...and we have RIBBING!

Yes, worthy of shout-out-loud capitals, we have RIBBING on the CSM.  I don't know why the thought of using the ribber struck fear in my heart, but the time was nigh to add this latest skill to my circular sock machine repertoire.

It's probably because every CSM forum features problems with the ribber as a main focus so much of the time that I was intimated by little bits of metal.  Shame on me.  It took me longer to find the dial adjuster lever that I had taken off and stored along with its screw in a Ziploc bag aptly tagged "Marie's Guts", which in turn was logically placed in a Rubbermaid bin where I store all the miscellaneous bits and bobs of my three machines.  Sometimes, I amaze even myself with my organization, (sigh), because it took me over an hour to find.  Then I misplaced the screw, and that must have taken me about another half-hour to locate...alas...a day in the life of...

I armed myself with my laptop, and for the umpteenth time, watched the YouTube video called Sock Machine Ribber Confidence.  I like Laurie's approach.  She's very cartesian in her logical, step-by-step explanations.  Thanks to Laurie and her video, I plunked my laptop beside my CSM, popped the ribber on, followed her steps, and behold!  We have ribbing:

I ran the tube off the CSM and put it in the kitchen for a show-and-tell when Eric returned.

And that's how my Anna Pepper came to be the best-dressed pepper mill in town.  Haute couture for your pepper mill - Alessandro Mendini would be proud.  Or maybe not, since I've turned his pepper mill into a Barbie?

So there's more ribbing in my future.  I still need to get a lot of the finer details down pat before attempting to make a sock like the original Auto-Knitter sock that came with Albert, my first CSM:

I'm sure I'm months from being able to crank one of these babies off the sock machine, but at least the first steps have been made.

Regia Hand-dye Effect Yarn Review

I picked up a few skeins of Regia Hand-Dye Effect yarn in Germany last year, and this week I finally sat down and cranked out a few pairs of socks.

All I can say is I wish my suitcase were larger, my wallet bigger, and my foresight better.

The yarn is lightly spun and plied with a thin, black thread I thought the CSM would not like.  Was I ever wrong.

This stuff went through the CSM like a hot knife through butter.  And the colours?

They are beyond beautiful.  This yarn is super-soft and fluffy on the skein, and when it's knit up, the fabric takes on a surprisingly coarse, almost scruffy feel.  I soaked the socks in Eucalan, dried them near the wood stove, and once dry, they soften up immensely.  The socks are very fluid and mold nicely to the foot.

Surprisingly, each skein weighed in at about 100g.  I started each sock with a 3:1 mock-rib on the 72 needle cylinder, knit 38 rows, replaced the missing needles and hung the purl bump from the neighbouring needle on each empty one to prevent the little hole that would result, and knit 2 rows before hanging my hem.  Then I knit 75 rows, turned my heel, knit 70 rows for the foot, and turned my toe.  I have about 4g of wool left from each skein, so I probably could have eked out a few more rows, but I don't live that dangerously...

Speaking of living dangerously, little Popina does:

Here she is in the kitchen, sitting serenely beneath Victoria whose innards are about to receive a bit of a tune-up.  I am going to have her cams brazed and reshaped, because she's a bit clunky.  Without needles, she's as smooth as can be, but once I have needles in and start to knit, she feels a bit...well...clunky.  I oiled her liberally, cranked out tube after tube, yet I don't feel she's at her best.  Since I took her apart, cleaned her, and put her back together again, I observed the uneven wear on her cams first-hand and think the extra work and expense will be worth the trouble.  So we'll be taking a trip to the machinist's workshop in the next few weeks, and I'll report back if my impressions are correct.

In the interim, I leave you with another view of Sockhenge:

Crankin' Time

Well, all I can say is this:  Planetary Alignment has occurred.  I have been crankin' (and crankin' and crankin') out so many socks that I have made a major dent in my sock yarn stash.  I am at the point of ordering more wool...a shocking thought!

Here's my first completed pair:

These are knitted with Lana Grossa Meilenweit in an unknown colourway.  They're not perfect, but I was pleased as punch to get these done!  

And my second:



I gave these Regia Design Line by Kaffe Fassett (rhymes with Safe Asset, says the man himself...) in colourway 4255 to my Dad for his 81st birthday.  To say he was pleased is an understatement.  He knows just how much I have been tinkering with my CSM's over the past 2 years.

These were both knit on Marie, outfitted with the 72-needle cylinder.

In the past 2 weeks I have churned out 10 pairs of socks.  Just as I had feared, it becomes somewhat obsessive, and I can think of little more than sitting at the CSM and cranking away.

My third CSM, Victoria, is currently outfitted with the 54-needle cylinder is still attached to the kitchen counter.  I need to get this baby fine-tuned, but it's hard with the 72-needle cylinder getting so much love these days.  I still have some issues with the fact the cams are well-worn on Victoria, and keep toying with the ideas of having them brazed rather than ground smooth.  I'm still not sure which route to take.

I'm also not thrilled with the Legaré yarn topper and it's somewhat ridiculous yarn mast spring.  The Auto Knitter is superior, in my opinion, and I'd love to find a few and put them on each machine.

