ever have one of those days...

It was early  afternoon, a cold, dull day and I thought, hummm… I can go up to the workroom and knock off the front of that baby blankie for Karen, my niece. It’s her due date tomorrow and I want to commit to this before I know the baby gender (we don’t know at this point, but it shouldn’t really matter as it’s all bright crayon colours on a navy background) so I’m not second-guessing my colours after the fact. I’m figuring I can do the front in about an hour and a half, should be no problem. I already have my yarn all in place. Get cast on and yes, I’m still using the orange waste yarn. Now the blanket is a creation of Mar Heck’s from Knitwords #35 – I’ve made it before, so I think I know what I’m doing
http://knitwords.blogspot.ca/2016/03/list-buster.html

I know I have an old system - I’m using DAK7, Windows 2000, SL4 and my Silver Reed SK580 – now, if you’ve been reading me for awhile you may have twigged to the fact that I’m not exactly the biggest fan of DAK – it’s probably my own unfriendly aura that DAK senses and the machine knitting gods do too. And I haven’t used DAK in awhile – I only use it to download large stitch files to the machine and knit-from-screen and as this particular stitch file came as a DAK file, 200 sts by 356 rows, this is really the only way to knit it other than drawing it out on 6 Mylar sheets – totally out of the question, never gonna happen. I have done some tuck patterning recently, using the built-in electronics, no DAK, and everything worked fine. 

On the blanket, there is a solid colour border, so 23 rows plain navy at the beginning – I’m not putting a name in – and there are 10 plain stitches of border at each edge – the picture is knit as a single motif and Mar has explained, on a brother machine, how to have extra yarn ready to wrap the edge stitches so there are no holes at the edge of the picture, before the border. Being the Silver Reed expert that I am (in my own mind anyway), I know this is much easier on this machine. Because the needles do not select (come out like the brother machine), you can wrap the next to the end-of-the-pattern needle with the second colour at the beginning of each row and using the yarn separators, everything works beautifully. I have learned in the past that I don’t need to use the yarn separators – they prevent the second colour from getting tangled in the background yarn until the second colour is required in the patterning of the next row – I simply wrap the needle with the second colour, leave it in B position, and with my hand, hold the second colour yarn slightly below the brushes/arm of the carriage just for the start of the row and it works well.
Back to the work at hand, knit the plain border. On row 23, set to fairisle, add in the second colour, knit the first row of patterning, everything’s fine. Knit the second row - somehow the second colour is knitting at the edge, in the border. Gosh, darney, darn, darn! Rip out the row, reset everything and try again. Same thing happens. Rip out, re-read DAK, knit, same thing. I very calmly take the carriage off, examine the undercarriage and decide that maybe it’s time for some cleaning and maintenance. Get out my tool kit, remove all the brushes and wheels and sure enough, there are a few bits of gunk and mashed up yarn and the transparent plastic round brush covers have a few marks on them, so I replace them. Wipe out the tiny dust bunny babies from the channels, oil it all, put things back on the machine, reset the pattern and I get two rows this time before the mistake. Check the end cams, here’s a thought, maybe they are not in the right position – it is kind of hard to decide it they are set at 100 or at 99…I go back into DAK and delete one stitch from each side of the file so it’s now 198 sts wide. Go through the whole deal again and same thing. I look closer and see that what is happening is that the second colour is actually knitting a row of stockinette which means that the DAK signal has dropped and there is not fairisle needle selection. Okay, this could be serious. I now realize this is an electronics issue and fortunately, I have new end cams and a new curl cord which I swap out – do that and same thing – it’s like freakin’ Groundhog Day! My two-hour window has disappeared, and I am defeated. I face the fact that my Silver Link 4 is quite old now and I am not up to replacing that. Turn everything off, drop the jinxed border from the machine – I’ll go drink my sorrows away!  I'm Netflix-ing 'This Is US' - what a show, makes you forget all your troubles!
This morning, after a good strong coffee, I go up to face reality. Turn on the computer, call up DAK and the pattern and I do a dry run – no yarn, arm off the carriage, set to fairisle, load the pattern and knit, listening to the sound of the clicking needles and watching the winking red/green light on the DAK link box. Ha! It is all working! Make 20 passes like that, all systems go! Still apprehensive, I leave the pattern on, cast-on and get the border knit to the point of row 24, first row of patterning. Re-read DAK for row 24, add in the second colour, set to fairisle, knit, check – it’s all good! Wrap the needle, hold the yarn below, take a deep breath and knit – it works! OMG! I keep going, not daring to take a break – sure enough, within the hour I have the completed front! Victory!
Moral of the story, when using DAK, when you need a re-start, always turn off everything! You know how your computer tells you this may require a restart after you add or remove a program, DAK really needs this – unplug the link, turn off your computer and restart everything before going into panic mode!  Also, Silver Reed people, if you do not have a spare new curl cord and point cams, order them today, just saying!
Have a great weekend!  XO, MAO!

