Garter Carriage Designing

Well, I’ve been enjoying my garter carriage on my Brother knitting machine. I’ve always wanted one to experiment with the stitches, I love seed and garter stitch on hand knits and wanted to incorporate them into machine knitting. Being a Singer person for more than 25 years it took a while for me to acquire a Brother which is the only machine that has a garter carriage.

The hem pictured above is pattern #547 which I’ve used a lot, it gives a slight ruffle effect and is repeated on the cuffs and ‘V’ necked collar. 

The other great thing about the Garter Carriage is that because I use it to knit some parts of my designs recently, it takes a bit of the load off my wrists! My De Quervain’s syndrome in both my wrists had eased greatly, especially my left wrist in which I had a cortisone shot, however they flared up this Winter knitting my husband an new pullover…aaarrrgh! But he does look good in it.  I can knit a little less on a garment and so my wrists get some rest and can live to knit more….

The only problem is that it is noisy and I’m in my studio all day with it going and in order to hear the tv or radio I have to wear headphones and earplugs…. it balances out actually as the ear plugs muffle the carriage and if I turn up the stereo volume I can hear dialogue clearly but not loud….whew…what I do to keep myself amused as I knit the boring bits!

Well, back to the studio to work on stock for the Spring shows.