machine knitting midgauge standard bulky machknit knit machine-knit patterns

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Compulsive, Obsessed, Determined, Crazy, Disappointed and Frustrated

That is an accurate description of my state of mind for the last 24 hours or so. Having knit the little swatch, and having successfully installed all the stuff for the Silver Link and Silver Reed, I thought I was good to go on my Peace scarf. The first couple of hundred rows out of the 586 were good! The chenille even behaved! Pretty, eh?

Then, for NO GOOD (or discernable) reason, DAK told me I was going the wrong way with the carriage! So, I pain-stakingly unraveled, did the GO TO RC thing and got going again. But then, it mispatterned all by itself, again for NO GOOD (or discernable) reason and I didn't discover it. Here's the bad: With a detailed pattern, it's hard to see from the backside if things are going ok or not. Well, they weren't going ok, as you can see.

Later, the demonic machine/link decided to shift the pattern over a few stitches, making this mess:

The steam coming out of my ears practically kept the house warm all night. I wrote to my Silver Reed guru friend for help. She said you have to wait for the click at the end of a row so that the next row can be made. (DID that.) Also, you have to knit slowly so that the signals get to the needle bed. (DID that because I also hung the contrast color over the end needle to prevent a hole and that took a couple seconds each row. I guess you have to program in the contrast color in the DAK pattern. If I'm wrong about that, would like some feedback.)

Like I said, I'm stubborn. So I went looking on the Yahoo DAK site for answers. Saw that people were having the same problem with my same setup, but no answers. So then I went to the Softbyte site. The latest update is 7.19.04. I had the previous one. SO, I updated. There were several things that pertained to better functioning of the Silver Reed setup, so I have my fingers crossed that this will be the answer to my problems.

If you are reading this and have the Silver Reed 860 and the Silver Link 4 and have any suggestions, I'd welcome the input with open arms.

I don't know if I have the umph today to try again. So many rows, so much frustration. Maybe I'll cut out the good parts---there seems to be enough length that I can get two pieces from---and make a pillow cover.

No comments: