Monday, March 14, 2011

The start of a beautiful friendship....

The last week has been a series of deadlines, so until today I've not had time to play with my new toy. Today, the lovely Jules came around and gave me an introductory lesson in machine knitting. I learned about casting on, tension... and then we had a bit of a play with the punch-cards for the patterned stitches.....
..which ended rather badly.
More research is necessary, into exactly what that little loose cog I found is for and why the machine goes CRUNCH when doing anything but stocking stitch... (I think there may be a bit of a cause-and-effect thing going on there).
I'm still a bit excited by the stocking stitch thing, though..... I went home and knitted a 1.5 metre cotton scarf. I'll see what it looks like when it's dyed.

How amazing... to make fabric.....There will be more of this.

15 comments:

A Peppermint Penguin said...

sorry to add to temptation, BUT.... if you use yarn suitable for dying and make up as machine knitted piece and then dye the fabric, and then unravel it to hand-knit it into something else you can get slow colour changes rather than the random blotches with yarn that is dyed as yarn.

You've got a cog loose!?!?

Cheers,
AJ

rett og vrang said...

You are going to love this, I think! I'm a knitter for YEARS! Synnøve from Norway

Kate said...

Oh my goodness I am excited for you! How fun!
I bought a red and white stripey machine knitted scarf off a lovely lady on the weekend who was raving about the process. X

sooz said...

Hail fellow MK traveller! Welcome to the exciting frustrating, amazing adventures of steel and yarn. Good luck with the cog locating business, sounds problematic?!

Tas said...

Way. Cool.

Probably a bit hard to use for knitting in the car though...

Tanya said...

oooh, that looks so very fun

Margaret said...

I hav a knitting machine sitting in my sewing room, but no space to actually set her up :( I had this dream of creating my own felted embelishments ... but other things got in the way!

Unknown said...

Wow it looks like great fun except for the loose cog that is .

Fer said...

Oh no, you didn't! Knitting machines seem to be coming back into vogue, I have a friend who uses hers to make wool fabric (you need to stabilise it a bit before cutting out your pattern). Fantastic idea though! Makes me wish my Mum didn't give hers away all those years ago..... :)

Nelly said...

Am jealous I have always wanted tp learn how to machine knit need a friend like yours methinks.

Jules said...

I'm so proud of you!! Well done, you're a great student ; ) looking forward to seeing where it takes you...

xx

Unknown said...

I'm sure that by the time I have mine all dusted off and set up again, I'll be able to come to you for lessons.

Olga said...

Congratulations. Knitting machine is a very cool thing.

Gay McDonell said...

ahhh memories!

MildlyCrafty said...

I've got the same machine (it's a 313 right?) and mine goes crunch on anything but stocking stitch too! Perhaps it's a "feature" of that model?