I also found a great tutorial on the Circular Sock Machine Forum on Ravelry on purl-side kitchenering.  I can't tell you just how much easier it is than knit-side kitchenering.  Give it a try!

The Happy Cranker

My CSM ramblings have been mighty sporadic.  2011 will be THE year that I crank out a pair of socks!  The time has come to put these babies to use!

I finally went out and bought a proper stand for my CSM.  Taking a page from The Soxophone Player's blog, I went to our local Canadian Tire and bought myself a grinder stand.  Like pretty much anything tool- or shop-related at Canadian Tire, if you wait 6 weeks, you're bound to get what you want at 50% off.  The price was right, and the grinder stand makes for a nice, sturdy base on which to mount my CSM, without taking up the same footprint as the ubiquitous Black and Decker work-bench.  With our on-going renovations upstairs, the logical place to put my CSM was under the stair, so I needed something compact.

I put away my most recent acquisition, Victoria, and pulled out good ole' Marie, both Legaré 400 models.  Both machines are nearly identical, but Victoria had been driven much harder than Marie, so I wanted to have her cams brazed and reshaped, but simply haven't gotten around to it yet.  I put Marie on the stand, and using Albert's Auto Knitter yarn mast which has a much nicer heel-uptake spring, I am up and running.

I ordered new heel forks, something I procrastinated about, because I had the good intention of making my own.  The fact that we have a drill press smack in the middle of the living room would motivate me to this extent.  In the end, I couldn't be bothered, so I contacted a heel-fork maker in the States and had her send me two pairs.  The old heel forks that came with the machine are in a V-shape, and have nasty little hooks on the end that of course grab the knitted tube ferociously.  At some point during my heel-making frenzy, I bumped my knee on the heel fork's weight, and down came the fork, weight and all.  Unfortunately, I also had my hand under the machine at this precise second, and managed to impale my palm with said heel fork.  Thankfully, I only nicked myself, but this incident served to expedite my ordering of new heel forks.

I also ordered a new yarn carrier that I am hoping will simplify things even more.  The face of both my Legaré yarn carriers are very worn.  Unlike the Auto Knitter, whose yarn carrier can be adjusted up and down, as well as in and out, the Legaré yarn carrier can only go up and down.  On Victoria, the yarn carrier had already been shimmed (there's that word again!) out with a piece of folded-up tin-foil.  On Marie, it was shimmed out with a washer.  The faces of these yarn carriers are deeply gouged from striking the needles and latches, and my hope is that the new yarn carrier will be a bit more needle-friendly.

Thanks to Sarahspin's wonderful YouTube video, I have completed heel after heel after lovely heel.  I might be personally responsible for 1,000 or so views on this video.  Her "one up, two down" narrative has been repeated so often, I'm sure I'm saying it in my sleep.  Another detail that aided my heel progress was...wait for it...marking my cylinders!  Whodathunk such a simple thing could prove to be so beneficial?  I don't know what kept me from pulling out some nail polish and making a few marks earlier, and it seems stupid to state the obvious, but really...what was I waiting for?  Someone, smack me upside of the head, please.

The above kludge-to-end-all-kludges came about since I was having yarn tension issues.  I had wound a wonderful centre-pull ball, as many advise, yet with the older Legaré yarn mast, the heel uptake spring was giving me fits.  When I used my paint roller/broom handle contraption, I had a more consistent feed, which worked better with the Legaré yarn mast.  I also could have cut a perfectly good broom handle, but why waste something like that on a kludge?  When I changed to the Auto Knitter yarn mast, I kept the above contraption in place.  The magnet around which I wound the elastic comes courtesy of Lee Valley, it's a stand-off magnetic tool holder that I stole borrowed from Eric's drill press.  Sometimes you just gotta make-do.  This was one of those times.

When I get the new yarn carrier, I'll go back to my centre pull ball, although I like the ease of feed I get from the paint roller.  I might find a way to incorporate that into the design modifications I have in mind for my stand.  Ideally, I'd like to make a solid wood top, with a semi-circle cut out that would permit the CSM to be recessed a bit.  This would decrease the leverage of the CSM on the stand, because I do find the current stand a bit tippy, if say, a cat decided to play with a tube-in-progress, (something that could realistically happen in this house).  If the stand had 4 legs instead of 3, I'd be more comfortable, and short of bolting it into the floor (that's how it's intended to be used with a grinder), I'll have to make do for now.  I have visions of a wooden top that would incorporate several recessed rare-earth magnets around the edges that could hold all my tools easily at hand, as well as accommodate a more user-friendly lamp.  I have a couple of modifications that I am ruminating, but I'd like to be a bit more proficient in CSM-ese before having a new top custom-made.

It seems like I am stating the obvious here, as no self-respecting office worker should sit on anything but the best of chairs, so should no cranker sit for any extended period of time on, say, a wooden bar stool while cranking. This is exactly how you could find me, hunched over my CSM, for hours on end.  Eric looked at me as I stood up and massaged my aching sciatic nerve, and suggested I might want to borrow his drafting chair.  Brilliant suggestion, my dear!  One does tend to get caught up in the throes of the CSM, and not realize just how unergonomic the experience can be.

