Sunday, December 21, 2008

MK projects


Earlier this month I purchased Silver Reed SK160. It is a mid-gauge single bed manual knitting machine. It does allow me the option of upgrading to electronic allowing me to use Design a Knit program and add a ribber. I'm not quite ready for that, yet. My first lesson was making a shaped hat. Well, the orange one was the first one. Then the green heather, followed by forest green and green heather mix (left overs), and then the gray one. The first three are Knitaly (superwash wool) and the gray one is Patons Classic Merino. They are adult sizes and fit my husband's head very nicely. The forest green/green heather one is going to Iraq with a friend who is being deployed for the third time. It took about hour and a half to knit the first one, then the others took about an hour. It includes seeming. The shaping at the crown is a bit tedious, but works up pretty quick.

I'm excited about knitting a sweater. I have lots of variegated yarn that I want to knit up but seem to be running short on time. Since most variegated yarn doesn't show pattern well, simple stockinette or reverse stockinette stitch would look nicer on a sweater, maybe with a little bit of accent patterning. I just don't have time to knit stockinette. With the baby due in April, I want to get some baby sweaters knit up as well as some simple sweaters for DH and me. I still have way too many socks on needles and even started a reversible cable scarf. I have to finish up some lace works as well. I enjoy the complex lace, cables, and other texture patterning with hand knitting. Although I have many stockinette socks, I find it very boring and tedious to knit stockinette sweater. I have a couple of garter stitch projects that are waiting to be finished. Same thing. Boring. This is why it took me 5 yrs to finish the Einstein sweater. Bah!