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Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2016 6:36 pm
by icedragonj
My kind mother gave me her old knitting machine for my birthday :yahoo:

I am excited to start using it, but am not sure what to make at this stage. It uses punchcards to create 2 colour patterns, so I was wondering if anyone had some ideas for simple 2 colour repeating patterns. Will probably try to make a triforce :tri one for starters.

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2016 2:31 am
by icedragonj
I threw together a few ideas, and did a practice with the animal crossing one. Forgot that it comes out backwards, opps! The repeat section must be 12 stitches wide, and each row can only have 2 colours, though I can change colours between rows. Not sure which row of pokeballs I like better... :confused:
2016-12-05 21.13.04.jpg
pat1.png

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2016 11:28 am
by Firehawke
How neat!!! Enjoy! Can't wait to see what you design...those pics look great!

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2016 3:47 pm
by Pyper
That looks a lot of fun to play around with :) How does the back look? Does it have the same pattern in the opposite colour?

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2016 5:16 am
by icedragonj
Pyper wrote:How does the back look? Does it have the same pattern in the opposite colour?
Unfortunately no, that would be much more complicated to make a machine for. It can only do stocking stitch, so for blocks of colour the back will look like that, and then there is just loose threads jumping over sections where they are not used. Will try to take a picture later.

There is a ribber attachment that has another row of needles that point the other way. This allows you to do garter stitch and ribbing, or any combination of knit and pearl. I haven't set it up yet, and mum had a lot of problems with it when she used it. It is quite old and tends to drop stitches a lot.

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2016 5:02 am
by icedragonj
Sorry for the delay! This is what the back looks like of a small zelda sample square. It does kind of look like the front pattern in reverse, but all the threads are loose and it can easily snag if you don't cover it with fabric or another layer of knitting.
back.jpg
I got very inspired by the recent blog post about a totoro inspired latvian blanket, so I decided to make something similar on my machine :yahoo:
I had to change the pattern quite a bit, as my machine only does 12 stitch repeat. I had fun making some other ghibli characters. After on night of about 4 hours of knitting I have already done 5 lines of characters. I can't imagine doing something this big by hand! Had a frustrating moment on the totoro line where the wool got caught and snapped and I was left trying to pick up the stitches :banghead: As you knit you can only see the wrong side, so I hope the fix looks ok.
ghibli.png

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2017 11:24 am
by Firehawke
That pattern looks cute!

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 1:46 am
by icedragonj
In case anyone is interested here is a time-lapse video of me making it! Came out lovely. Still have a bit of sewing to finish it all off. Every time I move the carriage from one side to the other it knits a row, I pull the lever to select the stitches for the next row, and when I am poking around at it I am usually fixing mistakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jEew16P-gM&t=0s

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:33 am
by ezsebeth
This is so cool!

I can't wait to see the final result!

Re: Knitting Machine ideas

Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 11:08 am
by VanishingMer
This is great! It will save you lots of time