Brother 940

Fairisle using the Brother 940 Electronic Knitting Machine

Some time ago, I knitted a wonderful fairisle jacket I found in Machine Knitting News ie Jan issue 2000 - (designed by Gill Harford) – and this time I used my Brother 940 – as the jacket was fairisle but using 7 colours I just manually changed the colour each time – the jacket was knitted in Shetland and I am lucky enough to have a good stock of this yarn ie its one of my favourite yarns mainly because of the colour ranges – however the stuff I have is around 20 years old at least so it’s the old fashioned colour ranges of the old one pound (in weight) cones.

Colour Choices

I tried to get the colours as near possible and it turned out fine. Shetland wool needs to be knitted on a loose tension to allow it to fluff up when washed. It was good to get the Brother working again,

I have been neglecting it lately – its such a smooth operator but like all machines benefits from being used, not just stuck in a corner like mine has been for a couple of years now. I gave it a thorough clean and oil and to start with it was a bit stiff, but with use it got easier.

Patterns and Designaknit

I actually photocopied the pattern this time into the computer, (great things these modern printers – ie you can copy, scan and print) cleaned it up and opened the Jpeg in Designaknit, converted it to a stitch pattern – this saved me a bit of time. I did not colour it up, as I only wanted to download the pattern into the Brother 940. – wonderful machine this one as the one cable does the lot and you can actually design and knit – I once designed a waistcoat, downloaded it and with the computer on speech mode, I sat and knitted it following the spoken instructions from the computer, (great for a small item like a waistcoat but I suppose it could get a bit tedious doing a full size garment). Funny to think that there is no way I would have knitted this design in my younger days, way too much hassle – but now I actually look for challenging projects cause I have all the time in the world to do them and I enjoy a challenge. The whole project took me 5 days working from around 2 – 7 pm each day.

Well the jacket was finished and I was well pleased, it has a very soft feel - I am getting so much better at this finishing stuff, and my Hague linker has been such a boon, personally I think the original linker, sold to me new, was a faulty machine, as it never stitched properly and I could seriously kick myself thinking this was the norm.