Today was a good day, I think, for making a little bow.
Thanks to Knitology 1x1 for the step-by-step machine knit bow video!
Today was a good day, I think, for making a little bow.
Thanks to Knitology 1x1 for the step-by-step machine knit bow video!
This post is part of a series, as I play catch-up on KnitFactoryImpl's knitalong of a set in sleeve crew neck sweater for channel members.
After completing the front panel, only one major on-the-machine task remains for this sweater, and that's the neckline.
This is easy to explain conceptually: connect the front and the back by seaming them together at one shoulder, rehang all the stitches on the knitting machine, knit some rows for the collar, then cast off on waste yarn.
Still, I was dreading this for some reason, so I procrastinated on it all day and then hemmed-and-hawed as I did it.
Technically, the last bits of shoulder seams should include some purple stitches, but I found it too mind-bending to think about how to change colors while so many needles were going into hold and being wrapped. It's really just a few stitches so I don't think anyone will notice in the final sweater.
I then took a long break for food, exercise, and a shower, and only actually started hanging the neckline on the machine about 15 minutes before the live show-and-tell. 🫣
I really enjoyed the show-and-tell. It was encouraging to hear KnitFactoryImpl's own challenges and inspiring to see the final (extremely fluffy!) cardigan. I was delighted and honored that she shared my posts from this very website with some kind comments on my knitting setup and progress photos. I loved seeing photos from other participants, too! It was nice to have enough context to understand and appreciate some of the choices made in terms of stitch variety, yarn types, and (of course) colors and patterns!
I ended up waiting until after the livestream to finish hanging the stitches.
Once it was all back on the bed, following KnitFactoryImpl's advice, I:
I even got to use these cool weight hangers on the edges!
After all the effort to hang the stitches, set the weights, set up the carriage, knit the one row of stockinette, remove the carriage, transfer half the stitches, set more weights, and set up the carriages again, I was feeling pretty nervous about this going awry.
So I knit 12 rows of 1x1 rib very slowly, checking each stitch after every row. This was made more challenging by the fact that my main yarn is pitch black. 😅
To my relief, those 12 rows went great! It was time to cast off onto waste yarn with circular knitting. So, I switched yarns, set the carriages for circular knitting, knit a few rows back and forth-
- and realize something was going very wrong! The tension from the weights just seemed to be not working. A bunch of stitches piled up loosely and then started dropping.
I didn't panic, but I did remove all the weights and start painstakingly removing the tangled knitting from the bed.
Most of the actual rib came off the machine fine. A few stitches have dropped but, in theory, I can fix those while sewing up to finish the seam. HOWEVER: sewing up seams is definitely one of my weaker skills, so I am not sure I trust myself to do it without making a huge mess of things.
For the sake of my future as a machine knitter, I think I will probably pull all this ribbing off and try again. It will be a time-consuming process, but it's safe to do. Importantly, it will give me a chance to figure out what bits of the knitting machine / stand / cast-on comb / hanging weights are interfering with one another, causing the stitches to bunch up after that dozen-or-so rows.
I could also stand to practice seaming and mending, a good reason to try and "rescue" this delicate collar situation.
Which will I choose? Will I let this project languish now that the knitalong is over? Stay tuned to find out!
Meanwhile, many thanks to KnitFactoryImpl for running this knitalong, for providing a super versatile free pattern generator, making extra videos to detail each piece, and pulling together and sharing photos and more from the community! Also, you know, for the tons of great instructional and inspirational machine knitting content! Go subscribe and support her channel, already!
This post is part of a series, as I play catch-up on KnitFactoryImpl's knitalong of a set in sleeve crew neck sweater for channel members.
At the dawn of the final day of the knitalong, I was determined to finish the machine-knit portions of the build. That means making the front panel, seaming the front and back along one shoulder, rehanging the neckline, and knitting the collar.
The front panel is constructed about the same as the back panel, but with differences in the neck and shoulder shaping. Compared with my rough go of it on the back panel, the front panel went much easier. I found myself tripping over the combination of working the pattern and switching yarns for the colored stripes. And I'm afraid that no one on Earth knows exactly how the stitch and row counts on the arm hole and neck actually shaping turned out. Future me will, unfortunately, become the one to solve this puzzle.
