peanut butter...

Did I upset the machine knitting gods? Is there a black hole in my knitting room? Was it because I flaunted the no-swatching bit? Why, why, why? Don’t mean to sound so disjointed, here’s the back story!
Got back to my E Fisher project, made the dart and, happily, blissfully, completed the back, feeling like I was setting the mk-ing world on fire. Sadly, when I took the piece off, it was riddled with mis-patterning and random, plain rows. What the hay? Trying to convince myself that it was maybe a static issue, I tried everything. Switched out the N1 and point cams, the curl cord, cleaned and oiled, even put in a new sponge bar. Turned everything off, left it to cool for a hour or so, came back, tried it all again. Ripped out row 13 so many times, sure I’d worn out the yarn! Nothing worked. Went and pouted for a bit, came back and tried it all again. Started over at least 4 times and I’d get maybe 50 rows done fine and then it would start dropping the signal and I would get a plain row instead of the tuck. Rip it out, re-program and same thing over and over, like a Groundhog Day nightmare! Got tired of ripping out the row so took it all off on the garter bar. Concluded that my electronics were compromised but wasn’t sure if it was the carriage or the machine bed/panel.
I had a brainwave and got out my lace carriage to see if it would work and yes, it did! switched over to the knit carriage and the tuck pattern and everything worked fine. I even did a sample dart and it knit perfectly. Holding onto the thought that it was just mk-gremlins at work, I took the evening to think good thoughts, planning to get a new start in the morning.
Did a bit of air knitting (take the arm off so you can see the needles coming out and in) and things were looking good, the pattern was advancing properly, so I rehung the piece and started on the dart. Rats! same thing, no patterning!
Things went from bad to worse. I couldn’t get it to even knit one row correctly. Thought if I could hook up DesignaKnit and get it to work that would sort out which was the problem, the carriage or the knitting bed. You might remember last July, [https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2018/07/drama-queen.html] my DAK laptop quit and I was left with a long cord that would reach my old desktop, which doesn’t have a USB port – too old, like everything else in this room! I had a little adaptor thingy plugged into a port in the back that added 4 USB ports. I made the mistake of unplugging this thing just to look and now it does not work.
I remembered another old laptop, dug it out and thought I could use it with DAK7. Got it all hooked up, downloaded my stitch pattern, knit  two rows and the blessed computer blue-screened on me and started this awful clanking noise. Unplugged and closed up, it was still annoyingly boinking away. The noise continued – I couldn’t shut it off. To save my sanity, stuffed it back in the bag and took it down two flights to the basement and left it chattering away.
I tried installing DAK7 on the Windows 7 laptop and it’s not compatible – I’m sure I did this before, but I have a short memory for bad things. Tried DAK8 with the cable and it wouldn’t find the SL4. I even sent an email to Ms. Help at Knitcraft, explaining the situation and what could be done? The answer, 8 hours later was, ‘likely bad cable’. Yeah, heard that before!
Seeking solace, I went for a spoonful of peanut butter (Jif extra crunchy – it’s a little early for wine!). I keep it in the basement pantry for a couple of reasons. I hope the inaccessibility will prevent me from consuming the whole jar. I have a rule that I can only take a teaspoonful and must go back up to eat it. I hope that, as sometimes happens, by the time I get downstairs, I will have forgotten why I went there and, if that doesn’t work, at least I feel justified in that I had a couple of up and downs to counter-balance the calories. Anyway, that freakin’ computer was still faintly rattling away!
To be continued…

tempting fate...

Am going to try the shortrowed dart, in pattern, down the middle of the front of this sweater – I can hear you, ‘are you crazy, MAO?’  Well, my theory is, the stitch pattern is 20 rows so if I make the gore over 20 rows, I should be back at the same row of the pattern when I get everything back to work and those every-other-stockinette rows between will help hide the change. I’m going to work it to begin at the under bust area, down to the hem, which will hopefully diminish the impact…the original instructions from Side Steps are as follows:
Shortrowed dart: Carriage at hem side. Turn off row counter. Bring all ns to hold. Set to hold. At carriage side, return 15 ns to UWP, KWK, 4X. Carriage again at hem side. At side opposite, hold 15 ns, KWK, 3X. When carriage is back at hemline, cancel hold, turn on row counter or reset to what it was and continue. This is adding 14 rows for each dart at hip. When carriage is back at hemline, cancel hold, reset row counter and continue.
My change is:
Carriage at hem side.  RC060. Turn off KR11/shaping device. Set to hold. Bring all ns except 15 at carriage side to hold. KWK.  At carriage side, return 15 ns to UWP (fork them back to B so pattern will be read if necessary – I don’t have to because this is the plain row, so it doesn’t matter), KWK, 4X (that’s 5X in all). RC070. Carriage again at hem side. At side opposite, hold 12 ns, KWK, 4X. When carriage is back at hemline, cancel hold, turn on KR11 (cancel hold) and fork all sts back to B position. K1R. RC079. Reset RC060 and continue. This is adding 20 rows for each dart at hip. When carriage is back at hemline, cancel hold, reset row counter and continue.
Make sure when you’re shortrowing with tuck patterning that you don’t have a tuck on the last held needle (the one you will wrap). Knit it through manually before holding the needle or it could cause an extra bump that may show up. Also make sure the first needle after the wrap knits off too!
Feeling so self-righteous!