Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Mixing it up...

Machine knit, hand knit and crochet....


This is a sweater that I started last Saturday after the Machine Knitters Group meeting I went to. I belong to the LA/SF Machine Knitters, this is mainly ladies who have loved and continued the art of machine knitting. There are a few of us who are new to machine knitting but mostly more experienced machine knitters. I always like to see what others are doing and each time I come home with some idea for a new project.

I originally wanted to get into machine knitting a couple of years ago and by now the popularity of machine knitting is long gone so they don't make too many different brands anymore. I found an older machine on Ebay and am pretty happy with it, the Brother KH 260 "Bulky". I thought that I would knit parts of projects by hand and transfer it over to the machine for those boring long backs etc. then I would finish it by hand. Well there is a major learning curve so finally it worked exactly the way I imagined. A sweater finished in a few days.

I used Red Heart acrylic yarn. I usually don't like this yarn but I thought I would try this pattern just for practice. Now I kind of wish it was done with nicer wool. I guess I can make another. It will be ok for those early morning dog walking trips.

I knit it "sideways" on the machine, starting on the left sleeve and ending up on the right sleeve. Then I took it off the machine and hand knit ribbing around the edges. I don't have a ribber and the machine won't knit in the round anyway.

I'm quite happy with it and now I'm ready to use nicer yarn and make another maybe Noro Silk Garden would be nice.

5 comments:

Yarnartist said...

Ana, This is beautiful. Where is the crochet?

MonkeyGurrrrrl said...

Wow. It is amazing. I can't believe you can get a complete garment done so quickly. I've thought about machine knitting (since I'm so freakin SLOW), but I figured I'd get this hand-knitting down first...

Excellent job.

Anonymous said...

Very nice! Really pretty colors, too. I bought my machine for the same reason, many years ago, and keep meaning to set it up for the same purpose as you. I've got lots of thin-ish yarn, lots of sweater ideas, with lots of stockinette that would do very well on the machine - so, it's nice to see how great the results will be!

Ana Petrova said...

Ellene, I used a crochet bind off and did a "crab" stitch on the top of the turtle neck.

Ellen Bloom said...

Ana Doll!
I LOVE this sweater. Sometimes, Red Heart can look faboo...excellent blend of colors, btw!