the Soxophone Player

Here’s a closer look at the 6 hole Topper I used on the Koigu Thigh Highs.

This topper is also referred to as an Argyle Topper, or a 6 hole Yarn Mast, and many other colourful names that I myself have given it from time to time.

The only difference with this topper from most others is that you can pre-thread up to 6 different yarns.

Alas, you can still only knit them one at a time, but the theory is that your work will progress faster during the colour changes since you don’t have to stop, lick your thumb and index finger, twirl the end of the new yarn and thread it through the tiny holes of the yarn topper with each change.

That is a significant time saving with a pair of socks like my Baroque Thigh Highs that had a colour change every 5 rows!

You can see part way up the mast a triangular shaped beastie faced with a tightly coiled spring. That’s where you park the yarns you are not using.  The spring hold them out of the way of your current work, and also prevents them from slipping themselves unthreaded.

I’m quite sure that the original use of these aids involved yarn on cones. Working with 50 g balls I had a fair bit of swirl coming off the ball that necessitated cranking a bit slower. I’ll be experimenting to see how to position the yarn containers for optimum performance.

Here is a review of the main Sock Tops I use in my sock making. I do variations from time to time, but mostly one of these:

Basic Mock Rib.

This is my work horse topper – I’ve made thousands of these! Its a 3:1 mock rib (every 4th needle removed). The sample pic is done on a 54 needle cylinder, and 4 doesn’t divide evenly, so I have two sets of 4:1 – one on each outside side of the yellow hash marks. Where the two sets of 4:1 go doesn’t make a difference. But I’m a creature of habit.

My usual pattern is to knit 40 rows, replace the missing needles, knit two more rows and then hang the hem.

The first row after replacing the needles picks up the yarn, and the second row knits it. The fact that you have a row that doesn’t complete the knit leaves little holes, or as I call them, decorative features.

On my pattern scribbles, I write this top as:

40; NI; 2; HH (translation: 40 rows, Needles IN, 2 Rows, Hang Hem).

Alternate Mock Rib

This is another 3:1 mock rib, this time done on the 84 needle cylinder.

The only difference in this topper is that I pick up the missing stitches when I replace their needles. To pick up the stitch I simply grab the purl of an adjacent stitch and hang it over the empty needle. That gives the next round something to knit into, so there are no holes.

It gives a less casual finish which some prefer. I use it for a dressier sock or a finer yarn, or just for a change in pace. It is also 40 rows and I write it as:

40, NI P/U, 2, HH.      (P/U for Pick up stitches).

I could suffice with one row after the pick up instead of 2, but its that creature of habit thing again.

Humongous Mother Mock Rib

This is basically the same as the Alternate Mock Rib, but in this case I have knit 80 rows before replacing the missing needles. This sample is 3:1 knit at a loose tension on the 72 cylinder as the top of a knee sock. I pick up the stitches on this type of top, which I write down as”

80, NI, P/U, 2, HH.

Advantages of Mock Rib

A  mock rib hem top provides elasticity which will keep the socks up, but it does this without the use of purl stitches.

Purl stitches can be a source of discomfort for people with diabetes, skin conditions or sensitivies, and such. The top is also reversible – that is to say you can fold it down if you like and still have ‘good side’ showing.

It has a hand made and more decorative (IMO) look. I might add that I don’t find this the case with skimpy mock rib tops – 40 rows give a nice proportion to the rest of the sock, and unless its a fancy edged sock, I find the short tops to look chintzy. (Also all IMO!)

Disadvantages of Mock Rib

I find the mock rib doesn’t have as much ‘give’ as a knit-purl rib. So if you are pushing the limits of the size of the sock, it might be less desirable.

The mock rib is double thickness. So in something like a hiking boot or a ski boot, if the hem top happened to be overlapping the tight-top of the boot – it might be an issue.

Pico Top

The pico top is a variation of the basic mock rib top.

This sample is knit 2:1 mock rib on the 54 cylinder. I knit 10 rows, then transfer stitch 1 onto needle 2 of each pair, knit one row (the pico row) knit 8 more, replace the missing needles, knit 2 more rows, hang the hem. (In this sample I picked up the stitches when I replaced the missing needles – you can do it either way.)

The pico row picks up the yarn on the empty needles and the first row following completes the stitches – this leave a hole as in the Basic Sock. But when we knit an equal number of rows AFTER the pico round, those holes end up on the fold of the hung hem and that’s what makes the little picos.

One little trick I do on this kind of top – I normally knit with my heel spring in action full time. In pico tops I disengage the heel spring for row #10 at the beginning, and for the pico row. Then I re-engage it at the completion of the pico row. This looser tension will give more pronounced little pico bumps.

I write this as:

10 (9, SP OFF), Pico, SP ON,8, NI, 2, HH (or I may add P/U after NI)

Beaded Pico

This is EXACTLY the same as the Pico Top. But when I get to the transfer stitches step, I pull the yarn from the stitch that I am transferring through the hold of a bead with a fine crochet hook and then hang the stitch on the needle. This works on the 54 cylinder for me, and the fact that I have loosened the tention the row before the pico row gives me the extra stretch I need to work the beads.

