Knitting Machines

I've been using a couple of plastic circular knitting machines for several years now to make hats, headbands etc for sale.

Last September I was given an old metal flatbed machine (a SK-151 for those familiar with these beasts) and I have been having altogether too much fun with it ever since. It is completely manual - both pushing the carriage across the bed and positioning the needles to make various patterns - and it is a "bulky" 9mm gauge so it will knit worsted weight and thinner. Makes scarves, hats, sweaters, even socks (boot socks in thick yarn): cables, lace, tuck and slip stitches, fair isle, stripes, all hand-manipulated. Flat bed machines like this can't make purl stitches, only knit, so they can't do ribbing, or garter stitch (unless you turn the whole piece around every row, quite a performance!)

I then found a somewhat newer (but still old-ish) plastic flatbed machine (LK-150) at the thrift store for $25. These are still sold new for upwards of CAD$600, and even used ones go for hundreds, so that was a steal. It works the same way as the SK-151 but has a smaller gauge (needles a bit closer together) of 6.5 mm. It knits yarn from DK and thinner. The advantage is that being plastic it's relatively portable and easy to haul about. I brought it home on the bus in my little shopping cart.

Then a friend gave me a "standard gauge" (4.5 mm) punchcard machine, SK 327. So fancy! Knits finer yarns and has a mechanical punch card patterning system which lets you do lots of fancy stitches much more easily. This one makes excellent socks in regular sock yarn. Had some parts missing, and some bent needles.

Then (are we seeing a pattern here?) my DH found two machines at the thrift store, $25 each, so he bought both and brought the first one home on the bus. Metal machine, super heavy. What a hero! It was a duplicate of machine #3 but it had different parts missing and much better needles. Score! I was on tenterhooks about the machine still waiting at the store, so he got back on the bus into town and brought it home. It turned out to be a "ribber" - a whole extra needle bed that fits on the front of an existing flatbed machine and allows you to do ribbing (surprise!) and tubular knitting.

I've been working on learning the ribber for the past couple of weeks, and it's been a bit of a struggle but I am winning. I finally got a decent sock out of it today after 8-10 attempts, with ribbing and knit tubular instead of flat. Phew!

These machines are addictive. They all have different strengths and things they do best, so it's very tempting to get more than one. The one saving grace it that they fit very neatly under the bed if you need to put them away to make space :)

If you want to know more, the best place to look is the Machine Knitting forum on Ravelry at https://www.ravelry.com/groups/machine-knitting
(you have to be a Rav member, but it's free to join and they don't spam you or sell your email).

Piccies...

Awesome!
I have a flat knitting machine I have no idea how to use, but I've been tempted to try for sweater making with handspun yarn.  I can't knit any more due to arthritis.   It has a ribber thingy too.

I have an antique circular machine but it needs a new cylinder.  It only has the 120 and I want to knit socks that take something closer to 60 or 70 sts.  

It would be fun to get them out and see if I can get them working.  

r ranson wrote:Awesome!
I have a flat knitting machine I have no idea how to use, but I've been tempted to try for sweater making with handspun yarn.  I can't knit any more due to arthritis.   It has a ribber thingy too.

I have an antique circular machine but it needs a new cylinder.  It only has the 120 and I want to knit socks that take something closer to 60 or 70 sts.  

It would be fun to get them out and see if I can get them working.  

Yep, I have RSI and the beginnings of arthritis in my fingers, so while I can still handknit, I can’t do it for long stretches. I do most of my handknitting on the bus, waiting for the bus, or waiting for appointments so it naturally gets broken up into short chunks.

What model of flatbed do you have? If my experience is any guide, learning the main bed alone first, before adding the ribber, is a good idea. Being a handknitter does help, but there are a lot of new skills to learn.

I don’t have a CSM but they do look very cool. Apparently it can be hard to get the antique ones working properly, but they sure zoom through socks once they are fixed up.

Machine knitted items (mostly sold during holiday shopping season)...

My flatbed knitting machine is out of storage.  Someone came today and confirmed it is in fine working order minus a few things which shouldn't make much difference at this stage.

I have yarn on order because the yarn I wanted to use is too fat.

How do I make a boring, single colour, v-neck, pullover sweater?

(we didn't try the ribber yet to see if it works.)

