This isn’t a tutorial on ribber use…. but just a few random little tidbits that I keep in mind while using the ribber.

1. If I want to keep knitting between socks instead of running the completed sock off the knitter, I knit about 20 rows of scrap yarn. Then I place my heel fork as shown, about 15 rows down from the top. The photo is taken from the side, so the fork tines are just inside the yellow heel markings. I hang a single weight, and I add a little very light pressure with my hand on the weight.  This works for me to keep the downward tension even all around the cylinder. If the fork was much higher then there would be a loose tension area at the mid point between the two tines, which could result in missed stitches.

When knitting a hem top instead of a rib top I don’t use the heel fork. I just hold on to the finished toe below the scrap yarn and, with visual clues, can keep my tension even. Using the fork/weight for a rib top allows me to keep my focus on the ribber while it is in work.

2. I start each sock with all the needles in the cylinder, and on scrap yarn, regardless of starting a first sock, or carrying on after a finished sock. You can see I’ve got the retention spring pulled out from the cylinder onto the little holder bit on the outer cam shell. This allows taking each cylinder needle out without having to pry it from behind the spring. I just place ribber needles in the empty horizontal slots, and then transfer a cylinder stitch by lifting it right onto the ribber needle.  You may note that I’m using the Verdun 47 in my examples. The Verdun Ribber Dial (the thing with the horizontal slots) is sized so that the ribber needles protrude over the edge of the dial by about 1/8″.  In this case, I find transferring the stitches as described works best for me.

(On the Legare, the ribber needles do not protrude over the edge and that makes me prone to dropping a stitch mid transfer, so I use a different method in that case. I’ll try to remember to take a pic of that.)

3. I switch from scrap yarn to sock yarn at the right side red hash mark. Here I’ve got the terminal tail of the scrap yarn going forward under the first cylinder needle  and I’ve got the sock yarn going backwards under that same needle. ie the yarns cross. I always knit with the heel spring in action, so that is why you see there is no slack in my yarns. I pull upwards gently, just enough to prevent the heel spring from pulling the yarn out before I get knitting. If you pull to strongly it is easy to pop the rib stitches at the red arrow and then, well, you have a mess!

4. Once I’ve knit a half dozen or so stitches I stop and pull my ends (the terminal end of the scrap yarn and the leading end of the good yarn) into the cylinder. Its difficult to see this but at the red arrow – reach up from underneath the cylinder with a latch hook so that it sticks out at my first good-yarn stitch. I snag the tails with that hook and pull them down inside, out of the way.

5. Tension and Selvedge.  What ever tension setting I would use with a particular sock yarn, I set my tension 1/4 turn LOOSER than that. To knit my selvedge, I knit one row with the ribber engaged, two rows with it disengaged, and then re-engage. When I re-engage the ribber that is when I tighten the tension 1/4 turn so it is now at ‘normal’ for what ever yarn I’m working.

The reason I do that little tension fudging is that it makes re-engaging the ribber much easier. I knit at a pretty high tension, and with the heel spring always in work, and that can make moving the little off-on switch jam. The bit looser tension seems to solve that problem for me. With a less stretchy yarn like a silk or bamboo, I may loosen even a bit more.

So these are some little things that are part of my knitting routine and I find that keeping these things in mind makes for things going tickety boo.

Part II finished off with my Kitchener stitching complete on the ‘Good Side’ and my needle preparing to take the left over tail yarn through to the ‘Wrong Side’.

The blue stand indicated by the Red Arrow is the tail as pulled through. The rainbow coloured yarn is the toe, and the semi-solid blue/purple is that last stripe on the foot of my sock. (The other bits of yarn flailing about are the tails from my colour-changes.)

Notice the coloured stitches that appear near the toe end of the white scrap yarn.  If you click that pic large, you’ll see that those stitches:

a. form a complete row (and it you turned the sock you would see it continues without interuption around the entire toe.

b. the stitches are each formed like a little HILL which is to say pointing upwards when looking at the sock with the toe up. And if you picked at those little HILLS they would not unravel because they form completed stitches.

