A Garter Carriage Can “Walk” With Your Knitting Machine

Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 8:43 am

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by Prairie Woman

Beautiful designs can be created when you combine standard Garter Carriage knitting with quite simple hand tooling techniques. The garter carriage is used to form purl stitches on single-bed, standard gauge knitting machines. It has a separate, opposing needle, which essentially places the stitch into a purl position before knitting it and returning it to its own needle. It has its own power supply and moves automatically, at a much slower pace than you can move the knit carriage. A Garter carriage can “walk” over your needles at a steady pace and knit for you. How wonderful is that. The garter carriage can also be used to cast on and off automatically. The garter carriage can produce a purl stitch at any position in your project.

There have been several models of G Carriage manufactured over the years for several different knitting machine models. Each machine had modifications, which made differences in knitting ease or difficulty depending on the model. The question often comes up as to which model goes on your specific knitting machine. I will try to answer that. Any model G carriage can work on any standard gauge machine. If you are not into computers and prefer your punch card machine, one could have changes made to allow your garter carriage to work on your newer machine.

Any row means it can be used to produce ribbings, garter stitch, seed stitch, moss stitch, basket weave stitch, and other fabrics that depend on a combination of knit and purl stitches. However, the garter carriage can only be used with a single color of yarn at a time, meaning it can’t produce Bauhaus-style knitting that combines both Fair Isle with purl stitches in the same row. Some repair centers now offer a conversion attachment that allows the garter carriage to knit with two different colors in a row, but I haven’t used or seen this in operation.

Make sure you change the sponge bar (needle retainer bar) if it is over 1 year old. Failure to do this may cause damage to your G-carriage and your knitting machine. It is good to have two of these bars and alternate the bars after each garment. Using the G carriage on the slow setting is better for the G carriage. Use lubricant sparingly and use weights across the entire width of your knitting when knitting with heavier yarn.

Once you have the garter carriage setup and a pattern programmed in the Garter Carriage work happily on its own with little supervision. Think, instead, about interacting with it more often. With each attachment you acquire for your knitting machine the more you enhance your abilities and skill level. The possibilities are endless with a garter carriage addition.

About the author:
Just an average person trying to live a stress-free lifestyle. To learn more about knitting machines, visit Knitting Machine Portal.