Friday, December 28, 2012

Knitting machine

     I have had several people curious about my knitting machine/s. Yes that is plural I have 5 of them and they are all Brother brand. I have two that are punch card machines, two electronic machines-these four are all standard size machines. I also have one bulky punch card machine. The standard machines use fingering weight to sport weight yarn. The bulky machine likes 4ply worsted weight. The best yarn to use is yarn that is put up on cones that weigh around one pound. You can see an example of a cone of yarn on the machine below.
     I apologize for the horrible coloring of this picture, it is night time and I don't have the right lighting in the room for picture taking. The machine is not really yellow!  This machine is a Brother 930 standard electronic machine. I have it clamped to a countertop. You can also purchase tables that are made for your machine. You feed the yarn up through the antennae and through the carriage that you see sitting on the bed of 200 needles. There are more than one way to cast the yarn onto the needles you wish to use, I mostly do an e-wrap method. You then hang weights on the knitting and manually move the carriage back and forth and watch your knitting grow with each row-see second picture. And the third picture is a close up of the carriage. You can increase and decrease by moving stitches with a transfer tool also.
     I do have to mention that Brother no longer makes knitting machines but you can find them on ebay from time to time. There are also other brands of knitting machines out there, but I have no knowledge about them.


I have knit many things over my 26 years of machine knitting, sweaters, hats, mittens, baby bonnets, dishcloths, doll clothes, socks. It is a very satisfying way to get things knit fast!

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Socks for me!!

I am so happy I finally have knitted socks that fit me!!  And they only took about 35 minutes to knit the pair!!! But longer to sew them up than to knit them. OK to be fair I will tell you that I used my knitting machine :-) I have tried in years past to knit them and just didn't get the right gauge so that they fit nice. I used 2 different yarns together this time and finally got the gauge/fit that I needed and boy are my toes toasty now!!  I used  one strand Tamm varsity and one strand of a 2/24 for these heather blue pair. Yesterday I tried one strand of Phentex sport yarn and that also worked up the same. So far I have 5 pair done, wonder what color I should do next!!  I am thinking I should whip up some for donations.  I am also crocheting in the evening some baby booties which I will post about one of these days.



Monday, December 10, 2012

Winter wall hanging





I just finished my new winter wall hanging. After redecorating our living room and attached foyer 2 years ago I really needed a new wall hanging to go into the seasonal corner of the foyer. I loved the snowman one I made years ago( 20 years ago!) but it was just not the right colors anymore. So this one blends much better. It started out as a panel with 4 pic's and I choose just this one and added the borders and pinwheels to get it to the size I needed for the wall. The quilting was freehand using my Nolting Funquilter, glide thread and Hobbs 80/20 batting.  I am almost ready for Christmas except to get a couple presents bought yet. It snowed 5" yesterday and the trees are heavy white-looks like a postcard!