatching On The Bond Ribber

Yesterday I packed away the SK280 and set up the dreaded Bond Ribber. I say dreaded because every time I try to set it up and use it I have problems with it. It has caused me so much grief in the past that I nicknamed it Beelzebub.

Yesterday, unbelievably, it behaved itself impeccably. There was no shouting, swearing or throwing things across the room. All was calm and relaxed.

I had one ball of DK so I decided to try out a few of the stitches from the instruction book and pattern book. The yarn was flecked and did not photograph very well but here are the swatches I managed to knit:

1×1 Rib

2×1 Rib, both sides

2×2 Rib

3×1 Rib Pattern

Fisherman’s Rib

Basket Stitch, both sides

Triangles

Diagonal Mock Cable

Tuck Rib stitch

The last one isn’t in either of the Bond Ribber books, it’s just one I tried out to see if it would work.

All of the rib patterns involve a lot of transfers between beds so they are a bit slow. Having said that, I can knit them a lot faster on the machine than I could ever hope to knit them by hand. I am hopelessly slow at hand knitting, which is why I started machine knitting in the first place.

I am hoping to eventually knit a jumper on the Bond Ribber but unfortunately I can’t afford to buy any yarn at the moment. If I ever manage to find myself a job and start earning again that will be one of the first things I spend my wages on!

Talk to you later,

Susan.

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Knit Radar Question

Sandra has asked a question on the message board which I’m hoping someone can answer.

She wants to know if dressmaker’s patterns can be used on the KR7 Knit Radar.

I didn’t think they could because of the scale but I’m probably wrong.

If anyone knows for definite I would be grateful if you could answer Sandra’s post on the message board.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Talk to you later,

Susan.

More Socks

Still not much knitting going on around here. All I’ve done is a few more socks from leftovers. I found a blanket that I knitted for Floss from oddments quite awhile ago. As Floss is sadly no longer with us I decided to unpick the blanket and use the little balls of wool for the socks. Some of the wool isn’t in very good condition (Floss was a blanket digger!) but most of it is re-usable so I’ll probably get a few more socks out of it.

As I’ve said before, I’m not bothered about having matching pairs so I’ll just keep on knitting them until I’ve run out of wool.

Tonight I’m going to make a start on unpicking some of the socks whose toes have been darned, re-darned and re-darned again. I’ll use the good wool to make even more socks. Then I suppose I really should sew the back ankle seams up so that I can actually wear them – it would help, wouldn’t it?

Talk to you later,

Susan.

 

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Socks

I haven’t done much knitting lately, I’m suffering from a lack of inspiration.

I’ve been using up what’s left of the wool from the mix and match jumper(s) by making socks. I started off with a yellow pair, then a green and white pair. Then I decided just to knit all the wool up into socks without bothering if they matched or not. I knitted three navy ones, all different shades though it doesn’t show in the photo.

It doesn’t matter if I wear odd socks, nobody can see them when I’m wearing them so why do they need to match? I will just keep on knitting up all the odd balls and as long as they all come out more ot less the same size they’ll be alright – I’m not proud!

Once they’re all sewn up and ready to wear I’m going to renovate all the socks in my sock drawer. Most of them have been darned over the previous darns. I’ll re-knit them all but discard the parts of them that are worn out. I’ll get less pairs of socks out of them but at least the toes won’t all be darned.

That’s the plan anyway.

Talk to you later,

Susan.

 

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Merry Christmas To You All

I have no Christmas knitting to show you so instead I’ll share a few seasonal pages from an old Modern Knitting magazine.

How about a few beauty gifts to hang on the tree?

I would have thought that the women’s perfumes would have cost the most but it’s the Busy Man’s Bar that comes out at the most expensive at a whopping twenty three shillings and sixpence. Don’t ask me how much that would be in today’s money as I have no idea. I don’t know much about pre-decimalisation money either – I’m much too young, I was only about six or seven when we changed to ‘new pence’.

How about some Christmas recipes?

So is anyone going to have a go at making the snowman cake? What a faff on! I think I’ll give that one a miss, although it would look cute sitting on the table on Christmas day.

Finally, some knitting. Here’s the pattern for the dress that’s shown on the front cover of the magazine.

If you don’t want to knit the dress, just have a read of your stars for December 1958 and see if they are relevant for you in 2011.

Mine says “far too much dislocation of plans, nothing turns out as expected, yet this month has plenty of sparkling moments. Health is good, so are your finances.”

Can’t say it’s all that relevant for me, I had a stinking cold last week and as for my finances the less said the better. Although ‘Nothing turns out as expected’ – that could be a description of my knitting.

I hope you all have a great Christmas.

Talk to you later,

Susan.