If either of the above conditions does not exist, then the Kitchener will die!

If a. doesn’t exist – ie you have a blank spot in the row of stitching, then your sock will run at that point.

If b. doesn’t exist – ie if you pick at a stitch it comes apart – then it is likely that you Kitchenered the Valleys instead of the TEEPEES and the whole thing will unravel ;o(

If both those conditions are met, then I would weave in the tail. If not, I would use my darning needle and push the tail back out to the good side through the sampe point it came into the wrong side, and then undo my Kitchener and try again!

OPTIONAL STEP

.This is a little step I usually do just prior to weaving in the tail

Just below the Black Arrow you can see the larger hole that is part of the downside of short row heels.  And if you look closely at the blue stitch the Black Arrow points to, you’ll see it is a double stitch that is formed at the corner of the short rows.

Since I have a tail of yarn just hanging about waiting to get busy, I’m going to run it through that blue double stitch – right between the two layers of it. Like so.

When I snug that tail up it will close in that last heel-hole, which is a vast improvement IMHO.

With that Optional Step completed, I run my darning needle through the HILL of a stitch close to where my tail came through from the Good Side to the Wrong Side. The HILL I chose is dark blue and you can see the crest of the HILL points towards the top of the toe.

I run the tail through about 8 HILL stitches, working diagonally (which will lock the tail in place better than running straight up and down).

And then I run the tail back just underneath the diagonal stitching I just did.

And all that’s left is to snip the tail – I leave about an inch, and unravel the scrap yarn.

Note: If you weave in your tail in the HILLS of the stitches as I have done, it will be invisible on the good side. If you weave into the VALLEYS, then your weaving will be visible from the good side.  With blue on blue, it wouldn’t be a problem, but, you know what I mean.

Sometimes with a real dark solid colour its difficult to tell the HILLS from the VALLEYS. There is no adjacent scrap yarn to help point them out. If that is the case, AND I have, for instance, a Red Toe and a Black Foot, then I will weave my tail into the toe just in case I hit a Valley. But if my toe and foot are the same colour, its no nevermind if I accidentally hit a Valley.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Here are a couple of the most common trouble spots.

The first pic is from way back at the beginning of Part I and I have just started to pull my needle from the wrong side to the good side. The Red Arrow is the loop of the final sock that knit with the sock yarn, and the Green Arrow points to the TEEPEE that I’ll put my needle through to make my first stitch.

But if you look closely – the Lime Arrow is pointing to the left part of the yellow stitch. You barely see this as its usually twisted to the inside of the work. If you put your needle through that part of the stitch you would be knitting a VALLEY not a TEEPEE so it would fail. The correct TEEPEE is marked with red lines.

Likewise, when we go to make the subsequent stitch to the left – you see there is a side that we cross over (not through) as we go through the left side of the Red Arrow marked stitch AND through  the first complete TEEPEE.

If you accidentally knit either of the part stitches marked with the Lime or Purple Arrows it will likely throw your entire effort off by half a stitch – meaning you’re likely to knit all Valleys – a crash and burn for sure!

And another trouble spot:

We always knit the TEEPEES together. And a TEEPEE is what points to the Top of the Toe! When your working with a circle, as in our sock knitting, the TEEPEES on the far side will look like Valleys, but they are not VALLEYS! You need to knit what IS, not what appears to be ;o)

In conclusion:

TEEPEES and HILLS. TEEPEES and HILLS. TEEPEES and HILLS!

This is where I left off at end of Part I. The tail of the sock yarn came through the final stitch that was knit in sock yarn, which is just before the first stitch that was knit with scrap yarn. Coming through that last stitch’s loop at 1. I then wen through the TEEPEE to the right (2.) and then through/behind the left part of the loop (1.) and through the TEEPEE at 3.

