Space age knitting machines

I visited Yeoman Yarns on Friday for the first of their two open days. They have recently moved into Leicester just outside the city centre so it is now walkable from the train station. The 'mill shop' is really a small warehouse with metal shelving piled high with boxes, not much to see but they have knitted samples of their yarns to look at/feel which is great and also some bargain end of line yarns. They sell coned yarn for machine knitting, and I picked up a cone of Fusion Panama (cotton acrylic blend) thinking of making a short sleeved summer tshirt if I can find a pattern.  It's good to know where they are in case I need anything else.

The reason they have moved into Leicester is because they've been bought by the owners of a design/knit studio across the road, which was also open to visitors for the occasion.  That was fascinating: they have about a half dozen industrial knitting  machines (Stoll) which are about as far advanced from my home knitting machine as the space shuttle is from a paper plane.  Apparently these machines start from $30,000. The studio specialises in small production runs and designer samples, taking the designers' concepts and translating them into software the machines can understand.  They had various gauge machines, one had four carriages which could knit together doing four rows at a time or each carriage could knit separately in a separate colour/stitch/technique.  The machines can not only do multiple colours (I think he said one could handle 32 colours?), they also do intarsia, plating, fair isle, textured patterns like cables, casting on/off and shaping all automatically.  They can even knit some garments all in one go: he showed me a cardigan with pockets and set in sleeves which had come off the machine ready to wear apart from sewing in some ends.  They had tons of samples on display, many of them high-performance fabrics that felt more like neoprene or canvas.  For example: high performance knitted trainer tops (sneakers), automotive seat covers, speaker grille covers, quilted high-tech fabrics, fabrics with three connected layers each in a different colour but patterned so that the different colours showed through in different places, chunky rustic knits that I would have sworn were handknit, all kinds of stuff. My guide showed me the design he was currently converting to software: a traditional fair isle cardi but the machine will knit on a moss stitch front band at a different tension at the same time as it is knitting the fair isle body and doing the shaping.  What I particularly coveted was the steaming table in the finishing room:  a padded table that emitted steam when you pressed a pedal, then pressing another pedal would suck the garment dry. That would make blocking easy!  A really interesting visit.

I've just come in from a couple of exhausting hours hacking the garden back.  We've had a lot of rain the last few weeks and the plants are going bonkers.  You blink and suddenly something has grown two or three feet and is blocking the light to other plants.  Unfortunately the bindweed and other invaders are also enjoying the season.  DH took a car load of jungle to the dump afterwards.  I've also sprayed the apple tree and roses for fungus (no, I'm not organic) - the roses are struggling a bit with all the wet and there was some white mildew starting on some stems.  The Chianti rose we planted in spring 2018 gave up completely in the rain and just flopped sprawling onto the lawn, I've propped it up with some supports but I think really it needs one of those circular rose basket supports you see in fancy gardens.  I've cut several stems off of it before they go over, and added some of the other roses to make an arrangement for the hallway.

I finished the second applique block for the 30s Sampler quilt. Just one more applique block to prep and sew and I'll be done all the blocks.

Meanwhile I've been following the assembly steps for joining all the different sized blocks into every-growing panels.  It's going together much better than I thought it would. There's a few floating or cut off points but generally things are fitting together fairly well.  DH doesn't like it, he thinks it's too busy.  I think the border is really going to frame it and tame it (once I find the right border fabric).

I went to my local lace group yesterday and worked on my Torchon beaded bracelet.  It's going fine, it's relatively simple once I remind myself each session how to do Torchon.  I've got some lace friends coming over today so I will be doing some more work on my Floral Bucks edging but I've also been winding bobbins for an upcoming weekend where I will be attempting a different floral bucks edging.  I'm popping the wound bobbins into the bobbin carrier that I made a while ago, that fits into its own little bag.

I've made it to the start of the little finger on my second red and white Sanquhar glove and I'm knitting a lace section now on the Misty Meadows Shawl.  I haven't touched the dollshouse roof this week because I was late in almost every night: Monday a person went under a train so all trains were delayed and I didn't get home from work until c 8:30pm, Tuesday was Japanese so home 9:30pm, Wednesday was Japanese but also a broken rail disrupted the train service and DH actually had to drive all the way to fetch me so not home until c 10:30pm, Thursday was machine knitting club (home 9:30pm again) so I spent most of Friday trying to catch up on housework and paperwork instead of crafting and the plumber came to fix the leak.   Japanese finishes at the end of the month so I will have more time then.

The leak is fixed (hurrah). He thought for a while he might have to replace the toilet because of the odd cistern which made it hard to find a flush unit to fit, but then he did find one and fitted it on Friday. So far (touch wood) the leak is stopped.  However it may take weeks or even months for the walls and ceiling to dry out.  I bought an inexpensive damp meter from Amazon which probably isn't entirely accurate but suffices for comparative readings.  It's been two weeks now since we stopped the leak and the worst affected areas have slowly decreased from c 19% damp to c 17% damp so we are heading in the right direction. Comparative tests on nearby external walls are only c 3% so we have a ways to go.  So the dining room is going to look like this for quite a while.