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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Finished Sweater for Best Friend's Birthday

I finished the sweater that I was converting from a hand knit pattern to my Bond machine. Overall it went very smoothly. I made a size medium according to the pattern. It fits me so I am sure it will fit her. We are the same size and only 5 days apart. We both turned 40 this month. I am a couple days past due but since she was out of town for her birthday I think giving it to her a couple of days late wont matter too much to her. Although I prefer to knit by hand as I have previously noted I cant help to get excited about how quick this was to make. It took me less than a week and technically I could have finished it sooner but I didn't work on it for a couple of days because I got distracted with other things. I did the collar, cuffs and bands all by hand and really I do not think it took any more time than if I had done them on the machine because it is very time consuming when latching up ribbing on the machine. Anyway, here it is.

This pattern is very plain and simple which is what made it extremely fast to make on the machine. I think that it would be very easy to add some design elements to it such as some cables or even a fairisle design. If I were to add cables however I would need to add stitches to the pattern in order to make up for the extra pull they would create.

I have so many other projects going on right now, that I have decided that I need to get some of them caught up before I can go yarn shopping again. The only problem with that is that I want to start a project to work on for charity. I am thinking of starting a wool baby blanket to send to the Afghans for Afghans project. It will be crocheted because I am a faster crocheter than I am a knitter.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Decreasing Fully Fashioned on the Knitting Machine

Here is a another tip for converting hand knitted patterns to your machine. Anytime a hand knit patterns reads like this " K2, K2 together. Knit to last 4 stitches and Sl1 K1, Psso. K2" you are decreasing fully fashioned to shape the garment. This creates slanted stitches and keeps he edge of your garment nicely lined. On the machine what that means is that you will decrease on each end and in order to get it to look right you will place the third stitch from the end of each side on to the adjacent needle.
Then you will need to move the 2 stitches over one to close up the gap.
Here is how the finished piece looks with fully fashioned decreases.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Converting a hand knit pattern to my machine

I have had my Bond machine for over a year now but have not been using it much. My wonderful Fiance bought it for me last Christmas. I had one several years ago and made everyone I knew stuff for Christmas and birthdays. They got a little tired of hand made stuff I think but I loved to give them to them anyway. They always oohed and awhed over whatever I made.

Here is a sweater I still have from my first machine. I actually wore this a lot but it is slightly out of style now and not quite as flattering to my figure as it used to be.Maybe it will come back in style and I will lose a few pounds. If not I can always give it to my daughter.

Then I broke my machine, so I gave away all of my accessories to a co-worker who also had a Bond machine. I wish I had kept them because now I have to collect them all over again. It is amazing how much all that junk adds up. I had all kinds of tools, an extension kit and a ton of pattern books. Now all I have is the basic machine with just enough of the stuff it came with to do basics.

So I hope my friends and family are ready for more because I have decided to start getting into the machine knitting again. Personally I prefer to hand knit but since the holidays are quickly approaching and I am short on cash but have a huge yarn stash--------guess what?????

For this project I am converting a simple hand knitted cardigan using bulky weight yarn to the machine. So far It is going pretty well. I am planning to give it to my best friend who is 5 whole days younger than me for her birthday which is this Friday so I better get going. I have completed the back the two fronts and have the first sleeve on the machine. I am hand knitting the ribbed bands. Here is what It looks like so far.

This shows how I have inserted my needle to begin the ribbing by hand on the right front. I have already done the back and left front. I prefer to knit the ribbings by hand then on the machine. I guess I think it looks nicer. Here is the sleeve on the machine

The key to converting a simple pattern like this one is basically making sure that your gauge matches the hand knitting instructions. Obviously that means making a swatch first. Once you have that done the rest is pretty simple. You can pretty much follow the hand knit pattern row by row and when you get to the parts that require shaping you should refer to your machine's instruction manual to see how increasing, decreasing and binding off are done. Remember though that in hand knitting you can measure your work as you go but on the machine you can't so it is very important to know how many rows are to the inch from you swatch then keep track of how many rows you have to know how many inches your work is. If you try to measure it from the machine you will be a little freaked out because obviousle the piece is stretched out quite a bit. Once you take it off the machine it will look more like it is supposed to. Then of course depending on the fiber you are using you can block your pieces to the correct measurements.

Well I will post what it looks like when it is done and let you know about any problems I encounter.

New Blog

Well I have decided to start this blog to document my knit and crochet works in progress. I plan to post pictures and explain how I accomplished creating it. I will be working from patterns but also plan to post my own designs as well. If all goes well and they turn out nice I might actually publish the patterns or make them available to people if they want them. I will start my first blog by posting some pictures of some pieces I have already completed. Some of it I have listed on my Etsy.com site to sell. Most I have either given away to friends or sold already. Here is one of my favorite completed projects. It is adapted from a published pattern book but I changed the stitch and the type of yarn used. I call it my plush hoodie because the yarn is very soft and plush like when worked up. I used Hobby Lobby's Baby Bee Pitter Patter eyelash yarn for this jacket and I just alternated rows with single and double crochet. I sold this white one and was asked to make a second one in sugar plum.

The cutie modeling for me is my 15 year old daughter.

Here are some more of my completed works that I have done by hand.

Red Ribbed Knitted and Blue Stripe Crocheted

Evening Chains Crocheted and turquoise stripes knitted.