Did you get any instruction books with your machine? They often have a pattern for a basic sweater, with lots of extra details as you go along. Also many, many books of sweater patterns were published back in the day, and used machines often come with some.

If you use Facebook, many of the MK facebook groups have patterns in their file section, or knitalongs with lots of details for beginners. Best group for newcomers or returners is:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/148091455684118

Ravelry has an excellent and very active machine knitting group. A question in the stickied Beginner Questions thread will get you good responses - I don't knit sweaters on my machines so can't give you a specific answer.
https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/machine-knitting/4095381/526-550#531

Instructions on how to make it work, but nothing about what to make.

There were other books, but they are on how to do fancy colour and texture work.

I'm finding it difficult to discover a very basic pullover pattern.  Not really a pattern, but a recipe.  

This site has an index to MK patterns, and there are a lot of sweater patterns listed here. Patterns are machine-gauge-specific, so the list has columns for the different gauges.
http://www.needlesofsteel.org.uk/pat-women.html

What machine do you have? And is the sponge bar in good shape?

Kevin Wilson wrote:

What machine do you have? And is the sponge bar in good shape?

silver SK-103
what's a sponge bar?  

Oh!  Arthritis friendly caston

PMany machines, but not all, have a strip of spongy foam (like weatherstripping) that holds the needles down. It deteriorates over the years into a sort of sticky mush, and no longer does the job. That means the needles can bounce up into the carriage as it moves across the bed, damaging needles and carriage alike.  Luckily the sponge bar is easily replaced.

OK, looks like SK 103 has a plastic bar, not a sponge, so you’re good.

The machine in that video is quite different from yours. Cast ons can be quite machine specific, and trying one that is never going to work on your machine can be very frustrating (ask me how I know 😀). I took a look at the manual for the Sk101, not being able to immediately find one for the 103, and the cast on in that manual doesn’t require hand manipulation of individual stitches anyway so it might be fine for you.

On a simple machine like a 103, working through the stuff in the manual won’t take long and will be quite eye-opening in the way of what can be done on the machine. Swatches and experiments are so quick to do compared to hand knitting, and you’ll discover the things the machine does well, and what it doesn’t do.

this machine uses a wire thingy to cast on.  It's very fast.

But I don't know if I would be happy with the result in a sweater.  

Yes, that cast on doesn’t give you a nice finished edge. The ones to look for on Youtube would be e-wrap, double e-wrap or crochet (also called latch tool) cast ons. Those require more hand manipulation but may be doable for you, worth a try. They should work on your machine.

How you use them is to do the cast on in your manual using waste yarn, knit a few rows so you have somewhere to hang weights, knit a ravel cord row, then cast on with your good yarn, right over the ravel cord that’s on the needles. When you’re done that section of knitting, you pull out the ravel cord and there’s your finished edge.

However, it will curl like mad, like stockinette always does. 3 ways around that are 1) do a hem instead, that’s in your manual, 2) re-form columns of knit stitches into purls in the first few inches of knitting, to make ribbing, or 3) use the wire cast on, pick up the stitches onto a circ, and hand knit the ribbing.

When you get your ribber up and running, you can use that to make ribbing, but there is hand manipulation required to go from ribbing to plain knitting which I find really awkward.

My yarn is back ordered and expected to arrive in a month.  Plus a couple of weeks to dye and dry the yarn.

That gives me 6 weeks to learn how to make a sweater.  

Plenty of time to learn, play and experiment then :)  

Honestly, jumping straight in to making a sweater would likely be an exercise in frustration. These machines are great but they do have a steep learning curve, even for people who already hand knit.

Tentitive learning plan:

A good cast on edge I'm happy with.

A good cast off edge I'm happy with.

Then learn the ribber.

Learn a good cast-on/off edge involving the ribber.

Then the increase/decrease.

Then gage swatches

Then make a mini-sweater to put it all together.

Does that look like a good plan?  

That looks like a good plan.

If it was me, I’d combine making gage swatches with casting on and off, but you may prefer to keep things separate.

Kevin Wilson wrote:That looks like a good plan.

If it was me, I’d combine making gage swatches with casting on and off, but you may prefer to keep things separate.

when I'm hand knitting, I want to check the gage of the ribbing and how it transitions to the sweater.  Usually there are a bunch of m1 in the transition to the sweater part.  Is it this way with machine knitting?

r ranson wrote:
when I'm hand knitting, I want to check the gage of the ribbing and how it transitions to the sweater.  Usually there are a bunch of m1 in the transition to the sweater part.  Is it this way with machine knitting?

