Archive of Thread: Hello I'm Laura from Virginia Back

3 years ago
Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to machine knitting but ready to level up and finally figure out how to use the ribber. I got started a few years ago but haven't had a lot of time to focus on it until now. Thank you so much KnitItNow for all the resources and for this Knit-a-long. I am excited to do some serious practice!

One question I already have is if I will be able to do fair isle with a punchcard while using the ribber. I notice that the piece that attaches the knitter and ribber carriages has a little piece of metal that covers up the button on the knitter carriage that I need to press in order to do fair isle... so... does that mean I shouldn't press the button?  🙂

3 years ago
Welcome Laura!  I'm so glad you are dedicating some time to the ribber.  There is soooo much you can do with it!

No, you cannot do fairisle with the double bed.  Looking at the coupler on the main bed, there is only one slot for one yarn.  

Fairisle knits 2 colors AT THE SAME TIME across the row.  Each color yarn is inserted in the main carriage in the A and B slots.

With that being said ....

You can knit beautiful multi-color fabrics with Double Bed Jacquard. (DBJ)

DBJ is basically multi-color slip stitch.  You knit 1 color across the row, then replace that color yarn in the feeder and knit a second  (or 3rd) color.
Multiple passes of the carriage knit the same row.  (you can knit up to 6 colors with the right color chaner)

The ribber comes into play in that there are ribber needles in work covering the floats of yarn that form.

Before you tackle Double Bed Jacquard there are some things you need master:

• Full needle Rib (what yarns work best, how to cast on etc)
• Use of a color changer (yes you can manually switch the yarns, but it's a pain)
• Knitting multi-color slip on the single bed
• Understanding the punchcard or electronic stitch patterns for DBJ

Each of these are pretty big topics ... put together, you can create magical fabrics!

3 years ago

Thank you, that makes perfect sense!  I'm definitely at the start of the long road to DBJ... and I'm so glad you are here to help me get there 🙂

That list of what I need to know is really helpful; I appreciate this roadmap to success! I've figured out the second one but the other ones I will work on over the next weeks. Thank you !

Laura