Learning the domestic knitting machine

I took an induction on knitting machines last year, but had few hand knitting projects going on so I didn't get that into it. Actually, that was a little lie there, the real reason why I didn't get into it was because I found it so damn hard! As quite skilled hand knitter it was very frustrating to try to work out the machine as the result of the samples weren't tidy or beautiful. It is more difficult to control the piece of knitting when you are working on a machine, than if you have them on your hands. Imagine you have 70 stitches on the needles of your hand knitting, when using a machine, these 70 stitches are on all individual needles and when the knit feeder goes trough them, they all push forward and open up to take on the new loops. In this process if the yarn is wrong size, or if any of the setting of the machine has set wrong, it drops out the stitches, and that makes the machine user in less of control.

In machine knitting it is important that everything is set up right. The yarn size, threading has to be set right, casting on has to be done in the right way, the buttons has to be in the right position and the speed and the pressure has to be controlled when pushing the feeder trough the bed of the needles. It is definitely wrong to say that knitting with domestic machine would be cheating, as there is as much to learn as in hand knitting. After learning the methods and developing a relationship (and some patience) it is very rewarding and saves you time.

I have been using domestic machine "Zippy Plus" (a japanese beauty) at the university. I was stuck with my work for a while, but then decided that now is the perfect time to learn what there is to learn about the knitting machine. And that did get me back into work and I am very enthusiastic again. I feel so much happier that I am accomplishing a new area in knitting. The technician (Sue) at the Knitting room has been very helpful-what a cool job she has "Knitting technician"! It is good that she is helping me and telling me what there is to learn before I will buy my own machine.

In the single bed domestic knitting machine I have been learning the following stitches and functions: Fair isle (the colorful patterns), Tuck stitch (the blue and the ochre color samples) and lace. I am very interested to learn cable as well, but I will have to wait until next week as I am going to London tomorrow!