Today is a good day, I think, to make little guys.
Pattern from Machine Knitting Monthly Oct 2025, which calls for spider legs, but I think the “little guy”-ness is correct without them.
Today is a good day, I think, to make little guys.
Pattern from Machine Knitting Monthly Oct 2025, which calls for spider legs, but I think the “little guy”-ness is correct without them.
Before I reveal the story foreshadowed in my post about machine knitting some first hats, a digression.
One of my main goals with machine knitting is to be comfortable enough with the machine and techniques required to make custom two-color patterns with AYAB. To that end, I had given myself a very short syllabus:
My attempt at a two-color Fair Isle patterned hat came out as a cool-but-wrong tuck stitch patterned hat. The "MC" button that activates multicolor Fair Isle knitting sits right over the "T" (tuck stitch) button, and they were well and truly frozen together. I will save that story for another time.
Meanwhile, the machine could definitely still knit, so I had no excuse not to keep learning and practicing.
Which brings me to socks.
As knitting project go, socks would appear to be small, fast, and easy. Depending on whose pattern you are following, there are a few techniques to learn. Plus you have to make two of them, so you are tested on your consistency.
Unfortunately, a lot of sock-knitting content is for circular knitting machines, or double-bed knitting machines with ribbing attachments, or for hand knitters.
Which is why I became obsessed with Diana Sullivan's No-Sew Socks
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These socks are designed to be made on a single bed standard gauge knitting machine - like mine! They are knit top-to-bottom, back-to-front starting at the rear ankle hem, going down to a rounded heel, across the foot bottom, and around the toe. At that point, you switch techniques, picking up the stitches from previous rows to work your way back up and over the top of the foot, ankle, and hem. When it comes off the machine, it's a whole sock. You just need to hide the end threads, wash it, and block it.
While my machine matched the pattern requirements, Diana's pattern calls for thicker wool-blend sock yarn than what I have on-hand. In my "practice phase", I'm using thinner two-ply cotton, which means I have to adjust the row and column counts from Diana's pattern by a conversion factor - a multiplier based on the ratio of Diana's sock yarn gauge measurements with my own.
While some of this is easy multiplication, some of the techniques require adding or removing stitches at some "rate". In this case, creating the curved heel and tow areas involves "short rows", where more and more end needles are held at their current row while more rows are added to the middle. When the number of rows and stitches changes, you've also got to change instructions like "add one stitch into hold at the end of each row". Thankfully, my gauge's stitches-per-inch measured "close enough" to Diana's pattern, so I only needed to deal with the difference in rows - my thinner yarn came out to about 1.5x rows-per-inch compared with Diana's.
I did my best! Here's the pattern I came up with to try and make socks for Producer Amy.
My pattern mostly follows Diana's until we get to the short rowing. Here, she calls for putting one needle into hold on each side as you knit each row, down to a certain number of needles, then short row back out at the same rate. The one-to-one ratio really simplifies the technique. Comparatively, I would need to knit 1.5x the number of rows with my thinner yarn. So I came up with a three-step waltz that moves two needles out of (or into) work every 3 rows.
The resulting socks have some holes of various sizes in the short row areas. Being new to this technique I can't be sure whether each hole is from a mistake I made in the technique or because my two-stitches-per-three-rows adjustment needed an extra needle wrapped here or there.
Anyway. Sock photos.
Despite some issues, they look like socks! But do they sock??
Something is... not right with the final seam inside the front hem of the socks. I think perhaps I am finishing them off the machine too tightly. Or perhaps a different yarn would have more give. Whatever the reason, these were really difficult for Producer Amy to get on her feet, stretching only up to a point and no further. These photos were taken before washing and blocking, which I knew would shrink the final socks further.
After washing, these look a little better! The fibers have pulled together. The too-loose front hem on one sock is more visible.
Neither of these are wearable now, unfortunately. But I learned a lot and got experience with some important techniques. I look forward to trying again with some actually-meant-for-socks yarn that more closely match the pattern. And some more practice!
In my apartment we are lucky enough to have a big countertop, open on three sides, creating a nice flat project surface for even sprawling projects.
However, we also have a lot of projects that compete for this space! Producer Amy is often working on increasingly complex sewing projects that require the entire surface. Likewise, the knitting machine occupies an entire edge of the space. Both of these are time consuming, with potentially complex setup and teardown procedures. How can we accommodate both fiber arts hobbies?
You may not be surprised to find that I found inspiration from Carson (@KnitFactoryImpl) on YouTube. In her videos I noticed a low-profile metal stand that basically amounts to a single horizontal bar and four splayed legs, clamped together by a couple of big screws. She mentioned briefly that they aren't manufactured anymore, but you can find them on eBay "from time to time".
With the fear of scarcity in my heart, I jumped when I found a similar one on eBay a few days later.
As you can see in the photo, the stand can break down quite small! Pictured here are 5 of the 6 parts required for it to work. The long body bar has circular recesses where the knitting machine can be securely clamped, as well as slots for the legs. Each leg splays out at an angle to withstand the force of moving the machine back and forth. The body bar and legs are held together with a pair of screws and wingnuts, and the screws are at the end of long bent metal bars which do double-duty to provide some stability for the mounted knitting machine, as well as providing a place to rest the top of the knitting machine.
You may note that I said "5 of the 6" in the previous paragraph. One of the screw/bar pieces was missing. Thankfully the seller had simply misplaced it and, after contacting them, they found it and mailed it to me.
Meanwhile... If you have a keen eye you may have noticed another missing part. Because each leg splays out at an angle, each also has a rubber foot with a special shape to let it rest flat and provide traction. One of the legs was missing this foot.