The beads can also be added after the fact onto a basic Pico Top, which is what I do with the 72 cylinder – I find the needles to close together to accommodate most beads on that cylinder. (I have a detailed post on that somewhere – I think on my old blog.)

The beads in this pic are bigger than what I normally use – ‘pony bead’ size, and so in this case I also left the heel spring disengaged for one more round after the beads were placed. But normally, I would:

10, (9, SP OFF), Pico/bead, SP ON, 8, NI, 2 HH.

1 x 1 Ribbed Sock Top

This a basic knit one, purl one sock topper.

The sample is knit on the 72 needle cylinder with 36 slot ribber attached.

Starting with all needles in the cylinder and knitting with scrap yarn – I put the ribber on the knitter and place every other stitch off a cylinder needle onto a ribber needle, and remove the emptied needles as I go. When all the ribbing stitches are in place I knit a few rounds before beginning my sock yarn, just to make sure everything is hunkey dorey.

I knit 1 row with the ribber engaged, then I turn it off and knit one row, then I turn it back on and knit 25 rows.

The one row one, one off, then back on thing gives a good selvedge edge that doesn’t curl AND won’t unravel.

25 rows is arbitrary, but its what works for me. Like with the mock rib tops – I find too few rows just doesn’t look right.

Generally speaking, I switch to full stockinette after knitting the 1×1 topper. I rarely, if ever, knit with yarn that doesn’t have a high wool content, so I don’t need the extra elasticity of running, say, a 3 x 1 rib down the leg.  (But that’s not a topper issue anyway!)

R/O 1, R Off 1, R 25, knit

Advantages of a Ribbed Top

These tops have a lot of give, so a particular sock size would work for a broader range of folks, and in particular with a fuller leg size at the top end of a foot size range.

The top is a single layer of stitches thick, so more suitable for hiking or ski boots.

If knitting with low elasticity type yarns, this would give a better hold up – like cottons without elastic component, or (ugh) acrylics.

Disadvantages of a Ribbed Top

Unsuitable for people with pressure issues that come from purl stitches next to their skin.

To me the ribbed top is more ‘Sock’ than ‘Design Accessory’. I think this is in large measure because they look ‘machine made’ vs ‘hand made’. That being said – some guys folks don’t want design accessories on their feet!

Time wise, it takes a few minutes more to make – not significant – but if you drop a stitch you’re pretty much screwed as you can’t access the knitting with the ribber on top of the cylinder.

Addendum Aug 18 2010:

See this post for a 2 x 1 rib top done with the 36 ribber dial and 54 cylinder.

They say “Timing is everything.”

(Whoever ‘they’ is!)

But it’s definitely true with Circular Sock Knitters. The yarn carrier has to be in the right position vs the needles as they raise and lower within the cams so that the yarn is ‘caught’ and then pulled down to flip the latch and complete the stitch.

The yarn (original) yarn carrier that came with my Legare 400 had a small hole in the yarn carrier for the yarn to feed through. I replaced that carrier with one that had a slot instead of a hole so that I could change yarn quickly when doing stripe work. The slot is about a quarter inch wide, instead of a tiny hole, and that affected the timing of how the yarn was caught (or not caught!) as the carrier went by.

My solution was simple enough.

I adjusted the yarn carrier to be at a bit of an angle. (OK, as much of an angle as I could muster.)

And all was hunkey-dory.

Now, one of the things that is superior, IMHO, about the Legare 400, is that the timing is adjustable – which it is not on the other Legare models or on the Verdun 47.

But I really didn’t want to dink with this. When I got my Legare  it was well used and all the settings were tickety boo, so I simply didn’t want to mess with what’s been working.

But the ‘crooked yarn carrier’ has been nagging away at me the way a picture hanging crooked on the wall (from an excellent sub-woofer) would.

And, I don’t use the ribber that much, but when I do, the timing of it goes with the timing of base unit, not the yarn carrier – so that’s a finicky problem.

Recently, I decided to clean my 54 needle cylinder, being as its slots were so crammed full of yarn-cucky that the needles didn’t want to go down enough to knit. So I decided to deal with the time situation while in a state of Knittus Interuptus.

When you turn the crank, the lower ring turns. The Letter A marks a ‘bumper’ attached to that ring, which turns and hits the bumper B which is part of the outer shell, and upon which the yarn carrier is attached. The adjustment screw on A is at its ‘least’ position – so that the screw is not produding through the other side of the bumper. By tightening that screw it will, in fact, protrude, which means that Bumper A will hit Bumper B sooner. The more you make it protrude, the sooner it will hit B.

Here you can see I’ve acutally turned that screw as far as it will go. And you can see that my yarn carrier is vertical, and that it is catching the yarn with near perfect timing. (Meaning, the needles rise to their highest point just at the hole of the yarn carrier, and the needle immediately following is already on its way to to catch the yarn.)

If the needle ‘at the hole’ is above or below the hole more than a wee smidge, then the yarn carrier should be adjusted vertically.

But if the highest needle occurs before or after the hole, then that’s when the bumpers need to be fiddled.

My Verdun 47 doesn’t have adjustable timing screws. So the only other way I know of is to set the yarn carrier crooked, or bend it.

