slisen.blogspot dot comI have a wonderful update to this post. A friend on Ravelry sent her husband on a mission to find a 'better' answer to holding stitches on the DIY Decker tool than the report cover sliders and binder clip. He came home with a pack of hair bands and they do indeed work better. They cling to the tool better, hold the stitches in place while turning, less cumbersome and no binder clip to get in the way. It was a great discovery.
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I’ve made a lot of socks in my knitting career and most assuredly will make more. I make my socks on a Brother KH965i flatbed standard gauge machine with ribber, most of them knit in the round from cuff down. This means making the ribbed cuff and transferring a portion of the ribbing to the other bed to convert knitting to circular for the remainder of the sock. I so dislike seams in my socks and will knit in the round whenever I can.
Until just a few weeks ago, I did the usual thing with scrapping off the ribbing sections that needed to be transferred and rehung onto the main bed. I like the seam of my ribbing to go up the back of the sock so after moving all the stitches to the ribber bed, I transfer the outside quarter number of ribbing sts on each side to the main bed. Then a friend (Cacher12) from Ravelry.com clued me in on Decker combs, which were manufactured only for 5mm Passap machines. She explained to me what they were and how to use them and even made a great YouTube video to actually show how to use them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4009HWBjY4
So I was on the hunt to find something that would replicate the Passap Decker combs for my Japanese machine. Voila!
I ordered a 68 prong ‘garter bar’ from Mr. Sunny Choi from e-bay and cut off a length of 22 prongs for transferring my sock ribbing. And I still have a length of 46 prongs to use for other applications. The ‘real’ Passap Decker combs are 24 prongs and come with a metal slider to cover the ends of the prongs to keep the stitches from dropping off while transferring. I found that the plastic slider bars from report covers will work but they don’t stay on real well without some help. So along comes a small binder clip. The ‘handles’ of the clip kind of get in the way sometimes when turning and transferring but is easy to deal with now that I've gotten the hang of it.
The setup works wonderfully! No more scrapping off and rehanging sock ribbing for this lady. I am so happy with it, could be my most valuable machine accessory right now!
The 20 prong short garter bar from KrisKrafter.com works just as magnificently as a Decker comb on my 6.5mm midgauge machine.
What works even better is placing stitches to be transferred on a circular knitting needle, I do it all time for my machine knit socks. Works great
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