One Crazy Fiber Lady

The twins had their 2 year checkup yesterday.  Both are 50th percentile for both height and weight.  Kat is shorter and lighter than her brother.  Yay.  Both were declared healthy and cute little monsters and got kudos for their excellent sleeping.  Yay.  I can’t believe we don’t have to go back until the 3 year checkup.  Woo.

Would it come as a surprise to anyone that I’m now evaluating sergers?  No?  Good.  There seems to be an agreement between the well-meaning and evil comments regarding my flannel piecing adventures that I’d best be served by a serger.  Evil.  Evil.  Naturally I now want one.  The choice boils down to getting a cheaper basic machine like this one.  I checked reviews of it at my usual places and I think it would do the job without breaking the bank. The price looks good and it would probably be a good supplement to the new sewing machine.  Hell, with the way I decide things, I’ll more than likely have bought this before bloglines picks up this post.. but in case, the auctions have 4 more hours .. so feedback fast please! {vbg}

Since I’ve gotten a couple of questions in comments and in email about the knitting machines, and being the lazy chick I am, I figured a little public info wouldn’t be a bad thing.  As the KnittersReview article quickly outlined, there are several guages of knitting machines available ranging from the fine to the bulky.  Most handknitters tend to stick with one of three, the standard (finer than dk), mid (fingering – worsted) and bulky (worsted +).  I have machines in each category. 

I originally started with that Bond/Incredible Sweater Machine that I bought off the infomercial years and years ago.  It worked.  It wasn’t great.  It has its issues but yes, I was able to whip out some knitted garments in no time.  It falls into the mid category, as does the Brother KX350 that I just got and the LK100 that Singer/Studio has.  The models other than the Bond use a tension dial that would approximate changing needle sizes if you were handknitting.  The Bond uses these goofy keyplates which allow for fewer adjustments.  The others can be far more granular.  They also have tension masts for feeding the yarn to the carriage where the Bond does not.  These hobby machines do not generally have an available ribber so if you want ribbing on an item, you need to manually work those stitches.  Is it as slow as sitting with the two needles knitting?  No.  But its not the speed of zip/zip/zip of moving the carriage back and forth.  When using a knitting machine, the fabric is created with the purl side facing you.  To make a 1×1 rib, you’d need to work the number of rows desired and then one by one, drop a stitch, run it down, and then latch back up row by row using a tool that resembles a small latchhook.  Many things can be accomplished with simple stitch manipulation.  With the hobby machines, everything is manual. They’re also far cheaper.

The std and bulky machines, while handling different ranges of yarn, generally have ribbers available.  This is a second bed that attaches at a 90 degree angle to the main bed and allow you to either knit in a tube or create a rib.  Stitches need to be transfered from the ribber bed back to the main bed when you’re finished with your ribbing.  This can either be by hand, stitch by stitch, or with a transfer carriage.  Sadly, I don’t have a transfer carriage so I use this needle with an eye at both ends to move stitches from one bed to the other.  Tedious, but less tedious than latching   As you move up the price spectrum in these machines, and more so with the std than the bulky (you just don’t want to do too much texture with bulky), the more automatic the patterning becomes.  From the simple punchcard to the computer controlled baby.  I have two different punchcards.  The Brother actually uses a card with holes in it (ergo a punchcard) and the Singer is an electronic (punchcard) but takes a mylar "card" with black dots in place of the holes.  These cards can be used for fair isle (singer has a 60st repeat), texture and lace depending on the machine and the setting chosen on the carriage.  The same card in one setting would be fair isle and a basketweave in another.  They’re pretty neat.  But the yarn feeding is voracious, especially with the std and it uses a pretty fine yarn.  You use mostly coned yarns as knots are a serious enemy.

The learning curve can be pretty steep depending on how fancy a machine you’ve gotten and how good the documentation is and your mood.  I had problems initially with one, got another one and now can go between all of them without issue.  There are any number of good video tapes out there for help and there’s a fabulous mailing list.  If you start out with reasonable expectations most anyone should be able to use a knitting machine.  Taking this to a different arena, a beginner spinner wouldn’t expect to create cobweb from that first spinning session, I wouldn’t expect a fancy shmancy fair isle with cables and ribs the first time out with a KM. 

The machine that I’d be willing to part with is the Singer 580 with SKP60N Ribber.  I have all the documentation, mylar sheets (I think some blank ones too), the tools, doodads, etc that I got when I bought it.  I haven’t played with it in a number of years so I don’t quite remember its full range of capabilities. There are some odd bits hanging about here and there so I need to check what’s what.  As for what machine to get, you need to seriously think more about what you want to knit, what yarns you want to have and the yarn capabilities in each category.  If you want to produce fine gauge knits and have absolutely no intention of knitting a sweater in a yarn equivalent to Zephyr, then a std is a must.  If you want to speed up them worsted weight items, either a mid or bulky would probably do the trick.

Craft on.