15/4/14

Today going back into uni I mainly focused on knitting. However as I had created hand knitted samples yesterday today I wanted to use the knit machine. I remember using it in knitwear week and I enjoyed that week however my memory of how to use it was a little rusty, fortunately I had taken pictures during that week that showed me how the thread up the machine. Once this was done I started on a simpler wool, threading it up was straight forward and I didn't have to rely on the pictures. Once knitting, it worked well although getting stuck and catching in a few places every now and then, but I was able to make a practice sample easily. However towards the end of the sample I was having difficulties as the machine kept on getting stuck. I realised this was due to the wool being quite loose and would therefore fray a lot easier which is why it would clog up. With this in mind I wanted to make samples with the purple wool however this did not work at all because every time I tried to knit it would clog up and the machine would not work. I tried this several times checking that the machine was threaded up correctly and sometimes changing the settings such as the tension. Yet nothing worked so I decided to move on because this was taking up too much time and I didn't want to waste time on the samples. I didn't even try with the metallic yarn as I knew that if the purple wool had not worked then the metallic wool would defiantly not. 

Despite these difficulties and restraints I carried on as I still wanted to create some samples so I used a different wool from a friend, this wool was a lot tighter and stronger and worked on the machine perfectly. I had no issues with this wool. I remembered one technique from knit week which was the cable stitch this meant crossing over three stitches with another three, I did this several times so it almost looked like I had plaited the wool.
After this I began weaving in the purple wool I had previously been using this meant weaving it over and under the needles, this took a while but I really like what it looks like. As that worked so well I thought about weaving in fabrics, I wove in a variety of fabrics such as the metallic stretch, organzas, because the purple wool worked well I also tried the metallic wool but this did not work as well because it would catch in the machine. Learning this I just carried on with using the different fabrics, the transparent PVC worked well and so did the translucent PVC.

I really liked this one as it's texture is quite unique because you can feel and see the knit but then the matte texture from the fabric comes through. I also tried my other organza, however this one didn't work in the same way as the other fabrics which stayed together and didn't fray. Yet this one did fray so whenever I would knit the fibres would stick through the knit in a similar way to the metallic wool. I really liked how it did this because it is different to the other weaves particularly as the strands that stick through are of a two tone shine which makes it even more intriguing to look at. Although the difficulties with weaving that fabric is that I couldn't weave it the same way as the other weaves because it's width was larger making it harder to negotiate over and under the needles unlike the wool. Therefore to get past this instead of pulling down all of the needles and then weaving I would bring every other needle down, then place the organza over the top, then I would bring down the other needles one by one making sure that the organza would go underneath, leaving the organza woven over and under the needles. This took some time to do mainly because it was quite intricate but I feel that it was worth it. I did this several times and the overall effect of weaving in the organza was really interesting to look at. 

This was the last sample I made today and it took quite a while to do because of all the different fabrics and wools I was working with, but I enjoyed experimenting with them and discovering how I could manipulate them in order to make some interesting samples on the machine. I also enjoyed working on the machine once I had learnt how to use it properly and I think that if I were to use it for my final outcome I would be able to knit relatively quickly on it, although I would have to reconsider what wool I would use because my chosen wools did not work.