In this house we 3D print, so I dusted off my calipers, OpenSCAD, and trigonometry skills to make a replacement. I'll attach the OpenSCAD and final STL files to this post for posterity, but I definitely hit a point where the math looked right but the piece looked wrong, so I did some eyeball-based adjustments when tweaking the foot's resting face angle and a fudge factor to help the foot slip onto the machine leg.
Now I can machine knit without taking up the countertop space. This reduces my anxiety about having the machine "out" for long periods of time as I practice skills or work on more time-consuming project.
Of course, there is floor space to talk about, but that is slightly easier to negotiate at this point.
1145 bytes. Updated
2084 bytes. Updated One of my main goals with learning machine knitting is to replace the electronics on my Brother KH-930e with AYAB (All Yarns Are Beautiful) to create multi-color patterned knits of whatever sicko stuff comes to mind. But home knitting machines aren't a fire-and-forget type of machine. They require a lot of manual effort - from fine stitch work to good core strength - a lot of which requires practice for technique and feel.
So, after taking a machine knitting workshop at Brooklyn's Textile Arts Center, I started absorbing a ton of how-tos, mostly in the form of videos (and those mostly from Carson at her amazing KnitFactoryImpl channel, but also old websites, shopping guides, and more. I ended up making a sort of "curriculum" for myself.
First up: I ordered some pre-coned yarn (I'll cake later, when I know my machine works well), got the ol' machine out of storage and confirmed it all still moved and grooved, made some gauge swatches. And then... needed a project!
I decided to make a hat, following a combination of techniques from these KnitFactoryImpl videos:
That last one is for a very different machine from mine, but more clearly shows the steps and techniques.
Anyway, I made a hat!
It was fun learning to do some of the pre-planning work, like measuring for a pattern, calculating stitches and rows, and writing out a pattern.
When actually working the pattern on the machine, I also practiced hanging a hem, gathering up onto a long tail to make the pinched hat top, and mattress stitching the seam. Practices in patience, eyesight, and fine motor skills.
I ran it through a load of laundry and it came out much better!
The fit seemed a little loose, but I feel like it sits on my head the way the Carson's sits on her head at the end of her video. I'm taking that as a success for process!
From here I thought a good level up would be to make a new hat with some design tweaks and, because I want to rush to get AYAB working some Fair Isle patterning using the Brother's built-in patterns. Consulting with Producer Amy, I decided to double the length of the brim without lengthening the hat overall. Amy picked a pattern, and I decided to try creating a stripe of it between the brim and the top of the hat.
Something was not quite right with the knitting carriage. The "MC" button used for two-color Fair Isle knitting was stuck to the "T" button below it, which engages tuck stitching. The result is that the pattern came out all wrong and also this whole paragraph is foreshadowing for some later posts.
The pattern should be gray contrast on black to match the rest of the hat, but instead is mostly-gray with some black peeking through, as well as some interesting texturing from the machine treating the pattern as a tuck stitch.
Despite the patterning issue, I am pleased with how this came out. It's made of cotton rather than wool, so it stretches out a bit as it is worn, but it's still pretty cozy! Producer Amy requested that the next version have patterning from the brim to the top. I look forward to trying that again soon... when I am able! (That's still foreshadowing.)
Okay, that's it! See you next time!
Heck yeah, I’m retro-posting. Hello from the future!
It’s August 3rd, 2025 and time for more machine knitting!
I started the day practicing some of the techniques from day one of the class.
I have forgotten the first technique Elaine taught us for the day, but it let us work in a second yarn by hand as each row is knit. Seems like maybe a cool way to work in wires or conductive thread??
Next up, we learned about putting working needles in hold, aka short-rowing, which allows you to “grow” sections of the knitting by adding rows just to one section, while other parts of the work stay put.
Next it was time for two-color patterned knitting with fair isle, powered by punch cards!
The knitting carriage needs several adjustments to begin following the punch card pattern.
Then… knit a bunch of rows! Here’s a little video.
When you’re done patterning, you can snip the contrast yarn, turn the carriage back knob back to ‘NL’ and disable the ‘MC’ button, then proceed knitting in your main yarn color as normal.
After a lunch break, we spent most of the rest of the time practicing what we’d learned so far. Near the end, Elaine taught a few important techniques that you do off the machine.
Note to self, or anyone who wants to book some studio time to do some machine knitting at the TAC:
And that was the end of the class! I learned so much, but mostly that I have so much yet to learn.
Besides the big swatch of worked-in yarn, here’s the rest of my swatches for the day!
From top-to-bottom, left-to-right:
Will I continue my machine knitting journey?? Stick around to find out! Subscribe in your favorite feed reader, and so on, and so forth!
Happy HTML Day!
I'm taking a two-day machine knitting workshop intensive, so I did not have the energy to join the folks at the Valentino Jr. Park meetup.
Instead I am writing this post (in HTML) while watching along to Jenn Schiffer's "HTML Day From Home (hdfh)" stream.
The workshop is Machine Knitting 101, from Brooklyn's Textile Arts Center's line of Machine Knitting classes and workshops. Today, our instructor Elaine walked us through some of the basics.
We bought a knitting machine, a Brother KH-930e, back in, checks notes, =chokes= like 2011 or 2012?? Enticed by Becky Stern's post on on hacking the KH-930e. As it turns out, the electronics hacking was NOT the difficult part of working with one of these machines! After some rounds of buying replacement parts and maintenance, we got a couple of little projects out of it, but found it challenging enough to work with that we stopped messing with it. But, we still have it, and I'm excited to try again!
Here's a photo of the workshop syllabus, as well as some of my debris from today's workshop.
From top to bottom, left-to-right:
Thank you for reading. I hope to post more knitting projects. I hope to read your HTML Day creations!
'til next time!