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Friday 1 April 2016

Swag Blanket Mk2

I've been pleased with my large blankets, useful as outer garments and for many household and travelling purposes. However, although simple, the knitting process was not quite as simple as I would like. Knitting neat edges was not an automatic process. To overcome this I modified Singer/Studio/Knitmaster Card 7 so that I could position two columns of knit stitches on each edge. Of course this meant that two columns in every 24 do not tuck, adding an interesting textural stripe to the fabric. The occasional seersucker type stripe effect is best seen in this project knitted by Marlene.



The seersucker effect comes about because the dominant tuck stitch makes the piece shorter and wider than a plain stocking stitch piece with the same number of stitches and rows. The stitches in the columns where all stitches are knitted are longer than the tuck patterned stitches so they pucker.

This is a modified Singer/Studio/Knitmaster Card 7




The middle two columns are punched out so that the corresponding needles will knit every row. To get a neat selvedge, position the edge where there are columns of knit stitches.



Here is the latest of my enormous, but lightweight blankets, pegged out on the rotary clothes line to show the area and the textured stripes.


This is a simple knitting process. Marlene's project was her first ever on a standard gauge punchcard machine. Some lovely yarn and a simple project made for a happy first experience.
I like the texture so much I will make another modified Card 7 with punched out columns on the edges as well as the center of the card.