How I Spent My Sunday
Lazy Day Sunday .... piles of awesome yarn .... sore arm from fluctuating capricious weather patterns .... what's a knitter to do??? Pull out the knitting machine of course! I haven't used it in quite a few months - seems that spinning has taken over quite a bit of ME time! LOL! Also having 2 very young DSs who couldn't resist the intricate temptation had it in the cupboard for some time. Now that they're getting older it seems the fascination wears off faster and I can (eventually) knit with it unmolested!
The variegated yarns I bought last fall have been sitting in a see-through comforter bag and I've been seeing through it almost every day since! I really want to make up some tops for myself but the busy busy color blends say "Vanilla Sweater pattern please!" Since they are finer yarns I can't see my lazy self committing hours and hours (and hours and hours) to hand knit them sooooo out comes Anne Bud's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, pencil, paper, calculator etc etc etc.......
Ahhh - swatching was never so easy! Cast on and knit one tension after another, one yarn after another...
Within half an hour I had determined that the Bamboo yarn and an alpaca blend I had tried were too fine for this machine (I'll have to knit them on my Singer Bulky). That left the Amerah 100% silk. It knit up really nicely with a fairly firm fabric. I have 5 different colors, but I will only use 3 or 4. I intend to knit each piece in more than one color before I knit the next so I don't forget what I did. I mean, I DO make notes as I go along but once I start a sleeve, what I did with the back doesn't stay fresh in my mind, you know?
Here is the first back in progress. The first rule of knitting machines is don't believe what you see! It looks like the back of a sweater for an elephant but the stitches and rows have been carefully calculated from the swatch.
I am assuming, by now, that anyone with a knitting machine is wondering what in the world I'm knitting on. Well let's just say I had an idea and a very inventive oldest son! I got my first knitting machine through Zeller's Club Z, a Singer LK100. I loved it! It really broadened my understanding of what knitting really was and I used it to death! The only drawback is that it was great for worsted or bulky knits but anything finer there weren't enough needles in the bed to cast on, even though the carriage tension would accommodate it. Well eventually I acquired a second one. My DS took the short 10 needle end panel off both machines and then bolted them together. Now it's a Singer LK180. Totally kick butt for afghans, and garments in finer gauge yarns. I owned an ironing board - a REALLY good one (cost about $175 through Sears 20 years ago - no they don't sell them any more). He used a torch and cut the side edge off the top, welded bars to bolt to and screwed on a good quality melamine shelf board long enough for the knitting machine. The main bed is just clamped on, the idea being that I could clamp on any machine I like (ya, I have 3) but the LK180 has claimed permanent resident status because it can't be safely stored without serious support because it's so long now. This is not a real problem because it was my first love in machines and tends to be the first one I reach for because I understand it the best. I own a Singer 360 & ribber and a Singer 360 Bulky & ribber but they are such complicated contraptions I never really mastered them... Maybe I'm just lazy .... naaaah!
Anyways, back to the knitting ... here is the first back hot off the bed! (colors are total crap - thanks camera!)
For this project I really took Sandi Wiseheart's latest columns to heart and decided to shape these sweaters a bit, now that I have re-discovered my waist after it's (very very) long absence. As you can see I tend to leave tails a mile long when starting a new ball or beginning or ending a piece. It's always nice to have way more than you need for whatever need arises. Hopefully over the next month or so there will be more progress to show you as the pieces come off the machine.
The variegated yarns I bought last fall have been sitting in a see-through comforter bag and I've been seeing through it almost every day since! I really want to make up some tops for myself but the busy busy color blends say "Vanilla Sweater pattern please!" Since they are finer yarns I can't see my lazy self committing hours and hours (and hours and hours) to hand knit them sooooo out comes Anne Bud's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, pencil, paper, calculator etc etc etc.......
Ahhh - swatching was never so easy! Cast on and knit one tension after another, one yarn after another...
Within half an hour I had determined that the Bamboo yarn and an alpaca blend I had tried were too fine for this machine (I'll have to knit them on my Singer Bulky). That left the Amerah 100% silk. It knit up really nicely with a fairly firm fabric. I have 5 different colors, but I will only use 3 or 4. I intend to knit each piece in more than one color before I knit the next so I don't forget what I did. I mean, I DO make notes as I go along but once I start a sleeve, what I did with the back doesn't stay fresh in my mind, you know?
Here is the first back in progress. The first rule of knitting machines is don't believe what you see! It looks like the back of a sweater for an elephant but the stitches and rows have been carefully calculated from the swatch.
I am assuming, by now, that anyone with a knitting machine is wondering what in the world I'm knitting on. Well let's just say I had an idea and a very inventive oldest son! I got my first knitting machine through Zeller's Club Z, a Singer LK100. I loved it! It really broadened my understanding of what knitting really was and I used it to death! The only drawback is that it was great for worsted or bulky knits but anything finer there weren't enough needles in the bed to cast on, even though the carriage tension would accommodate it. Well eventually I acquired a second one. My DS took the short 10 needle end panel off both machines and then bolted them together. Now it's a Singer LK180. Totally kick butt for afghans, and garments in finer gauge yarns. I owned an ironing board - a REALLY good one (cost about $175 through Sears 20 years ago - no they don't sell them any more). He used a torch and cut the side edge off the top, welded bars to bolt to and screwed on a good quality melamine shelf board long enough for the knitting machine. The main bed is just clamped on, the idea being that I could clamp on any machine I like (ya, I have 3) but the LK180 has claimed permanent resident status because it can't be safely stored without serious support because it's so long now. This is not a real problem because it was my first love in machines and tends to be the first one I reach for because I understand it the best. I own a Singer 360 & ribber and a Singer 360 Bulky & ribber but they are such complicated contraptions I never really mastered them... Maybe I'm just lazy .... naaaah!
Anyways, back to the knitting ... here is the first back hot off the bed! (colors are total crap - thanks camera!)
For this project I really took Sandi Wiseheart's latest columns to heart and decided to shape these sweaters a bit, now that I have re-discovered my waist after it's (very very) long absence. As you can see I tend to leave tails a mile long when starting a new ball or beginning or ending a piece. It's always nice to have way more than you need for whatever need arises. Hopefully over the next month or so there will be more progress to show you as the pieces come off the machine.
A few years ago at a knitting machine seminar one of the booths had a Studio LK150 with extensions. You could have knit a bedspread for a king size bed with it.
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Well mine's not quite that wide but you CAN knit a pretty wide afghan with it! Now I always have enough stitches for a sweater!
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