I got onto a crafting binge this weekend. Yes, I’m still a frantically reading and writing grad student. And no, in my final semester I probably have less “time” than ever for crafting. But I needed craft therapy. I created some gorgeously outlandish spring floral necklaces. I finally reupholstered a rocking chair cushion that had been in desperate need of love from someone other than the cats for many years now.
But I still wasn’t knitting.
As promised, I want to share my “comb” trick for machine knitting “fair isle” on a basic knitting machine. After much tedious and slow hand manipulation, I came up with this idea to make cardboard combs to manipulate a whole row at at time. This idea is probably not original or novel, I probably saw something similar somewhere long before I had a knitting machine. But if I had seen it somewhere before, I managed to forget about it through exhaustive hours of hand manipulation of a dense pattern. Then the idea started to surface in the back of my mind, but I somehow thought it would be more work to stop, measure, and cut out a comb.
Desperation makes us keen to experiment. Continue reading
Unravelling Argyle 