Internet Induced Hypochondria

Back in 2005, while on holiday in the UK, I woke up to find the world spinning. I was fine if I closed my eyes, but if I opened them things started revolving, I couldn’t keep my balance, and I felt nauseous. All I could do was lie in bed and occasionally crawl to the toilet. By the end of the day the spinning had eased, but I felt headachy, washed out and, strangely, very hungry.

In a weird co-incidence, back at home, on the other side of the globe, my mum was having the same problem. You see, vertigo seems to be a curse I inherited from my mum, and she from her mum. Nana had Meniere’s disease and the operation to fix it rendered her deaf in one ear. I’d have mild dizziness before 2005, but never this bad. I’ve only had it that bad a few times since, when I had a cold or sinus infection.

Yesterday I had a mild bout. I only got dizzy if I moved too quickly or tilted my head. But on top of a very sore back – which I couldn’t do my usual stretching exercises because they involve tilting and turning my head – it wasn’t a fun day. I could still sit at the computer, as I wasn’t so bad that the eye movement of reading brought on nausea. So I decided to look up vertigo and Meniere’s disease, so see if there were any prevention and treatment tips I hadn’t tried yet.

There must be a term for looking up a health problem on the internet then freaking out. I can tell I’m doing it, but am powerless to look away. It kinda goes like this:

Do I have Meniere’s? I’ll look it up. Well, I do have a lot of the symptoms. I’m a classic Stage One, with a bit of Stage Two. But as so often happens, some of the symptoms are common to a lot of diseases and conditions. Trouble is, it’s very hard to diagnose. You have to be in the middle of a bout, and be able to get to someone who can test you at a time when you really shouldn’t be driving. But Nana had it. Does that mean it’s more likely Meniere’s is the cause of my vertigo? Wait… it says here that it will lead to eventual deafness. And collapsing suddenly and without warning. Yikes. But it might not be Meniere’s. In a quarter of cases of vertigo a cause is never found. In a small percentage it’s a brain tumour… well, at least I know it isn’t that. It would have killed me by now. Oh, this is ridiculous. I really need to get away from this computer.

Later my back was doing something that started back when I had chronic fatigue: my spine itches. Not my skin, but somewhere deeper. It’s like the itch you get when a wound is healing. So I decided to look that one up, and I get Spondylitis. And I go through the whole mental process again. I picture myself telling my doctor ‘I was looking up my symptoms on the internet the other day and…’ and I return to sanity.

But it’s interesting how, with both of these conditions, they have the same diet advice: avoid caffeine, fat, smoking and alcohol. Sometimes I wonder if that would prevent everything.

If only.

One thing I do know: vertigo sucks.

DIY Hem Weights for the Bond USM

When knitting on the Bond USM, as with most models of knitting machines, you need to hang weights on the project to stop the stitches lifting up off the needles. The machine comes with plastic hems that you slot metal rods into. You do a row of elastic cord that attaches the hem, then a few rows of waste yarn, then start with project yarn.

I have a wide hem and a short one, the latter being a part of the extension kit that came with the machine. But what if you cast on lots of extra stitches at one side of a project? How do you weigh that bit down? Or, if you don’t have the extension kit, what do you do if the big hem is too awkward and heavy for your project?

Well, you can make your own hems. I discovered this while exploring machine knitting forums on Ravelry, and then found a tutorial on YouTube for making them. The video I watched used pvc pipe filled with lead for the weights. I’m using metal rods and long bolts.

To make one I cast on with the plastic hem as usual, then knit six rows in waste yarn. I used the 2.5 keyplate and enough stitches to match the width of the rods plus four more for a seam. I knit ten rows in a robust yarn – I’m using basic acrylic 8ply/dk.

Then picked up the stitches of the first row and popped them on the needles, starting from the right, to make the pocket for the weights.

Another ten rows then switched to the largest gauge plate – 4 – and knit two rows. You might want to use a different coloured yarn for this to help you find these rows later.

Knit another ten rows then cast off.

