The knitted piece - Monday 19th May 2014

As discussed with Emma, my knitted piece is now completed at knitting club today thanks to Lidia.   So it's similar to the samples I did as I have used a tuck stitch which has created a slight bubble effect to represent the stones that I walked on each day whilst in Borth.

The colours I have used are greys, light, dark and flecks.   I have used a range of thickness (or I should say "ply") from 2 ply to 4 ply.   The 2 ply wool is Islay and is 90% wool and 10% nylon.  This wool due to its fineness, I doubled up when I knitted with to make it thicker.   This then gave a mix of the greys consistently. I also used wool that I had purchased from the charity shop a couple of months ago and this was thick.

Whilst knitting today, and during previous lessons doing samples, I encountered issues such as casting on due to the wool looping and not catching on the pins -this was down to usually one of two things: my tension was too loose for the wool I was using i.e. 4 ply I had on 7 tension whereas the two ply coped better with that tension; the second reason included setting on the machine not being right but gradually over the weeks I have got used to which setting I need to have the machine on for knitting.   Lidia introduced something new to me today which I wasn't really up for as I felt I hadn't yet achieved one really good completed piece but she showed me anyway and explained that I could use two colours if i used it - IT being a plating yarn.   This replaces the standard yarn feeder.   That's as technial as I'm going to get.   It worked, I understood what I was doing.

So casting on 80 stitches, I knitted around 5 plan rows before introducing the pattern, using tuck stitch and before introducing alternate colours.    I did 20 rows at different tension settings, namely 7, 6 and 5 to represent the different sizes of the stones.   The tension gives a looser knit.   Altogether, the final piece measures 18 x 12 inches consisting of 80 stitches and over 100 rows.

Casting off was fun NOT!   This is still something I am getting my head around.  I can hand knit with my eyes closed, but machine knitting is a whole new experience.  I'm sure in a few months I will think how could I not do this but at the moment, I'm still at the stage of some things being like morse code.

My final piece is shown below.   I have embellished the piece with a knitted cord, rope from the beach, and other contrasting threads, all of which were colours found on the beach.

on this picture you can clearly see the pattern which also resembles the sands when wet - i have one picture in particular that I am thinking of 

the cord that I knitted and then have woven through 

here, i have added the photograph that I had digitally printed onto fabric - i wanted to photograph it with the knitted piece as it shows the colours that I found on the beach

In addition to the above, I hand knitted an orange square in very chunky wool which I purchased at Wonderwool.   I wanted to use it as a frame for something within the exhibition.   However, I have found a use for it now by creating a plain knitted piece (at home) with stripes.  However hte piece I felt wasn't good enough to be the final knitted piece as I couldn't case off in the way I wanted and I ended up just threading wool through the stitches.   To hide this I then turned it into a long narrow sock like piece and put stones in it.  Sounds awful but actually I feel it works well.  The delicate knitted piece against the chunky orange and the rocks complement each other.   The rocks and the plain knit are as smooth as each other.

Reflection:  I reflected today with Lidia, the tutor who has been patient and helping me get to where I am today with the knitting.   She said "I was a bit worried in the beginning as you were a bit aggresive with the machine"!   I am she said today improved and in control of it.   I feel more comfortable with it but I still look in down at my knitting in amazement when nothing has gone wrong!   Lidia also did say that's probably why it keeps going wrong, because I keep looking down to see if it has gone wrong!

I have learnt how to put my machine together and take it apart, including simple things like putting the yarn tension unit back into the lid.   I actually photographed it to remind how it fits together when put away because if it isn't in right, the lid isn't going on.   I wanted last week to throw it threw the window because I just couldn't do it.  I can now do it.

I feel I underestimated doing a knitted piece on the machine.  I thought once I got a machine working, it'd be a piece of cake.  It has not.   I have gone from not knowing how to get a machine going, being given a second machine to use the parts from to get mine going, then after discussion with Lidia, agreeing we were flogging a dead horse, I donated the two machines to a charity that refurnishes them for 3rd world countries.  I then purchased a new second hand machine from Lidia, a Brother machine, which she felt was the better machine.   I then had to start again, using what I had been learning, i.e. casting on and trying to knit.   To today, where I have cast on, knitted plain stitch, then used a pattern, several colours, tuck stitch and tried to cast off but felt it was going wrong, so I was rescued by Lidia.  I did not want to ruin what I felt was a good piece of work that had taken me all morning.   Casting off is something to be continued as it's a vital part of knitting.