Tag: Knitting machine

Knitting Machine Scarf

Dyeing and knitting a stripy scarf.

Since the knitting machine entered my life, I’ve been looking for things to use it for. Recently I watched a tutorial about knitting a very pretty scarf on a knitting machine. It’s by Ingunn Hvatum and can be found here. The pattern itself is not very difficult, so it seemed like an interesting challenge. It did take a little bit of learning to achieve the eyelet edge smoothly, but that’s what practice is for!

You start with three stitches and every second row you create an eyelet and make the scarf that little bit wider. This is done until you are halfway through your yarn (in my case), or if you follow the instructions until you have engaged all needles. Once you are halfway, you knit 4 rows and then start decreasing one stitch while still creating an eyelet. Once you have three stitches left, you bind off.The last instruction is to crochet a chain and thread it through the eyelets.

For this scarf, I used one skein of self-dyed 100% merino wool (Quarter round by Chester Wool), which is around 400 meters. The skein was dyed a light grey while keeping a small section out of the dyebath. After the grey had set, the white area was overdyed with a mix of navy and green dye which resulted in a sort of petrol colour. Some orange transfer can also be found from the rainbow skein that was dyed at the same time. The aim for this one, though, was to do dark green, but I do like this end result. At some point, I accidentally cut through a thread so I ended up with two balls of yarn, one about 97 grams and one 10 grams. After knitting the scarf, any yarn that was left over was dyed with the petrol stock to make the crochet chain for the eyelets. All in all, a happy accident.

Once the scarf was knit, I had to block it because it was rolling over on both the eyelet and the neck edge sides. I thought it would be a right angled triangle, but while blocking that turned out to be wrong, so the point is a little more obtuse than I figured it would be. I still like it a lot. Once the crochet chain was attached, I still had a little bit of yarn left over, and I decided to add tassels to the points. Not sure how they will do if this thing ever sees the washing machine, but that’s a concern for some other time. For now, I’m just going to enjoy wearing this cute triangle scarf.

Leftovers Hat

With the last of the leftovers, made a jaunty hat.

After the success of the Nutmeg leftover sweater, I set out to finally get rid of the last bits of that yarn that had been hanging out in the stash for way too long. So on New Years Eve, I got the knitting machine ready, and cast on some stitches to see what the settings needed to be. Turns out that it was impossible to knit this yarn when casting on on every needle of the machine, so I had to skip every alternate needle. This did mean that while knitting, it was very wide but it would shrink in width and expand in length when off the machine. Since I was fairly uninterested in actually doing a super good job, I just cast on the maximum amount of stitches that would fit and figured it would probably be fine.

I was actually inspired to knit this thing by this video. While looking for a tutorial for a triangular scarf on the knitting machine, one of this channel popped up. After I watched it, it moved on to this new video and I decided to watch that too. I didn’t do any of the special things, but I did get the idea that rectangle hats were a thing. So after the cast on, I just knit until there was no more red yarn, then I switched to the white until that was all gone too. Next up, blue and because I didn’t think it was long enough yet, I also added two of the leftover tiny balls of grey. The rectangle of knitting was taken off the machine and I used knitting needles for the cast off. Then I sewed the sides and top together et voila, hat!

Since there is no further stitching in the hat, you can just fold over the bottom grey edge any way you want. I’ve been doing a fold in such a way that there is a three layer bottom and no purl is on show. Of course, you can also just fold it over and have purl visible. The points of the hat can be back to front or side to side or at any given jaunty angle. In the end, I used 45 g of grey, 15 g of red, 15 g of white and 37 g of blue. This means that I now only have 34 g of grey and 27 g of black leftover. We’re getting to the bottom of this particular yarn stash!

Rainbow Socks

Double experiment with dye and with a knitting machine.

I recently acquired a Knittax S knitting machine and to thank the original owner, I am making him socks.

The yarn I’m using is Alpaca 4ply Sock: 60% Superwash Merino 20% Superfine Alpaca 20% Nylon sock yarn, purchased from Chester Wool. This yarn is so soft, I love it. It was hand dyed by using it as the ‘cleaning tool’ when making up some pots of citric acid with Eurolana dyes. The spoons that were used to put the dye in the pots, was wiped on the wet yarn. The distribution of colours is basically ‘which bit is still too white’. Colours are black, brown, grey, orange, yellow, soft yellow, red, magenta, violet, blue, navy, turquoise and green. They came out quite muted, but I do like them. When knitted up, they are more obvious than on the ball.

As for the socks, the instruction booklet for the knitting machine came with patterns in the back so I chose to make the basic socks for men. The pattern is in the images (in Dutch, translation for the image below). For the first try, I cast on exactly as intended, but chose setting 5 on the machine. These socks turned out quite large so I frogged them and started again on a setting 4 on the machine. The length that came out on setting 4 matched the book, so that seemed to have gone well. I’m not sure if I’m seaming them right, they feel quite bulky and I’m not sure that’s nice on the foot. I’ve also discovered that knitting takes about as much time as the seaming. The knitting is very quick, this machine goes a hell of a lot faster than I ever can by hand.

Image translations (left). Hiel: heel; Ondervoet: bottom of the foot; Teen: toe; Bovenvoet: top of the foot; Beenlengte: length on the leg; Naad: seam; Verkorte toeren: short rows; Open steken: provisional stitches.

After finishing one sock, I brought it to the original owner to try on. He claimed that they were indeed the right size and that the ridges of seaming wouldn’t be annoying. As he’s been wearing machine knit socks like this for a long time, I’m inclined to believe him. So then I set out the knit the second sock with the same settings. It took me a few goes and a lot longer than it should have but in the end, sock number 2 was finished. Before seaming it together it does look really strange and not what you expect. Once the seaming is finished however, it does look like socks. I’m amazed.

Sock, pre-seam
Knitting machine in action
Knitting machine, lengthwise

I really enjoyed the process, can’t wait to make more things on this machine!