04-12-2017

Brand new machine. I’ve never even seen one in real life. Even putting the stand together was intimidating. The machine is gorgeous, yet I’m terrified I won’t be able to figure it out. This amazing Craftsy course is giving me the courage to try! Renee Callahan is a FANTASTIC teacher!!!

This yarn splits bad on the machine. If I was handknitting it would probably be OK, but I will never buy it again. I thought I’d buy something inexpensive because my first sweater would probably turn out crappy, but that was a BIG mistake. I’ve had more headaches from this yarn than anything else while learning to machine knit.

Working the back- I dropped a stitch a few inches before the back was done. I tried latching it up but it looked bad. So I frogged back. It took forever getting the sweater back on the machine. Part of it is a learning curve and part of it is I’m going to need bifocals soon! Anyway it was sloppy and I decided I was going to rip back again and this time pick up and finish by hand. Since I was going to be hand knitting anyway, I decided to do some mesh lace for the yoke.

Front 134 sts: RIght front: K2, yo, k2tog, rep from 24 times. BO 26 for neck. Left front: k2tog(have to fig out with bind off) yo 25 times, k2.
Cont left front, next row purl. Patt row: K3, yo, k2tog, rep from until last 3, yo k3. check count.

04-15-2017

Yikes figuring out the ribber is a tour de force! Should post a bunch more photos of all the ripping I’ve done on this.

I would never have made it through without help from the machine knitters group beginners thread and facebook machine knitting beginners

Helpful videos/ photo tutorials I used:

• Setting up my ribber and getting started ribbing
• Transferring sts from ribber to main bed

And once the ribbing is done and you’ve transferred sts you’ve gotta’ ratchet your ribber outta the way! Then switch arms! Then it all works.

Wheh, I learned SO much!

My two sleeves don’t match. Bad. I must have had the settings wrong during the ribbing, and the length is off by at least an inch. I was thinking of just calling this Frankensweater, but I’ll probably reknit it.

And Renee talks about a LINKER that’ll seam for you; I need to find one of those!

04-16-2017

Had to knit a third sleeve since the first two didn’t match at all. Fortunately had enough yarn so I didn’t have to frog and rewind. The third time’s a charm! It is getting easier for sure.