Adventures in Machine Knitting

Several years ago, I bought 2 knitting machines with the idea that I could use them to knit my stash quicker. Wrong. There is a huge learning curve with machines and I am not the most patient person anyone knows. Knitting machines are geared to the weight of yarn. And while there is some wiggle room, my machines are standard machines and they use fingering weight yarns best. A lot of my stash is worsted. I played with them some made a couple of hats. Anything more complicated was beyond me. l then tried to ignore them. Classes are not readily available and few people machine knit, but that is changing.

For several years I played around with the idea of putting a she shed or a used RV in the yard and moving all my various crafts out there.  Realization set in when the estimates came in. One of the bloggers I read, wrote about having a second craft room in her home.  I have empty bedrooms, It made no sense to put another room outside when I had empties inside. The Yarn Cozy was born. I took the smallest room and moved all yarn and related items into in.One of those was this knitting machine.  I swear, that machine mocked me each time I came into the room. It just sat there and smirked.

Another blogger wrote about her machines and I thought, it's time. I took a deep breath, and started again. The first attempts did not go well. I thought I would try a towel,but the cotton I used is not appropriate for this machine. Also, the samples indicated that I needed to change a couple of needles. I have extras, so no problem.

The next step was to knit a swatch. In machine knitting, swatches are not optional. There is no way to get an accurate measurement once you start knitting.  I decided to do this the right way. I swatched, got my numbers and pulled out Ann Budd's book, "The knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. Stay tuned for the result.

TTYL,

Melodye