Now I look for the next TEEPEE on the right – and there it is at (4.) with the orange arrow.  The TEEPEE is of yellow yarn.

So let’s skewer that one!

In photo above I’ve put my needle through that yellow TEEPEE and you can see my sequence – Red Arrow, Green Arrow, Purple Arrow, and now Orange Arrow.

Until now, I haven’t pulled that yarn snug as to pull in that first loop we came through. But it’s time to do that.

And above, everything is snugged up.

Until now, we’ve been working on the side view of the sock. (Above, the rainbow coloured yarn is the actual short rows of the toe, while the blue on the right is that last part of the foot.)

Now I’m going to turn the orientation of my work so that the rainbow-toe part of the sock is facing away from me, and the blue part facing towards me. At the same time, I am going to ‘tuck most of the white scrap yarn to the inside of the sock:

So my thumb is on the top of the foot while my fingers are on the short rows and bottom of foot.

Notice I haven’t tucked the scrap yarn completely inside the sock. I want enough of it still showing that I can easily see the TEEPEES for the rest of my stitching. And remember – TEEPEEs point to the TOP of the TOE.  On the back the toe opening where my forefinger is, the TEEPEEs will look like V’s but they are not – because TEEPEEs point to the TOP of the TOE.

The tail I’m stitching in is dangling down on the front, facing me. So the next TEEPEE I will look for is on the backside.

There it is! I roll the work towards me a little to find that stitch, but I’m not changing the orientation of my work. See the Blue TEEPEE stitch. Let’s get it!

And then since that TEEPEE was on the far side, the next one will be on the near side:

Oops. Photo a little blury – trying to snap these pics with my left hand on a right handed camera! But I think you can see I’ve skewered the next TEEPEE, this time on the near side.

And so we work our way across from left to right – from a TEEPEE pointing to the TOP of the TOE on the far side, then on the near side, and so on.

A word of caution – don’t pull the stitches you are making too tight or you will make a seam – and annoying ridge. What we are actually doing is knitting an extra row that joins the top of the foot to the toe. So each TEEPEE from one side shouldn’t be pulled up tight against the TEEPEE on the other side. Rather, they should be snugged only as close as the length of one stitch – which is what becomes your ‘new row’ or ‘Kitchener Row’. The exception if the few stitches at each end where you snug them up a little more to reduce the ‘dog ear’ corners.

So. I carry on from near to far TEEPEE to TEEPEE until there are only 4 TEEPEEs remaining. Two on the near side and two on the far side. Here’s the two on near side, and the last TEEPEE a skewered til now was on the far side.

You may have to click this larger to see – but I’ve marked the two TEEPEEs with red lines. What I’m going to do with my needle is go under the left bar of the left TEEPEE, then over top of (skipping) the right bar of the left TEEPEE, and then through both parts of the right TEEPEE as in a usual manner. This combines two stitches into one, just as we did in the beginning of the other side, and this will help reduce the dog ear corners.

The reason to skip the right bar of the first stitch – the right side of one TEEPEE, plus the left side of the next TEEPEE are part of the LOOP of a single stitch. As marked on the photo below:

The top of the loop is concealed by next row, which in this case is the white scrap yarn.

So if you put the right bar of the left stitch, and the left bar of the right stitch you would actually be running the yarn in AND out of the same loop. Meaning the stitch would be dropped and the sock would be toast.

Expressed another way, the right bar of the left stitch and the left bar of the right stitch forma VALLEY not a TEEPEE.  And that’s why we work the TEEPEES, not the VALLEYS.  (If you Kitchener the Valleys you will end up will entire row of open stitches!)

Sorry if I beat that to death!

Anyway, we’ve joined the two stitches to one on the near side, and now we do the same on the far side. But don’t pull this last stitch snug yet, or it will be hard to find those last two stitches.

And here we repeat the last step – pass the needle under the first par of the left TEEPEE, skip the right part of that TEEPEE, then do the final TEEPEE as usual.

