New acquisition

This is my new toy. Well, new to me, anyway. I have been thinking for some time of buying a knitting machine. I was looking at the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine. It's a basic machine, hand operated, no electricity. Elann.com are selling this for about $150 Cdn. I was on the verge of ordering one when I considered checking out the classifieds on a local news website. Bingo! A Bond knitting machine for $75.

I took a long time to go to sleep last night, as my brain went over the pros and cons. This morning I called the number in the ad and it turned out that the seller lived just a few minutes down the road from my house. It was meant to be! I went to see it, it was in great condition, all the parts were still in the box, so I bought it!

Today I have been reacquainting myself with how it works. I say reacquainting because I actually owned one of these about 20 years ago! It's pretty simple to get started. I used some spare yarn to knit a couple of practice pieces. I have come to the conclusion that where there's miles of stockinette to be knitted, this machine will be very useful. However, ribbing will still be done by hand, as will garter stitch or any fancy stitch patterns.

My plan is to see if I can zip through a Harry Potter scarf in green and grey in a couple of hours. I'll have to finish the blue and grey one by hand as the gauge will be slightly different. I've knitted two swatches with different plates in the machine and have left them to relax overnight so I can get an accurate measurement - while knitting, a weighted hem hangs off the bottom of the knitting and it stretches it out like crazy.

So that was my fun today - and to give you an idea of what my kids do when I'm not looking, here are a couple of photos.....




Looking up from the bottom of the stairs ----------------->









<------------------------ I guess it's good for the spine!