Archive for the ‘CSM’ Category
posted Saturday, August 9th, 2008
A couple of weeks ago I got this crazy/stupid idea to sign up for the Ravelympics and knit 17 pairs of socks. Why? Because I could…
I am of course, already behind. The Olympics started yesterday. All I’ve managed to accomplish (and only today, a day after the opening ceremony) is winding balls… 23 of them (and I’m actually missing one). Somehow an extra skein got in there and I failed to grab another that is already slated to be a pair of socks (pair #11)… hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually get around to making some socks 
Posted in CSM, Knitting | 2 Comments »
posted Thursday, July 24th, 2008
- If it doesn’t work, take it apart, clean everything (again) and keep trying
- If the stitches don’t clear the latches (easily, on their own), and you’re using plenty of weight, your ribber dial is TOO HIGH. It’s not a tension issue or a needle issue, it’s simply because the dial isn’t adjusted properly. It seems counter intuitive to lower it, but it has to be lower for the needles to work correctly
- Stitch tension adjustment is very touchy – a small adjustment makes a BIG difference! It’s not like the v-cam tension at all
- Ribber timing is tricky – just when you think you have it, you have to tweak it again. Make TINY adjustments. A quarter turn of that screw can make a big difference. An entire turn might be WAY WAY WAY too much!
- If you yarn carrier is not where it needs to be, that can cause all kinds of problems
- You might break/bend latches (and possibly destroy needles entirely)
- Latches won’t open
- Your timing will seem off, when it really isn’t, the needle just can’t grab the yarn
When you get it all right, it sings You can crank out an entire ribbed sock with no trouble at all… amazing!
Posted in CSM, Knitting | 2 Comments »
posted Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
About a month or so ago I got the notion that I wanted to buy and restore an antique CSM to go along with my NZAK. I settled on a Legare 400 as the machine that I wanted, and I watched eBay for a while (which is likely the most risky place to shop for one, but hey, that’s part of the fun, right?) and finally found one I liked… and two weeks ago, bought it. I’ve been anxiously waiting since then for it to arrive (note: it was shipped right away, USPS has been doing who knows what with it for the past 13 days since it left Canada).
It arrived today!
Since everything looked like, well, really REALLY good, I decided that instead of taking it apart right away, I’d throw some needles in, and see what it could do.
Wow. That can’t be… it’s casting on perfectly.
Not only that, iIt isn’t dropping a SINGLE stitch. I’m almost disappointed – I wanted a challenge, right? I wanted a machine that needed a bit of work (and not just some minor cleaning). This isn’t challenging if it knits perfectly!
I swapped out the yarn carrier for a slotted one from Roxanne (which I’m not sure about quite yet – I need to get a washer or something to use as a spacer, if I leave it as is, it will hit the tension dial when knitting heels and toes), and just kept cranking away. I’d be tempted to say that this machine knits better than my NZAK… it’s very smooth.
The only problem with it? A tiny chip off the 72 cylinder… which happened during shipping (it was packed very well though, so I’m not sure how it happened, other than USPS having it for 13 days, doing who knows what to the box it was in).
So there it is.. my new to me, beautiful Legare 400. All I have to do is clean it, but it appears to be complete, it knits like a dream, and I’m quite pleased with my “gamble” on eBay. I’ve yet to try the ribber, but it seems to be fine as well.
Amazing 
Posted in CSM, Knitting | 6 Comments »
posted Thursday, July 17th, 2008
I am thrilled with these… 2×1 ribbing, all the way down the foot. I had some (serious) issues with each sock, but thankfully because of where the problems were located, I did my best to just forget about it while my work was on the machine, I was able to confidently handle both of those when I was finished – which was MUCH simpler than trying to deal with it on the machine. These are short ankle length socks since they are knit from the leftovers of the first pair.. I tried a picot hem on the top to see how it would work/function, and I think it would be fine on a taller pair of socks.. it’s a little loose around the ankle though, but this pair was more of an experiment than anything else, so I’ll just keep that in mind for next time. Aside from being a smidge loose at the tome, these are a nice length though, and the hem even looks cute folded over, so it’s all good.
Blog Tweaks
I don’t know how many readers there are out there that might have noticed, but my progress bars have been MIA a few times over the past few days as I have been tweaking the code for them (a lot). I’ve generally made a grand mess of things and I need to sit down and clean up my both my CSS and my code (I have bits commented out all over the place, and I’m doing with three files what I think *could* be done with just one), but I got a few things working that have been bothering me for a while.
Changes:
- Added day of the month to the started/finished dates (originally ravelry had no day field)
- Added finished date to FO’s (since this was recently added to the JSON, along with a few other fields)
- Added a “recent FO’s” section to my sidebar – since a lot of my projects don’t actually end up being “in-progress” at all, I thought this was a nice addition
- Added happiness info (thanks to code provided by pocketsize on Ravelry) to my sidebar and on the FO’s gallery page
- Overlayed happiness/comments/favorited info on my project thumbnail on the sidebar images. That’s something I’d been wanting to get working for a while, I just abandoned it a while back not wanting to deal with the CSS (it really wasn’t that hard though, I’m just lazy). I even made super tiny icons to go with that, but I’m not completely happy with the smileys… I wish they were clearer, but I haven’t yet found any the size I want, and attempts to make my own have ended in failure.
- Added titles to the comments and favorites, so you get a ‘tooltip’ with more information
Things I want to do:
- Show the medium flickr image when you rollover the thumbnails. Not sure how I want to do that exactly, or where to even start with the code, but since I added the little rollovers to the comments and favorites, it had me thinking about those thumbnails. Solved this by using lightbox, and tweaking my code to include a link to flickr in the image caption to abide by their TOS. Pretty happy with this, though I’d like to include more project information in the caption, but I’ll work on that later.
- I’ve been trying to decide if I want to do anything with my notes info as well. I don’t reliably utilize this on ravelry now – sometimes I include useful information, and sometimes I don’t, and sometimes what I put is a little bit cryptic. Decided I don’t need to do anything here
- I would also like to get some math working to display the amount of time it took to complete a project. So if something was a one-day project for me, I think it would be nice if my FO page reflected that… and likewise, if something took a while, I think that can be helpful to see as well. Done! I’d like to make it a little better (display weeks and days for projects that take a while – say more than 30 days) but for now it’s a good start – most projects only take me a few days anyways. Ok, I’m really DONE now!
- I want to break hibernating projects out and reformat them. Currently they are marked as hibernating by a small addition of code, but I’d like to be able to apply specific CSS to them that would be different than the “active” progress bars. Currently the recent FO’s and the active bars use essentially the same CSS, and I’m fine with that – the FO’s of course just don’t include the progress bar itself. Done!
Posted in CSM, General, Knitting | No Comments »
posted Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
I got brave and tried a pair of ribbed socks this morning. I only dropped one stitch, and that was when I was transferring the ribbing stitches on the first sock onto cylinder needles – I didn’t make sure the last one had an open latch, and thus it dropped when I went around and attempted to knit it. BUT, being a purl stitch, it was super easy to pick those stitches up (since those are knit on the inside), so it wasn’t a problem at all.
I’m quite happy with them, and it was WAY easier than I expected! Maybe tomorrow I’ll try a pair with a ribbed foot too
The yarn is the new Imagination sock yarn from KnitPicks – it’s really nice, very soft, and the colors are pretty neat too!
Posted in CSM, Knitting | 2 Comments »