I love my Legare!

When you’re hanging a hem its important to line up your stitches. Otherwise you will get a twist in the hem.

When I do my standard hem top socks you may recall I do 40 rows in mock rib, replace the missing needles, do 2 more rows and then hang row 42 onto row 1.

And you may also recall, that as I begin to knit the second row, I place the beginning tail of yarn under the needles to knit it in as I go, which saves sewing the tail in at the end of the work.

I started this sock, as always, with the scrap yarn and the sock yarn pulled through between Needle Z and Needle A at the red hash mark. (This is Regia Silk, on the Verdun 47 machine, 72 needle cylinder.)

So the first stitch to knit in the sock yarn was on Needle A, as I knit counter clockwise.

To find that first stitch 42 rows later, follow the tail of the scrap yarn. There will be a bit of a hole and then the first stitch of the sock yarn. And if you look carefully at Stitch #1 down against the green scrap yarn, you will see it has  a second bar of the sockyarn angling upwards and to the left of the stitch. That extra bar is from where I laid the tail of the yarn on the needles to knit it in. Looking for that little special configuration makes it very easy to locate the first stitch.

Now I take the bar of the first stitch and hang it (the horizontal bar, not the extra bar that angles up).

The stitch was made by needle A and the bar follows the stitch counter clockwise. So I hang it on the first needle counter clockwise to Needle A.

BUT WAIT! The next needle after A is X. And that needle wasn’t present when I knit the first row because I was in mock rib. I only put needle X in place after row 40.

So I hang the bar of Stitch 1 onto Needle 1, which was the first needle to knit after A.

I hope that didn’t come out more confusing than it is!

Another helpful thing to watch – since I was knitting the mock rib in 3 to one, you can clearly see, in both the sock and the scrap, vertical rows of 3′s. And when you hang the hem you are putting each group of three bars onto the corresponding group of 3 needles. AND the bar on the first of each group of three stitches is much bigger than the other two, since it skipped a needle when being made.

And since I always begin knitting at the right red hash mark, and I always set up my 3:1 mock rib so that there is ONE needle after the hash mark and two before it, then it ALWAYS works out that the first stitch I hang goes onto the third needle after the hash mark. (not the first needle – which made the stitch, and not the second needle, which wasn’t present when I did the mock rib.)

(This is a review/revision of a tutorial in my ‘old’ blog.)

I am working on the 54 cylinder in a 3:1 mock rib set up – ie, every 4th needle removed. (But since 4 doesn’t divide evenly into 54, I have two sets of of 4:1 needles – which I  always place between the yellow heel marks and red hash marks.)

My standard knitting has the the yarn in the heel spring at all times – personal preference. I use the spring while I knit up the scrap yarn BUT I  don’t put the sock yarn  in the heel spring until AFTER the first round.

I always, always, always, begin knitting at the right red hash mark ( asterisked in the photos).  And when I set up my needles to do the 3:1 (in 54 and 72 cylinder), I have it so that at the red hash mark one of the three needles is counter clockwise to the red mark, and two are clockwise to it. I do this the same way every time  as it makes finding the first stitch ever so much easier when I go to hang a hem.

(Counting: I don’t use row counters. I count out loud. Since I start at the red hash mark, that where I count….every time the yarn carrier passes the red mark I count. And if I have to DO something, like add needles, hang a hem, start a heel – I stop the yarn carrier at 6 o’clock so that the needles at the red hash mark aren’t engaged in the cams….so if I want to do something after 12 rows, I count to 11 and stop at 6 o’clock. )

I cut the scrap yarn and thread the sock yarn through the yarn carrier AT the red hash mark. I hold both tails together and MAKE SURE that the scrap yarn is under the hook of the needle BEFORE the hash mark, and the sock yarn is under the hook of the needle AFTER the hash mark. I hold the tails while I begin to knit the first few stitches. BUT, as soon as those two needles are almost down, I put a little downward pressure on the tails I am holding.  In fact I usually move my thumb/forefinger up closer to the needles and push down. (If you push down in the very beginning there is a chance the yarn won’t catch the hook. But if you aren’t putting a little downward pressure when the first stitches are completed there is a chance they will slip off the machine.

As I complete the first row, I grab the leading tail of the sock yarn and hold it under the hooks of the needles so that the tail will knit itself in as row 2 begins to knit. Don’t start on the first needle with the tail – if you knit onto the same needle that made the stitch it will drop – start with the tail under the hook of the 2nd needle.

This little exercise accomplishes two things – first, you have no tail to weave in in at the end, and second, it will be very much easier finding the ‘first stitch’ when you go to hang your hem.

When I get near 12 o’clock position (ish) I hold the leading tail into the cylinder, and knit a stitch of two more.

It is at this point that I engage the heel spring on the yarn.

Now I can motor on knitting my mock rib hem top.

You need to knit twice as many rows as you want for your final top. My personal choice is 40 (and then 2 rows once the missing needles are replaced and I switch from mock rib to stockinette).  This is a personal design decision; and a ‘how much yarn have ya got’ too. But I find this size looks good to my eye in proportion to the rest of the sock.