KM-FO!
That is, for anyone not up on their "l33tspeak" for knitting: a
Knitting Machine -- Finished Object!
It's posted
in my drafty gallery.
Yes, I have had that knitting machine for just about a year. Yes,
this is the first completed project from that knitting machine -- since
swatches don't count as completed projects :^) . The two
major challenges have been:
- finding chunks of time to sit in front of the machine (since
machine knitting is not something you can just do for 5 minutes, set
down, and pick up again a week later, the way you can with hand
knitting); and
- finding yarns that are really fine enough to work with the
standard gauge machine (in this instance, a Brother KH930).
For this sweater, I eventually wound up using 2 different yarns at once
-- each one is really thread-like. You can see them in this
detailed photo:
You can also see the effect I got from knitting the two together -- a
bit more stripey than variegated, but still interesting. You can
also see that, even though I was working with 2 strands together, the
stitches are still NOT BIG AT ALL. This machine makes a very fine
fabric.
The edging, of which you can see some detail above, is a crochet trim I
added after assembling the sweater.
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Assembly
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Inspection
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Yes, well, about the cat... See, I know that some cats are attracted to
knitting. Guiness largely ignores mine, for which I'm thankful
(though she has certainly been known to hunt-and-capture dangling ends
when near-completed items are tried on...). But, the blocking
sweater was *wet*! And, she wasn't anywhere near that room!
And I wanted more air circulation to speed the drying! So I left
the door open and wandered off to do something else. I think some
little kitty alarm must have gone off in the house, somewhere, because
as soon as I came back: wham, plonk in the middle of this drying
sweater, one very pleased-with-herself cat!
A bit more about the sweater/project history... A long time ago, with
a plastic bed (toy) knitting machine and a very different yarn (Dale
"Svale"), I made up the pieces for this jacket. And
then discovered that plastic (toy) knitting machines are very finicky
about producing anything like even gauge throughout the course of a
project. Different sweater pieces were wildly different
proportions than the ones they were meant to line up with.
It was, in fact, that experience, that finally drove me to commit to buying
a metal-bed knitting machine.
So, there is the sense of completing the circle with this project
-- I had to change the yarn and the machine, but I did manage to
complete it, by gar!
I decided I had so much fun with that -- I made another one, this
weekend!