So, stay tuned for another episode of "How the Sock Turns", right here at Shim Farm Central.

Oh...and I forgot to mention...

...that we went on another road trip, and you know what that means, don't you?

It means that Ann, AKA She-who-walks-with-horseshoe-firmly-planted-up-posterior, found another, YES, another circular sock machine, or CSM for those in the know.

Drum roll please!

Albert and Marie, meet your new friend Victoria:

A close up of the crud, and I truly mean CRUD:

This machine is going to need major elbow grease to bring back its original shine. It's already in pieces, liberally sprayed with WD-40, each piece beckoning me one-by-one.


I wish I knew more about this machine. I haven't found a serial number, but from what I can tell, I think it is a Legare 47, probably one of their earlier machines.

Do you think it's time I actually cranked out a pair of socks?

Yeah, me too!

Once our renovations are over, and we have finished the slate patio, completed rebuilding the fence, and done a multitude of other outdoor chores, I hope to have some spare time to crank to my heart's content!

Reno Day 9/10/11

Today was a (b)itch-o-rama.

We took Saturday off to take our little road trip to bring Marie home, and Sunday was a slow day. The electrician came, changed out the electrical boxes for a beefier model, and ran some more BX cable. He is also a friend, so we can bribe him out on weekends with offers of food. Some other stuff was wired (face it, we never have enough electrical outlets in the right places, so now is the time to right some wrongs), and with this out of the way, our work could go ahead.

Yesterday we opened the first of the 24" wide Roxul batts. We needed these batts to insulate the knee wall:

We placed 2 on top of another on the floor, giving us 12" in height (though the photo shows only one layer), and then we added a little retaining wall out of plywood strips to hold the rest of the Roxul in place:

The idea was to place 12" of batting upright in this space, and keep going from there. Easier said than done. It was like giving birth, but in the reverse order.

Murphy's Law dictates what can go wrong, will go wrong, and that's exactly what happened when we opened up the second bag of Roxul. We ended up with a bad batch. This is what we got:

A lumpy mess. We called Roxul and gave them the batch number, and a rep called us back. They say this sort of thing happens from time to time, and we will get reimbursed, but in the meanwhile, Eric and I both lost a lot of sleep last night, thinking the product now looked like this, no exceptions! There is no way we could have put something that looked like this in the angled part of the roof. It was impossible to cut and totally unmanageable.

This is what Roxul normally looks like:

It is compressed, and when you cut the bag open, it nearly explodes. This is a good batch. What is nice about Roxul is that it's dense. It has more "hold" than regular fibreglass pink, and it is water-repellent and fire-repellent. Just what we wanted.

This morning we were greeted with snow (again)!

Then the sun came out, and the trees looked as though they had had a dusting of icing sugar:

It was a sight to behold. There was no wind, so the trees actually stayed this way for a few hours.

But back upstairs! (Sounds of whip cracking!) Enough dilly-dallying!

Eric decided that all the tiny forged nails that were originally used to nail the cedar shakes on the original roof just had to go. There were hundreds in the 2 sections I had access to, and I broke each and every one of them off using a pair of pliers. Thankfully, they cracked off readily after being bent back and forth several times, but mind-numbing grunt-work nonetheless.

With the nails out of the way, Eric screwed furring strips on the roof. This is to prevent the Roxul from being pressed up against the roof to facilitate air circulation and to prevent condensation.

Have you ever had a product catch your eye, and although you're not sure of an immediate use, your frivolous nature makes you buy it?

Well, this quick-release magnet from Lee Valley was one of those purchases:

It features a quick-release trigger below the handle so you can easily drop what you've picked up, and is quite frankly one of the most-used gizmos we have. I used it to pick up my (million) little broken off nails, as well as hand Eric the screws he needed to put up the furring strips.

With the furring strips in place, we were now able to put batts against the inside of the knee-wall and work our way up to the ceiling:

These are the first 2 courses in place. There are 2 - 6" layers here, one behind the other, and we staggered them by 5" to give us a bit more hold as we were layering the batts. It seemed impractical to butt-end 2 layers simultaneously, hence the back batt is shorter.

We also had not considered exactly what would hold the Roxul in place as we were installing it; the batts are quite heavy and would fall down if not held in place by something. Eventually, this entire area will be covered with planks of wood and Gyproc, but in the interim, we had to improvise. We thought of screwing more furring strips across to hold everything together as a temporary measure, but then we decided to simply use string. We placed screws every 6" or so, and using surveyor's string (polyester, and really tough!), Eric spanned this across the batts.

We worked our way up the wall using this method:

Until finally, we had one entire section completed:

Bravo, Eric, take a bow!

Roxul is not fibreglass, but it is still itchy. Maybe not to the same extent, but nonetheless...after installing this product, you're entitled to a long, hot shower. (Despite the installation instructions telling you to take a cold-to-lukewarm shower. Thanks, but I'll take my chances!)

Hence, the (b)itch-o-rama.

When we have 4 sections like the one above completed, we will be ready to install the planks which measure 16 feet. And then we'll be a quarter of the way home.

(I can hardly wait).