Now with any luck your needle is now exiting through the SAME loop as you exited from the step you did just before. You’ve got the yarn going through the same loop twice, but it won’t drop the stitch because the first time through that loop tied into the near rows, and the second time through is tying the other side of that loop to the far rows.

In the above photo I’ve turned the work slightly to show you that last two stitches.

The light blue tail of yarn is where I exited the two last TEEPEE on the near side, and I left that slack rather than pull it snug. And the yellow part of the yarn is where I am in the process of exiting the last TEEPEE on the far side.

IF you don’t end this way – its very likely you missed a TEEPEE somewhere on the way!

Now, pull that all nice and snug up.

That’s the end of the Kitchener row. Now, see my needle – one yarn away from where my (blue) tail of yarn is.

I’m going to run that needle and tail to the inside of the sock for weaving in the end. And I will show you how I do that in Part III of this tutorial.

By left handed, I mean that I hold the darning needle with my left hand, and hold the sock with my right hand.

In this tutorial, my scrap yarn is white, and my sock yarn is multi-coloured. I usually knit 20 -25 rows of scrap yarn between socks. No doubt it can be done with less, but I’m paranoid about good stitches running on me!

I’m sure there are different ways to do this. This is what works for me.

Click any photo for larger.

The sock is NOT turned inside out, but in this view we are looking into the inside of the toe.

The red arrow is pointing to the very last stitch that was knit. You can see the tail of the sock yarn dropping off to the right of the photo, and you can see the leading edge of the scrap yarn going to the left.

Don’t pull that last stitch snug (yet). Leave it nice and big.

Now I thread the tail of my sock yarn into a darning needle, and put the needle through the center of the loop of that last stitch (marked in first picture with red arrow).

Once I feed the needle through that stitch I turn to the good side/outside of the sock.

See the needle coming through that final sock stitch – still marked with the red arrow. And I am going to pull the yarn through just enough to take up its slack – not so much that I snug in that big loop of a final sock stitch.

Now see green arrow to the right of the red arrow. That is pointing to the first stitch on the right hand side. When I look at these stitches I see TEE-PEES, not ‘V’s. TEE-PEES point UP. TEEPEES, TOES, TOP, UP….

Now I run my darning needle through that first TEEPEE. (The yarn in my needle is yellow but its the same tail that is blue coming through the stitch by the red arrow.)

Notice that I’m actually darning 1 and a half stitches on the first pass – since the stitch will pass over the right hand side of that blue stitch plus the yellow TEEPEE.

So that’s the first and most important stitch completed in the Kitchener. Still – don’t it snug just yet.

To review – I came through from the inside of the sock at the red arrow, and then I went through the yellow TEEPEE on the right; now I will do a stitch to the left side.

But wait. When I did the first stitch I actually did a stitch and a half – covering the right side of the blue stitch plus the yellow TEEPEE.  So I will also do a stitch and a half  when I go to the left.  So I’ll go BEHIND the left side strand of that blue stitch (red arrow)and then through the blue TEEPEE to its left – marked by the purple arrow.  This is MUCH easier done if you resisted pulling that red arrow stitch snug! Once snug its hard to find the left strand of it- for me anyway.

Now we’re off to a good start – getting started correctly is more than half the battle.

I’ll carry on with this tutorial next post. (And the most important word will STILL be TEEPEE!)

Timing on a sock knitter means that the yarn has to connect with the latch hook needles at ‘the correct’ time.

A CSM can knit forward if the timing is ‘off’ a lot. It can knit in reverse – as for heel or toe short rows – if the timing is off a little. And forget about ribbing if your timing isn’t pretty much bang on.

I blogged about general timing last year, and this post is to flesh my comments out a little more.

Many of us use new manufacture slotted yarn carriers for their ease of threading. The old yarn carriers had a small hole instead of the slot. The small hole was in the center line of the yarn carrier – as referenced by the red line above. With the slotted yarn carrier, the yarn doesn’t come out at the center line, but at the end of the slot (or, at the other end of the slot depending if you are cranking backwards or forwards).