I played gravity chicken with the cast-on comb and weights and, unfortunately, they were near touching the ground just as the pattern called for the long series of decreases for arm hole shaping. I was able to hang the regular cast-on comb, but it added some complication with moving those stitches. If I had to do it again, I'd make sure to re-hang all the weights 10 or so rows before that.
I also regret being precious and/or clever with managing the out-of-work yarn. To keep down the number of ends to work in, I let the out-of-work yarn float from one section to the next. For straight sections, I should be able to hide the floats in a seam. For areas with decreases and bind-offs, I should have just snipped yarn and worked in the ends as I went. I think I'll be cutting and adding extra yarn to several floats that ended up being pulled shorter than the stitches they are meant to hide among. 😩
With breaks for food and stretching, it took me about 4 hours to get through this body panel. With my other obligations for the day, I don't think I'll be able to finish the neckline tonight. But, hey, there's always tomorrow!
I'm not super confident in how this is gonna turn out, but I'm proud that I've pushed through so far! Plus I got to try draping all the major pieces on!
👍🏻
This post is part of a series, as I play catch-up on KnitFactoryImpl's knitalong of a set in sleeve crew neck sweater for channel members.
In the first installment of this series, I made some sleeves, putting me well on time for the knitalong. Since then, however, I spent two weeks in Berlin, a few days sick, and some days catching up on work. All that adds up to: the knitalong is already practically over! 😱
However, I can't let that get me down. It's not homework, there's no grade. I just want to practice some skills, learn some new ones, and make producer Amy a nice sweater. So, let's cast on and get back to it.
The second video in the knitalong series is on body panels. I started with the back. A process that was meant to look something like:
Because I'm working this sweater with a pattern of stripes, I peppered the printed instructions with the row count and color for each color change. This would become important when switching "sections" of pattern that restart the row counter to 000, and doubly important for the shoulder shaping, which has to be worked twice.
This was my first time casting on a 1x1 rib across almost the entire bed. I found it challenging to get the ribber's full-bed cast-on comb. In my first failed attempt the comb was one needle too far to the right and got caught on a piece of the machine. For the second attempt, one of the weights got stuck on a piece of my knitting machine stand, causing stitches on that side to bunch up and drop. Seen above: I finally got it right!
After transferring the stitches from the ribber to the main bed, it should have been smooth sailing for the main body. Unfortunately, working the striped pattern proved challenging with so many stitches on the bed. The area for "parking" the non-active yarn ends up under the carriage, making it easy to tangle and create long loops. And, oh no-
Dropped about half the stitches off the bed during a color change. 😭
Just over halfway through the main body, after switching colors and, I SWEAR, checking that the new yarn was properly in the carriage feeder, I dropped off a ton of stitches.
Thankfully, this was recoverable, if tedious.
That was, thankfully, the only major disaster.
When I made it to shoulder bind-off, I pulled up the knitalong video to start double-checking steps. The bind-off went fine. The reductions for the shoulder holes was made more complicated by needing to switch colors in the middle, but went pretty okay!
At this point, it was time to work the shoulders one at a time. I referred to the video multiple times. I goofed up and dropped some stitches that I was thankfully able to recover. I took it slow and sweat the details. I nodded along at the concept of short rowing on two sides as I watched the video a 5th and 6th time. I ver-ry care-ful-ly bound off stitches. I counted and recounted and still somehow ended up off-by-one stitch somewhere along the way.
But I finished! And I think it will be okay!
I worked on this piece on and off all day, in between work and meetings and phone calls. I definitely putting in at least a few solid hours of work, mostly in recovering from mistakes. I wrapped around 10pm to write this post!
I'll be back at it tomorrow! My hope is to at least finish the front panel and the neckline and get a post online in time for the knitalong's Sunday show and tell. I'll still need to seam the final shoulder, sleeves, and sides, but I'll have finished the machine knitting part of it, and that should feel pretty good.
OK, see you tomorrow!
The Level Up is an indie improv showcase. Join us as we watch amazing New York indie improv talents gain XP on the Magnet stage, unlock new achievements, and reach new milestones. Or do comedy.
