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.