There will be a sweet spot for timing with these slotted carriers so that the CSM knits properly in both directions.

To fiddle with the timing, you can move the yarn carrier a little up or a little down. You can also fiddle it off-center instead of perfectly vertical.

When the latch hook needle is at its highest point going through the cam, you want it so the hook just clears the yarn at that exact point.

If your yarn carrier is too low, and the hook is lower than the yarn, then it won’t catch the yarn and therefore will dump your knitting.

If your yarn carrier is too high, it may catch the yarn and knit but the knitting will be several needle positions later in the sequence and this will come back to haunt when ribbing or short rowing.

See in the above photo that the actual stitch that is forming is a few needles behind the center line, and specifically right below the outer edge of the yarn carrier.

Looking at the same position from a different angle – you can see that the hook of the needle in its highest position ‘just’ clears the yarn before the needle starts its downward motion.

With the slotted carriers a little extra fiddling may be required to find the best ‘average’ spot that covers off cranking forward and reverse. In the original yarn carriers this is not an issue as the yarn is in exactly the same spot regardless of what direction you are cranking.

In the above linked post I also note than on some versions of the Legare 400 there are adjustable screws on the gear ring that can also adjust timing. In the absence of those, I would adjust FIRST by moving the yarn carrier up or down. If that doesn’t give me sufficient ability to get the timing correct, my SECOND  thing I would do, for the slotted carriers. is to set the yarn carrier a little of center – ie so that it is not perfectly straight.

In a previous post I blogged about ribber timing.

Today I’ll look at the Ribber Cam Plate. That’s the part that contains parts B, C, and D in the photo above. It sits on the ribber dial – the round disk with the slots. The ribber needles sit in those slots. The Cam Plate has, as its name suggests, a cam. When the cam passes over the ribber needles, it guides the feet of the needles in and out (if switch B is set to ON) or it caused the ribber needles to to nothing (if switch B is set to OFF)

This is a ribber needle (photo from www.angoravalley.com). The arrow points out the ‘foot’ of the needle. It is this foot that will travel through the cam and be guided by it.

Here is the Ribber Cam Plate removed from the ribber and turned upside down so you can see the cams.

The arrow indicates the point at which the foot of the ribber needle enters the cam guide, and the red line shows the path the the foot will follow. The on/off switch (B in the top photo) moves the cam (on the left – just underneath the red line.)  In this picture the switch is set to OFF, so the path is a gentle round arc and as the needles pass through they will not be forced to move in or out, so will not knit. (To be more correct – it is the Ribber Cam Plate that moves over top of the ribber needles rather than the needles moving through the Cam Plate, but hopefully you get my drift.

In this photo, switch B is set to ON. See how the different position of the cam changes the route the needle foot will travel.  This route will cause the needle to move out and then back in. When the needle moves out the existing stitch will pass rearward over the latch. When the needle moves back in it will catch the feed yarn in the hook, and slip the old stitch over top of it – causing a purl stitch to happen.

When you adjust the Ribber Timing, what you are doing is setting when this rib stitch action will happen, in relation to the knit stitches that are being made on the vertical cylinder needles and in relation to the position of the yarn and yarn carrier.

And in this last photo you can see what it would look like if the switch was set half-off. The ON-channel isn’t completely closed off – so the foot of a ribber needle could get snagged at that point which would jam up your knitting – hence the importance to ensure the switch is fully ON or fully OFF.  The biggest risk would be if you were in this half position and went to change the switch from ON to OFF or vice versa, and the foot of a needle just happened to be right at that gap the arrow is highlighting.  It would be very easy to knock the needle into the wrong path.

Some one on one of the lists I read asked a ribber question this morning. She found that her ribber timing was in order and things were generally tickety boo, but sometimes after disengaging and reengaging the ribber a few stitches would drop.