Come support Michael as he dons his hosting-duties cap for three exciting indie teams!
I’ll be playing in with Michael and the rest of the Level Up!
Looking forward to it! And to seeing you there!! (Yes, you. Come on out!!!)
Saturday November 15th, 2025 @ 10:30pm
Magnet Theater
254 West 29th St (btwn 7th and 8th Ave.)
New York City, NY 10001
Tickets $10: https://magnettheater.com/show/tickets/60023/
Today was a good day, I think, for finishing a little guy that I’ve been carrying around incomplete for a couple of weeks.
I’m traveling but that doesn’t mean I’m not machine knitting!
I am so grateful to Cristina Talpa for her make-a-scarf workshop. Amy found it via the Makery and we thought it seemed too good to pass up.
And it was! While the workshop is geared for total beginners to machine knitting, Cristina smoothly adjusted to work around things I already knew. She taught me some great new techniques and helped me improve some less-than-optimal techniques I came to the workshop with.
Plus, this scarf! I love it! Amy enjoyed posing me on an outing in Berlin today to snap a few photos.
I’m so grateful for the opportunity to meet an expert (and experimental!) machine knitter, work on a garment together, and chat about the state of the craft.
Thanks so much, Cristina!
After many years away, I have returned to in-person IndieWeb events, for IndieWebCamp Berlin 2025!
In past years, I have tried to capture my experience for each day and session in a long-form blog post, with thoughts on sessions, project ideas, progress made, ideas for the future, etc.
I’m pretty tired, though, so instead here is a collection of photos from my phone. It is both too-few and yet too-many!
We had a good turnout, and I was impressed with how many folks demo’d their personal sites, in whatever state they were in, and shared their plans and hopes to improve them! ❤️
You can find a recap of the Intros session on the IndieWeb wiki.
After intros we took a short break for coffee and the restroom, then inscribed the runes and constructed the grid for summoning our schedule for Saturday.
With our futures committed to ink and paper, we had our first short sessions. Then it was time to break for lunch.
Fed and caffeinated, we returned to our sessions.
You can find a list of sessions, each with links to notes (and, eventually, videos) for each, on the IWC Berlin 2025 schedule page.
Before 5pm (1700) we cleaned up and moved out. I was beat, so I headed back to where I’m staying for food, before meeting up with Amy and our friend Jessica, who showed us KPop Demon Hunters. I loved it. 🥹
Once caffeinated, we returned to the scene of Saturday’s summoning. We each inscribed small prayers for the day on small paper squares and arranged them next to the scheduling grid as a blessing.
Then everyone hacked on their websites! Until lunch time!
A short couple of hours of hacking later, it was time for Demos. Everyone shared the projects they had tackled, showed their progress, and talked about future work.
After demos it was time to wind it down, clean up, photograph and take down the schedule board, pack up our pins and stickers, and say our goodbyes and see-you-laters.
It was weird to be back, and it was good to be back. To catch up after a long time away, to continue conversations as if no time had passed at all, and to meet new friends in meatspace.
Thanks to everyone who made this possible! An incomplete list would include:
I had an idea of a couple of “easy” projects, but ended up spending most of my time fixing up some posts with images I broke when I deleted a bucked from Amazon S3, thinking I had already updated those posts. I hadn’t! So, I dug into my backups, re-uploaded, and updated 50-something images across 30 or so posts, mostly from my February 2011 thing-a-day posts.
My first easy project was to fix up some bad markup and styles where YouTube embeds were breaking out of my layout at small screen sizes. This was largely due to my awful old templates and styles, and I ended up manually fixing about a half-dozen posts by hand.
The second “““easy””” project was to try and figure out why I couldn’t sign in to the IndieWeb wiki, using my own IndieAuth server.
It seems like the indielogin.com service that the IndieWeb wiki uses has drifted from the IndieAuth spec, in anticipation of an update to the spec that has not yet materialized.
It’s too much to recap here, but you can find the chat log where I bother Aaron Parecki about it.
A little while later, he told me to “try again”, and…
Mid afternoon horror film 🎥 😱
IndieWebCamp Berlin Day 2 (Create Day!)