I’m not sure, I find the transition from ribbing to plain such a pain with my wonky eyes and hands, that I don’t do it! I either use a hem, for plain knitting, or rib the whole thing.

Something fun.

My flatbed knitting machine is checked out by a friend and works.

I just signed up for a crafsty class.  I'm feeling quite nervous about this as I hear dodgy things about quitting craftsy (it's impossible without changing your CC number...?)  

The goal is to knit a sweater.

And then to knit a sweater like the Land Girls used to wear (all ribs)

I had no trouble quitting Craftsy. They are back to being independent now, so that may help.

Susan Guagliumi's videos on Craftsy are very good, definitely worth watching. She has a web site with some free stuff, and several very good books.

Blocking my swatch for my first sweater.

I got to learn lots of mistakes and how to fix them.

Fantastic!

I'm taking the craftsy classes and they are good.  BUT...

... the sweater patterns included are not my size.  

What I really want is a ... I don't even know what it's called.  Like a pattern blank?  A forumula?  

I can take all the variables and plug it in.

My bust size is X, recommended ease is X+something.  My desired length is Y for the body and Z for the sleeves.
My gauge swatch was Suchandsuch.

Some math later (or wouldn't it be nifty if there was a website I could plug the numbers in and the type of neckline and eh presto)

Out pops a sweater pattern.

Where can I find this?

I'm not sure there is one. I just did a search on ravelry dot com, for 'basic sweater sizing formula', and got 0 hits. I'll check with some other fiber friends and see if they have ideas. Are you looking for a particular style? Like one with a specific neckline, like a turtle or mock neck, v neck, crew, jewel, square, scoop, sweetheart, or boat? Long sleeve, no sleeve, puff, cap, lampchop, short, half, or 3/4? Waist, hip, or tunic length? There are a LOT of variables, so that may be why there's no easily found specific formula. That's not even including throwing in things like cables, coloration, zippers, buttons, etc...

I got some suggestions off reddit (great group of people in the machine knitting sub).  This one seems the closest for what my brain can do.

https://www.knittingfool.com/Pages/Sweaters.aspx

It needs to be converted into flat and all the math checked, but the ratio seems to be what I'm used to working with back when I could knit by hand.  

I'm going to see if I can get enough of my brain working to combine these numbers with the crafsty class on machine knitting a sweater.  

Would this help? https://www.knititnow.com/tools/

Questions

When knitting a big bit of fabric and the cast on comb hits the floor, do you just move it up or is the weight of the fabric and the side weights enough?

When using yarn from a cake made on a ball winder, do you use from the middle of the ball or the outside for nicer tension?

had two kitting machines one like above and a very rare antique sock one,  that was commercial. I no longer have and am looking for again, with a commercial sewing machine like use to have. The one was very fun to experiment with, so looking forward to finding a treasure and experiencing some fun with and learning new patterns. Beautiful projects,  you are very talented.

My knitting machine back and forth thingy has two places for yarn.  Does this mean it can use two yarns (one at a time?)

I want to knit with handdyed, but I don't want the colour pooling.  If I was knitting by hand, I would use two yarns and swap every other row.  But I cannot see how to do this for machine knitting (it would have to be every two rows)

Help.  Please help

So this raglan pattern has me doing short row shaping to shape the body above the armpit

Only the stitches keep falling off at the start of the row.  Even with moving the weights and holding the fabric against the machine every row.

There's got to be a trick to this.  What is it?

After binge re-watching craftsy classes, I noticed that they always wrap the stitch at the end of the short row. My sweater knitting recipe doesn't.

I assumed that because it's a raglan, they wanted a bit of a gap there like the last time I handknit a raglan - yarn over increases.

Now that I've had a night to think about it, I wonder... maybe because this sweater recipe comes from a class, the instructor assumed that everyone following it would have taken the class and known these basics (always wrap the stitch).

I'm hugely tempted to take the knitting off, somehow frog it back to where the shaping started, and knit again. I'm not sure I'm brave enough for that. Maybe it is easier just to frog the whole thing and start from cast on?

Finally I knit a sweater!