One off the machine it looked like this:

I popped the rods in the pocket and sewed up the sides. This is the finished hem, ready to go:

And since I wanted to make another, smaller hem I immediately put it to use. The trick is to fold it along the rows of longer stitches, stocking stitch sides together, so the larger stitches pop up. They can them be easily hooked on the needles.

None of this messing about with elastic. And then I used another tip I picked up recently on Ravelry: ravel cord. It’s a row of smooth crochet cotton that you just pull out when you’re ready to remove the hem. Brilliant!

I knit a few rows of waste yarn after it, but only because using a different colour it made it easier to hook up the stitches for the pocket in the second hem I was making.

What I love about this is I can custom make hems for any projects that require them, so long as I can find a weight of the right length. I can probably get longer ones by simply inserting a row of long bolts.

Between these hems and the ravel cord – and screwing the machine onto a piece of wood – knitting on the Bond is so much easier. What did we do before Ravelry existed?

A Better Bond

The other neglected project, Summer Solstice, didn’t sit unloved all because of the Passap either. There were issues with the pattern to be sorted out, but also issues with the machine.

Compared to the Passap, the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine is limited, rickety and suddenly I’m very conscious that it’s made of plastic. But it is a brilliant entry-level knitting machine and if I hadn’t learned on it I’d have had a much more frustrating time getting used to the Passap. One of the big selling points for me was how light it was. Unfortunately, I’ve just sacrificed that in order to get past some of the Bond’s problems.

The main one was getting the machine to stay put. If you knit a garment sized piece the weight of it will pull the machine over the edge of the table. You’re supposed to clamp the machine on but I could never find a table with an edge deep enough for the clamps, and when I put the machine onto a sheet of wood to get over that problem I found the clamps still didn’t work. They don’t go in straight because the support rod inside is in the way. If you to slide them under the rod they twist as you tightened them, pulling the front of the machine down.

I abandoned the clamps years ago and have been keeping the machine in place by using the non-slip mat and putting soft weights (the kind you strap around your wrists) on the ends. But if I was knitting something wide I’d have to pick up and put down the weights as I slid the carriage across. You already need two hands to slide the carriage and hold the yarn. The bed of needles is made up of little segments, and the carriage can catch on the joins unless it’s held ‘just so’. With the weights to worry about as well, it was all getting too tiresome.

I decided I’d had enough the other day. The only solution I could see was to attach the machine to a length of wood, then clamp the wood to the table. I explained the problem to Paul and we discussed various fixes. Whatever we did shouldn’t alter the machine any more than necessary, in case I decided to sell it one day.

After a trip to Bunnings and some digging through leftover materials at home, we had ‘fixed’ the machine. The only alteration to the machine was an extra four holes drilled in the base so we could bolt on two aluminium ‘L’ shaped strips, which were then screwed onto a scrap of particle board (from the kitchen renovation).


Right end from the front


Left end from the back

Fortunately, the machine has an extension kit added so it’s almost the same width as the table and I can clamp the mdf at each side. If your machine was shorter than your table you could make the board a little wider at the ends and clamp it from the front. The only down side to ‘fixing’ the machine in this way is it now weighs a LOT more and can’t be disassembled easily. Storing it is going to be interesting, and it certainly isn’t portable any more.

I’ve also replaced the sponge strip under the green rail that holds the needles down. I was surprised to find the old one had deteriorated so much, when I hadn’t used the machine all that much. There happened to be some similar foam in one of my boxes of saved packaging, but I’m already finding chunks of that are coming out. I’ve heard you can replace it with a strip of suitably thick and fuzzy yarn instead, so I’ll try that next.

You can order replacement foam strips from the Bond website, but I can’t see the point when it clearly doesn’t last. I have ordered some extra accessories from the site, but have had some problems there. I ordered them back in January, but was unlucky to have done it just when they were switching from one online ordering system to another, and my order went AWOL. In the meantime, while looking for short term alternatives, I found some really good tips that meant I didn’t need some of the accessories so it was a good thing I got to do a new order. I’ll cover those in another post.