DesignaKnit 8 - Project 2 cont.

DesignaKnit 8 – Heraldic Sweater – part 2.

After downloading the front into my Brother 940, I had to go to interactive knitting via DK8 – this told me the amount of stitches to cast on, knit the preselect row and press the go key and we were off – I had to use the KC key on the carriage but this preselected the needles for the cables but one thing I had to do (forgot the first time around) was to take the outside stitches of the cable out of work. Another tip with this jumper was to mark the 6 cable stitches with highlighter pen so you can follow this for the next bits to ensure the cable selection is not out of sync – important with this design as the cables match up at the top.

Single Motif

What a hassle this was initially, something I have never done, DK informs you once you have selected the pattern to take the 2nd colour into action, and you must press the fairisle buttons in the middle of the carriage – another point is the carriage selection must not be set to end needle selection or it will catch the 2nd yarn and take it across the whole bed – you can gather I did all the above wrong…trial and error.

The Lion and the Bird Image

The initial 2 motifs were a steep learning curve again, I knew I had to ewrap the outside stitches but I kept tensioning the yarn by hand and this lead to the yarn constantly catching the outside stitches and jamming up the machine, nightmare – it involved the usual ie releasing the carriage and resetting the whole thing yarn wise, one good thing is that unless you get to centre you do not need to reset the machine and DK. End result is do not hand tension the yarn or it gets caught, Nightmare!

It took me forever to get the front done and I will not go into all the things I did wrong, especially the bit where I thought I would be clever and insert Jacks initials into the design. I thought it has to be mirror image – WRONG again! So I duly went back into the programme and changed then, started knitting and guess what, the damn things still knitted in mirror image, I was tearing my hair out until I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to download the newly altered design into the machine, ye gods could anything else go wrong.

Eventually the front was done to my satisfaction and then to the back which was relatively straight forward by comparison because I had no single motifs or initials to contend with – only cables which incidentally needed a stitch adjustment to get them into the right position – again a DK alteration and download, I actually remembered this time.

The back was finished without any more hassle.

#DesignaKnit8Project2