MDK's ADN: Lil' Knitter Rides Again

After Dark Nightie on the hooks.At some point I really want to do a post on the benefits of the knitting machine, and why these handy little guys might appeal to some of you. (It's definitely an "extra," but avid knitters and designers could find it useful.) For now, here's a little intro and a summary of the things I use Marnie's for. If anyone has a similar model and gets more or unique use out of it, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

This particular model - Silver Reed's LK 150 - does both more and less than you might expect it to, and I have to be completely honest and tell you that I know absolutely nothing about any other model (in fact, on one occasion MH brought over a computerized model and I had no idea what to do with it! We'll figure it out some other time!) This machine is a fairly reasonably priced model ($350-$400 ballpark, but shop around, it can be gotten cheaper) that is very manual. It looks like a piano keyboard. You thread the yarn through it like a sewing machine, and then slide a cartridge along the hooks to create the loops. Each row requires that you manually push the cartridge across the hooks, and every manuever other than knitting is done manually. You move different stitches around with the aid of "eye" tools to create decreases, increases and cable crosses before you knit the row, then zip the cartridge across to seal the deal. The wrong side is always facing you, which can make it a bit confusing. Its pretty easy to do, but its also amazingly easy to f*ck up, so you can end up spending a lot of time ripping as well as knitting.

So many good things in this photo.
Do you see them all?I've been able to short cut a lot of the learning process since Marnie taught me (it's her machine). As a consequence I don't bother to muck around with casting on, casting off or short-rowing on this machine - it just doesn't do them in the way that I prefer, so all my cast on and cast-off edges are provisional and done by hand. Similarly, if there is a short-row section, I do that by hand as well (I can't remember if Marnie found a nice way to do that on the machine or not). This particular model will not do ribbed portions, but it will make slip-stitch patterns (again, you move the stitches individually) and it has - get this - a fair isle cartridge! Fair isle on this puppy is no picnic, as you move the stitches manually and have to manipulate all designs from the wrong side, but the results are pretty cool. It is still a bit faster than fair isle by hand, and I can definitely see swatching for color combos in fair isle or slip stitch on the machine, as you could determine which ones you liked relatively rapidly and then go on to hand knit your chosen colorway.

My special, patient helper.I'm not sure I'd often use the fair isle cartridge to make an entire fair isle sweater, because that is something I prefer to do by hand, but I have used Lil' Knitter quite a bit to bang out long stockinette pieces on small needles. For me, that is its best use. If you have fairly even tension, it is not noticeable when you change from hand knitting to machine, surprisingly enough. On my mother-in-law's sweater that I re-created from a favorite of hers last year, I did from the bustline up by hand (It was full of short-rows) and the transition was seamless. I don't think it was my own knitting expertise that made it so - I'm pretty sure that if you've been knitting at an even tension for a little while it won't be noticeable when you transfer from machine to hand.

Another look at the vine lace.Ann and Kay's After Dark Nightie (designed by Alison Green Will) is the perfect example of my favorite way to use machine knitting to get the knit I want fast. I love, love, love working with Euroflax Linen, and if I didn't have about a zillion things going around here and very little time, I would knit every stitch of this by hand. Since that is not the case, however, I'm speeding up the process by using Lil Knitter to zoom through the stockinette portions. In this case, I knit the 5 inches of vine lace (seen at the bottom) by hand over the weekend, and then got up at an insane hour in the morning a few days during the week to place the live stitches on the machine and bang out the stockinette portion.

Sheer and sexy....Once done, I put all of the live stitches on a smaller straight needle, and dunked the entire thing in some Eucalan to rest and re-shape. Machine knitting tends to leave stitches stretched out for a while after the piece is taken off. It usually requires a decent rest and a significant swish and block to get things to look as they will. In this case, the linen has uber-memory for stretch, so I'm guessing it will take even longer.

Anyhoo, I blocked the bottom portion and laid it out to dry yesterday morning. Today I'm going to finish the second bottom lace panel and the second round of stockinette for the front. That way, I will be able to finish the nightie in the car on our way out of town Friday morning. Moxie and I are taking a little trip to celebrate our anniversary, which was last month. . . more on that soon.