Silver words of wisdom....

So, I’m back at my knitting - actually I already have 3 garments ready for the next issue - I’ll tell you about them maybe another time. Today, I’m working on a light green top with a gathered neckline to wear under a jacket or cardy, using Bambu7. It’s quite thin and to make a wider stitch gauge - stockinette at T4 gives 37 sts to 10 cm which restricts the finished width you can get from 200 needles - I’m using a one-row-tuck, what I call a tuck pattern with a row of stockinette on every other row that gives a nice, subtle texture on the knit side, similar to a garter carriage look. The tuck on every other row is enough to add extra width (stitch gauge at T4 is now 29 sts/10 cm) and the every other row stockinette takes the ‘bubbly-ness’ out of the tuck.
I have the Silverlink4 with DAK7 and my standard gauge Silver Reed machine. I’ve been using this system to knit all my garments for the past 4 years and I love knit-from-screen because it shows exactly what needle is doing what on which row - you can’t go wrong!! Before that, I used the SK580 with built-in electronics and the PE1.
The curl cord can get blown out with improper use. Also, I hate to say how old some of my curl cords are and not surprisingly, I have had 2 burn out recently. When this happens, nothing else does, meaning you can program and re-read till the cows come home and no signal goes to the machine and DAK will keep telling you you’re on the wrong side.
How do you know it’s burned out??
Okay, so I have replaced a couple of curl cords and I am pretty careful (I think) about hooking up the electric to everything - I always make sure my SilverLink4 is unplugged from the power source whenever I’m not using it - in between pieces of knitting, even if I’m only taking a break to grab a cup of whatever, I unplug it from the power bar. If I am not using the patterning for a garment, I unplug the curl cord from the carriage, and I park the end in an old pill bottle attached to one of the antennae, to protect the prongs inside from inadvertently coming in contact with anything.
Now, I use this stuff often enough that it comes second-nature and I’m a big short-cutter and when on auto-pilot, may forget to check something - you know what I mean. So. I’m putting in a pattern and everything’s cool and working fine. On row 8, I’ve hung the hem and then go back to knitting in pattern. I usually watch the red/green flash of lights on the end of the SilverLink to make sure the pattern is continuing properly and I’ve also become attuned to the sound the needles patterning make, so I noticed right away on row 12 that the tuck pattern hadn’t happened by the sound or rather, lack of it. So, rip out a row... re-read the pattern and begin again. I get 4 rows knit and again, the familiar little click-click-click was not there. Sure enough, a pattern-less row! At least it has the courtesy to actually knit the row when you are doing tuck and the signal is lost - if I was using the lace carriage, there would be major drama happening!! When the signal is lost with the lace carriage, all stitches act as a selected stitch and transfer off, resulting with everything on the floor!!! Also, it occurs to me that I did not get a signal from ‘Matthew’ (that’s what I call my DAK screen in honour of Matthew Bragg, the creator of DAK)telling me I'm on the wrong side. So, third time is a charm, but I decided to investigate first. I checked my curl cord - I had put a tag with the date on it up near the top, out of the way and yes, it’s a new one. Remembering that my last garment was stockinette, I checked my connection into the carriage and wouldn’t you know, I had not pushed it down fully, probably resulting in a weak connection. Re-read one more time and zip-zam-zoom, in no time, I’m shaping the underarm and then finishing off the shoulder, 357 rows, no lost pattern once!!
So, here are some Silver Reed/SilverLink/DAK/knit-from-screen safety rules from me for you.
1. Always unplug the link from the power source when not in use. Leaving it plugged for an extended period of time creates a constant heat and can cause the wires to burn out in the SilverLink or the curl cord. Do not leave it plugged into a power bar unless you are turning off the power bar each time.
2. When making connections between the SilverLink and the carriage (which is your curl cord), make sure there is no power to the SilverLink - it can be connected to your computer, but not the direct power source. If you have the USB connection, this protects the SilverLink and the computer and allows you to connect those two things without unplugging everything, but it does not protect the curl cord.
3. No need to unplug the SilverLink from the curl cord each time.
4. To prevent the curl cord from stretching out unnecessarily, unplug it from the carriage when not in use and protect end (see above) or park carriage in the middle of the needle bed.
5. It’s a good idea to have an extra curl cord on hand.
Oh, and the Bambu7 top turned out great - look for it in the next issue!!