Mona's Knitting Room

There was a crank-in in Marblehead today and I made it my goal to get all of the knitter parts from my sock machine cleaned. It was my thought that I could put it together in the company of other sock machine enthusiasts while learning more from watching others knit. With the help of a few friends, I not only put the machine together, I knit my first tube! Very exciting! On to ribbing next.











But first I should share some of my work this morning. Here are before, during and after pictures of the cam shell. You can see that although the grease and dirt were effectively removed with the Dawn dishwashing detergent and a paint stripper brush, there is still a significant amount of build up on the outside of the cam shell. Using a paste made of Bar Keepers Friend and water, I used an old tooth brush to scrub all of the nooks and crannies. For the larger smooth areas, I used the same paste with a cleaning pad cut to a manageable size. There were some areas of significant rust that required several applications of Naval Jelly to dissolve the rust. The end result, though, is beautiful.

After obtaining advice from a number of sources, I decided to try WD-40 to clean the sock machine parts. I bought a galvanized steel bucket and a gallon of WD-40 and soaked several parts in it for an hour after which I scrubbed them with a nylon paint stripping brush. The worst of the gooey grime came off but the rust and discoloration on the machined surfaces remained. Next!


After consulting yet another person, I decided to try Dawn hand dishwashing detergent with my stripping brush. This worked much better. As these before and after photos of the side cams show, Dawn removed all of the goo as well as the surface rust but did not remove the discoloration. Next!










I next decided to check with the experts at my local True Value Hardware store. They recommended Bar Keepers Friend, a cleanser containing oxalic acid. I bought a green scratchy pad, meant to be used as a paint stripper, and that combined with the BKF did the trick. As you can see in this photo of the knitting cylinder, the BKF nicely cleaned the right side. Success!

I'm beginning a new adventure. I purchased a circular sock knitting machine (csm) on eBay and it arrived today. It's a Legare 400 and I'm excited to learn to knit on it. But first things first. The machine is filthy and covered with surface rust. I have not been able to find any tutorials on the web for mechanically restoring these gems so I'll have to experiment with various products to see what works best.

What is a circular sock machine? Check out this website.

The box arrived and I heard "clunking" as it was placed on the floor. Not a great beginning. The seller didn't do a great job packing the machine parts. Most of the parts were wrapped in bubble wrap but because they were free to move around inside the box, the wrap wore away in many places. I opened the box and here's what I found:












Yikes! This is the worst of the parts!












Now it's time to start cleaning...

Each summer, my spinning group gathers in the beautiful garden of one of the member's home to dye fiber and yarn together. This year, the theme was over-dyeing wool using immersion methods. Using camp stoves and a bbq grill, we fired up 6 dye pots with water, immersed the yarn and fiber into the pots and poured the dye mixtures over everything. And, as usual, I couldn't leave the pots alone and had to keep checking the results.







After simmering the fiber for 30 minutes, we removed it from the pots and allow it to cool on the grass. A good rinsing from the garden hose followed by a dip in a cream rinse & water bath and here's the result. The variations from each pot are amazing.








I was given several hanks of lace-weight, medium quality Chinese cashmere yarn by a generous co-worker. I failed to take a picture of the before colors but suffice it to say the colors were less than desirable. Flesh-colored beige, mustard and grey. I decided these were prime candidates for over-dyeing as I couldn't imagine ever using this yarn, except perhaps the grey if the project was intended for someone else. Here they are after over-dyeing:


Can you guess that the hank on the left started its life mustard colored?

It's been four months since my last post -- yikes! Where has the time gone? Between work, family time and fiber opportunities, I've had no time to spend on my blog except to think of it fondly in passing. Well, life has settled down a bit now that the kids are on summer break and I'm glad to have this chance to highlight the last four months.

We went on vacation in April to Las Vegas. I've always wanted to see the desert in bloom and the Hoover Dam and so off we went. What a beautiful area of the country!





Of course, no vacation is complete without knitting time. I finished these Cascade Fixation socks for me:

The next highlight was Summer SPA at the Western Massachusetts summer house of a spinning friend, Sherry. I forgot my camera so I don't have pics of the idyllic setting: a rustic house set on a private lake with canoes and kyack to enjoy the serene beauty of the tree-line lake, along with a half dozen knitters and spinners with whom to enjoy the time. Sigh! That was a nice weekend.
I spent the majority of the time practicing my spinning. Everyone donated bits of their roving to me so I could try different fibers. I ended the weekend with a nice collection of mini skeins and the the confidence to move from my "practice" fiber to "real" fiber for a project. Before and after. Can you see my progress?

Dateline: Memorial Day Weekend
The next highlight was a camping trip with my son and two of his friends to Lake Conway, New Hampshire. We had a wonderful campsite on a point that juts into the lake. We went fishing and biking, played some baseball and generally had a great time. The loons were out and about; I felt like I was a part of On Golden Pond. You can barely make them out in the photo on the right.

I, of course, spent some time in my comfy chair with my lovely view and knit. I was able to get quite a few inches completed on one of the sleeves of my FLAK sweater before I noticed that the pine trees overhead were dropping sap occasionally, two such splats landing on my sweater. Gasp! I put away the FLAK and I whipped out my portable knitting. I was able to finish my patriotic socks knit from Fortissima Colori sock yarn in colorway "1776".

The next weeks were filled with the hustle and bustle of end of school year activities. I managed to start another pair of socks and make more progress on my FLAK. Best of all, I finished spinning my first "real" fiber and now it's time to ply it. Here's my first full bobbin of singles from Lorna's Laces merino roving. It was gifted to me by Nancy McGlynn of Knitting Now.

I am making regular progress on my FLAK sweater. I now have the front and back completed and have started the first sleeve.

I continue to learn new techniques as I work through this knit along. I decided to add a horseshoe cable and twist on each side of the center braid in the sleeve. The sleeves are knit from the top down and you pick up stitches along the side of the front and back and knit down to the cuff. Since the stitch gauge of the moss stitch filler is different than the gauge across the horseshoe cable and twist, I computed different stitch pick up rate for the two sections of the sleeve. Surprisingly enough, it looks like I figured it out correctly and there is no puckering along the pickup line. Now, hopefully I'll compute the rate of decrease for the sleeves correctly!

I nearly finished my entrelac sweater. I almost could claim victory. It was in sight. Alas, no. After completing everything but a few stockinette rows for the neckline, I tried on the sweater. Yuck! The arm holes aren't deep enough and bind at my upper arms. In addition, the stiffness of the entrelac emphasizes the bunching under the arms that occurs with drop shoulder style sleeves. So, it's back to the drawing board. I'm going to take the sweater apart, pull out the edge rectangles along the armhole and add new side triangles to create a modified drop shoulder style sleeve. Then, I'm going to rip back about 8 inches on the sleeves and reknit them to be larger. Although it's disappointing to have gotten this far and still have more work to do, the sweater is so beautiful that I don't mind the work.