Circular and the Garter Carriage
Garter Carriage and the Brother 940
In 2013, I decided to try out an unusual pattern produced in Machine Knitting News 2002 by Pam Soames. This designer also wrote a very interesting article along side - it features the art of circular knitting - and in particular fisherman’s ganseys. The pictures of the small test jerseys knitted are superb and the actual pattern, was a challenge not to be missed, Biggest problem was the substitution of the light but bulky 2 ply wool and acrylic that was used in the original and the gorgeous eye catching colour ie red, Mine was knitted in an industrial yarn mix of 2 greens of a similar mix - not nearly so nice but fine to try out this pattern, I have always been fascinated with circular knitting and feel there could be so many more applications. This particular pattern called for the use of a garter carriage - KG95 - as mine seriously needed a workout, this eventually persuaded me to give it a go,
Circular Knitting Cast-on
The initial bit ie the circular knit cast on was easy enough, done in waste yarn (unfortunately I used something way too close to the main colour typical me!) then you just continue with the main yarn in circular until the armholes, then the fun begins - as the knitting is circular and you are knitting both back and front there is quite a high row count and thank goodness I have a motor. At that timr - having recently recovered from a frozen shoulder - I have a gut feeling that machine knitting and computer keyboards, are seriously beginning to take their toll, and my arm is beginning to rescind back to being painful again (well I suppose I have only myself to blame as the doc did warn me) - I simply hate old age....
The next bit was comparatively not too bad, ie waste knitting the ribber bed off - then the remaining main bed bit was tackled - you simply download (in my case with DesignaKnit and my cable to the Brother 940) your garter carriage pattern (or in the case of punchcard machine - the pattern supplied by Pam Soames, and set the garter carriage off to do the yoke part on the back of the jersey. When this is finished you waste knit off.
Garter Carriage process number 2
You continue by rehanging the front part of the knitting wrong side facing onto the machine and proceed to knit again with the garter carriage (cut and sew neckline in the case of this design so no shaping - good news in this case) - so far so good now for the complex stuff ie the joining of one shoulder and the cut and sew neckline,
Well tried several methods ie backstitching then cutting but untidy edge so resorted to using my Hague and overlocked the edge and replaced this onto the machine with the back straight across so fingers crossed it does not look too untidy - next step is the garter carriage after a plain row across and this does 4 rows at 4 then 4 rows at 3 then 4 rows at 2 on a 2 x 2 rib then its down to stocking stitch to finish to give it a role over edge.
A seriously thought provoking and challenging design
Finished this jersey and it took a while but again that’s another type of knitting tackled and its not so bad to do once you get the hang of it - but - when knitting sleeves downward and circular its seriously important to do as you are told ie hang the weights before you start and me as usual trying to be smart decided I would do it once I had started – oh no, not again, I should have hung the weights via the comb by pushing it through the top part of the knitting before putting the stitches onto the machine, not only was it so difficult doing the second row ie the ribber bed but I had to hang on to the knitting as I went to give it weight and it was sore on the arms, the second sleeve was 100 per cent easier and I was able to use the motor.
