New Textiles 2012

Knitting with knitting machine! I was excited to start this assignment, especially after seeing a sample of a 3d knitted fabric. The first part of the assignment was to make a swatch following the pattern below:

Cast on 20 needles. Knit 10 rows. Carriage should be on right side. Make sure carriage is in the proper mode (Russel levers should be in position I). Bring needle closest to carriage into hold position. Knit one row (carriage should be on left side). Bring needle closest to carriage into hold position. Knit one row (carriage should be on right side). Continue bringing one needle into hold position on the carriage side until you have 2 needles in knit position in the center of your pattern. Carriage should be on right side.

Begin taking needles out of hold position. Push the needle closest to the knitting on the opposite side of the carriage (the left side) into B (knit) position. Knit one row (carriage should be on right side). Push the needle closest to the knitting on the opposite side of the carriage (the right side) into B (knit) position. Knit one row (carriage should be on left side). Continue bringing one needle out of hold position opposite the carriage side until all needles are back in knit position. Knit 10 rows. Cast off.

After completing the first pattern, I continued on with the same pattern but added additional knit rows in between every hold position. It created a taller bump. Taking this test to the next step is the below attempt of creating a knitted landscape.

After coming back from a week long spring break research trip (for another class) to Iceland, I was inspired by the vast moon-like moss covered lava rock landscape of Iceland. For the second portion of the assignment, I wanted to create a knitted landscape (a small swatch of 6×6 for now) of small bumps in different shades of greens and yellows (imagine a mossy field in spring with small yellow flowers blooming – if there are flowers at all!)

I tested knitting with different yarn – brown cotton yarn, canary yellow linen yarn (too thin to knit with, and it broke off easily), moss green wool yarn (too thick for the knitting machine), and pine green thinner gauge wool yarn. The challenge was to use all of these different material/gauge yarn on a single machine but keeping the same knit gauge to create different densities of bumps.

A mess! After struggling for few hours with the machine, I was able to knit few bumps with only one type of yarn. Problems were: yarn breaking off, yarn getting caught in the machine, knits slipping off the needles, loosing stitches, to name a few. More tests to follow. Below shows a successful 3d knit piece. (I used a larger gauge machine)

And this lovely image shows felted (with hot water – washing machine) knit piece.