This is the KnitSmart carriage with the electronic row counter
that came with the Sweatermaker. The non-electronic carriage looks the same,
except it has no buttons. The handle sticks up much further than it shows here
in the picture. Instead of a wire guide, there is a smoke-colored, plastic needle
guide. The handle does not lock on top of the carriage, it just lifts up and
out.
The strand of yarn feeds through the gap in the middle of
the handle, through the pink nozzle and down through the slit in the needle
guide and can be easily replaced by another if you need to work on both sides
of a sweater at the same time.
The row counter works with a magnetic tripper that is attached
under the back rail at the center of the bed. Each time the carriage passes
it, the number goes down. This had me puzzled at first, I'm used to a row counter
that counts upward! Since there is a way to store a number in memory, it's pretty
practical when you're doing cables though. You set it for the number of rows
to knit before each crossing and when it hits 0, you just press memory again
and it's back to ten, or whatever you set it for...
The Knitsmart carriage will work on the Bond bed but the
Bond carriage will not work on the Knitsmart bed without some type of adjustment,
and I don't know what that would be.....let me know if you know of a way!