I think this has to do with finding (and, argh, remembering) where the sweet spot is on a ribber.

The ribber can be engaged, in which case the little horizontal needles will make purl stitches, or, it can be disengaged, in which case the little horizontal needles do nothing . In the latter case you basically end up with a mocked rib as the yarn bypasses the ribbing needles.

The tricky-ish part – when you reengage – is to do so at a time when you don’t get a ribbing needle stuck in the middle of the switch when your changing it. If you try to jiggle backwards, stitches will drop. Even if you jiggle back a teeny weeny bit. If you try and force ahead forward you will jam the works because of one needle in the ‘off track’ and the rest in the ‘on track’.

The good news, ribber behaviour is highly predictable. So its a matter of knowing EXACTLY where the sweet spot for touching the engage/disengage switch is.

For me, I move the switch just as the latch – on the first cylinder needle that will knit – is in the almost horizontal position. If that latch has passed the horizontal point it WILL jam. If, no matter how careful I’ve been, that latch is further up than horizontal I abandon moving the switch and proceed to the next cylinder needle, trying to stop at that latch-horizontal position.

The switch should move freely – if there is resistance then there is probably a rib needle that is going to jam, so quit and move carefully to the next needle.

In my pictures I have knit one round with the ribber engaged, and am preparing to disengage the ribber.

When I reengage the ribber I will stop at the same spot and make sure the latch I’ve pointed to with the green arrow is in that position. (In this photo you can see a stitch being formed in the horizontal rib needle just before the highlighted needle. When I’m going to reengage that yarn would be underneath the horizontal needle, not inside its hook.)

It so happens that the sweet spot is the same on my different knitters. That doesn’t mean it will be the same for yours. Just keep a keen eye and determine where that spot is. All things being equal (ie if you don’t change the timing of your ribber) that spot will be constant.

What’s the deal with engaging and disengaging the ribber?

With a 1 x 1 ribbing, if you knit one row with the ribber engaged, then a few rows with it disengaged, and then reengage you will have an edge that won’t unravel….so no finishing required other than tucking in the leading tail.

I find that knitting 3 rows disengaged gives me a nice, solid, crisp top to the sock. One row or two will work but I personally have come to favour three.

Quite some time ago I blogged about using my left hand to add weight/tension while knitting.  At the time, I did that either by holding onto the sock just above the weights, or, while the heel fork was in place by putting my thumb in the crotch of the heel fork and applying pressure downward and inwards at about 45 degrees.

I usually leave the heel fork and weights in place while I knit the foot as well, then reposition them to knit the toe.

I gave up on that method ages ago but haven’t blogged on it. The problem with this method is that after  or 8 pairs of socks in a row it gets painful to have my thumb wedged in there. And volume knitting is all about eliminating things, like pain, that get in the way.

This simple variation was the solution. I put my left hand right on the weight that hangs on the heel fork. Between my thumb and forefinger. I still push downwards and inwards with the same amount of pressure, but with no cramps.

In this picture I’ve also got my remaining fingers on the main weights.  I do that if I have the ribbing lever attached to the inside of the cylinder. That lever makes enough of a difference that the heel fork doesn’t apply enough pressure to the stitches on top of it – and that includes the first few stitches from the short rows on the left side.  That is enough difference to miss a stitch, or – more often – split the ply on a stitch which will then be a weak point in the sock.

Putting a little pressure on the main weights while still tending to the heel weight seems to eliminate that issue.

One could probably add more weights to the main heel weight and the main weights. But I prefer to use some pressure from my left hand as an alternative.

Over time I’ve developed a sense of tactile response from the knitting – I know how it ‘feels’ in my left hand when things are going correctly. I can tell the feel of even subtle changes in tension. And I can tell the feel of a missed stitch and a split ply stitch – well, most of the time.

So, in a way, my right hand is responsible for output (cranking), and my left hand is responsible for input.

And the circle is complete ;o)