{"id":29,"date":"2007-04-16T03:15:12","date_gmt":"2007-04-16T08:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/16\/needling\/"},"modified":"2007-04-16T03:15:12","modified_gmt":"2007-04-16T08:15:12","slug":"needling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knitbot.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/16\/needling\/","title":{"rendered":"Needling"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t had a lot of time for machine knitting over the last few
\nmonths (something to do with having to be in the same place as the
\nknitting machine for a chunk of time?!), and when I have sat down at
\nthe machine, it hasn’t been a uniformly positive experience.  <\/p>\n

For example, I sat down the other day and cast on 166 stitches for the
\nback of a cardigan\/jacket I started making last fall.  I’ve done
\nthe left & right front pieces and “just” need to do the back and
\nsleeves.  I really didn’t get very far with it:  the carriage
\npractically jammed on the first knit row, and by the second, all kinds
\nof stitches were leaping off the needles.  Taking a closer look, I
\nrealized that a number of needles had bent latches:  they needed
\nto be replaced.<\/p>\n

How many needles?  Well, this many…<\/p>\n

\"Cross<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\nHow does that happen?  Well, I guess it’s sort of like learning to
\ndrive standard — if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re bound to
\ncause some wear and tear on the parts.  Every time the carriage
\njams or is very stiff to run across the needle bed, it’s likely that
\nneedles are getting bent.  I’m certainly hopeful that I’ll be
\nreplacing fewer as time goes by and I get more experienced!<\/p>\n

What do you do if you don’t have enough spare needles?  Well, I
\nfinally broke down and ordered a serious whack of spare needles (50 for
\neach bed).  In the meantime,  I pulled some of the needles
\nfrom the left and right edges of the machine to replace the bent ones
\nin the middle 166.<\/p>\n

How bent is bent?  I guess I’d ignored\/been in denial about the
\nproblem for a while.  But, finally, the seven I pulled suffered
\nprimarily from bent latches — they would not open fully, as is the
\ncase for the needle in the background in this next picture — the latch
\nis as open as it will go, but it should flatten all the way down to the
\nstem.  Another failure mode is that the needle gets bent sideways,
\nas you can see in the foreground needle below (it’s not lying flat on
\nthe table).<\/p>\n

\"FailureModes\"\n<\/div>\n

After replacing the 7 needles, with some trepidation I cast on my 166
\nstitches once more, and passed the carriage cautiously (and
\nsmoothly!)  across the needle bed…<\/p>\n

\"TwentyThreeTwentyFour\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hurray!  That’s 2324 happy little stitches a-hanging from the main
\nbed!  And, if ever you *doubted* the fun of machine knitting,
\ncompleting a couple thousand stitches in a matter of moments will
\nconvince you!<\/p>\n

Probably one of the reasons for the bent needles on the machine is that
\nI’ve been struggling to find the right yarns to use with the standard
\ngauge machine.  It was (is) hard to get used to just how fine a
\nyarn the standard gauge machine uses.  Essentially, it’s happy
\nwith laceweight yarn.  But, I kept doggedly trying yarns that I,
\nas a hand knitter, considered “fine”, and they just were too thick for
\nthe machine.<\/p>\n

Well, too thick for *that* machine.  Not too thick for *this* one
\n\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"NewNeedles\"<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

A while back, I found this Studio SK890 on eBay.  It’s a *chunky*
\ngauge machine.  That means the needle pitch is 9.0mm (to the
\nstandard machine’s 4.5mm needle pitch), and it has 110 needles on the
\nbed (to the standard machine’s 200).  <\/p>\n

As I observed a while ago — knitters fall into exactly one of the
\nfollowing categories:<\/p>\n