My Knitting Goddess, Beth, wrote a wonderful, extremely simple sweater pattern. To be knit in heavy worsted weight Maine Wool , I guessed it would be a quick and easy sweater to make five times before Christmas. That was way back last summer. I got this one done in July:

My dear, rumpled T2 on Christmas morning. He had requested a leather lace rather than the knitted one the pattern calls for. It’s in a dark green–I honestly don’t remember the exact color.

Then I moved on to T3’s sweater. I decided that it would be cool to knit the stockinette parts on the knitting machine. Being the smallest of the sweaters, it went quickly and even the machine didn’t give me too much trouble.

T3 decided he wanted a knitted lace so I ran to the machine on Christmas and attempted to make one. I failed. So, this is what it looks like without the lace. I promise to make one soon. The color is Cornflower.

When I measured T1 for his sweater it dawned on me that he really needed an adult size sweater. He’s really growing up . . . and is growing his hair out. He didn’t want any lace at all, so I changed the pattern for him.

T1’s is in Navy Heather and the stockinette parts went really quickly on the knitting machine! And, yes, it looks like a dark charcoal color, but I was so happy that he didn’t insist on black that I was very happy with what he chose.

I’m still working on T, the DH’s, sweater. The back is almost done. His is in Black Watch (a lovely dark green and black). I put it aside to complete the hats in my post for tomorrow (hey, I’ve gotta keep those nephews happy!).

I completed my machine knit sweater!  Here are the specs:

Tahkai’s Donegal Tweed in red, about 3.5 skeins
Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns, child sweater, 4 stitches/inch
Knitting machine gauge set at 7

Because I wasn’t ready to deal with the ribber, I made I-cord (a dream on the machine!) for edging.  I tried fake rib, but on the bulky machine it looked weird.  I will attempt to put the ribber into service before my next sweater.

I followed the pattern pretty faithfully, but before the second sleeve it was clear they were too long.  The pattern called for 14" before decreasing for the cap sleeve.  I made it 13" and (note the rolled up sleeves) it was still too long.  I hope that means he’ll wear it longer.

During finishing Peggy noticed that the neck was too small.  So, I put two buttons at the neck and T3’s big head fits just fine now.

All in all it was a good project to get started on the machine.  I did a gauge, I-cord, increases, decreases, and bind-offs.  If I had worked all the way through and not re-done so many pieces I could have easily completed the four pieces in a day.

Much to the surprise of my fellow knitters, Beth and Peggy, I had never sewn a sweater together.  For seven years I’ve always bought patterns that didn’t need finishing or re-wrote the patterns so I didn’t have to put them together.  The most I’d done was three-needle bind-off of shoulders.  So, Peggy showed me how–she even offered to do it for me!–but I persevered.  I’m proud of myself.

Here’s a picture of T2 and T3, each in Donegal sweaters.  T2’s striped sweater is at least two years old.  I just fixed the cuff again (he keeps wearing it out).

Thanks to Beth, Peggy and Susan for getting me through this project–the support and inspiration was much needed.  It’s fun to do something new, but this was a bit too new for me.  Now that I’ve had success, I’ll give the ribber a try and then jump into another sweater (for the DH maybe?).  I know an essay on machine vs. hand knitting is going to come up soon as well.

Although lack of a computer makes me spend more time knitting (which might be good for you in blog-land), it’s making me crazy. 

I stitched up one shoulder of my sweater today and then put the neckline on the knitting machine to knit the roll collar.  I only had to pick up the stitches twice.  The first time I put the weight comb on too close to the stitches and knit the comb right into the sweater.  That was a Bad Thing.  So, I had to break the yarn, extract the sweater from the machine and then pick out the row of stitches (and the comb).  I then picked up the stitches again and knit a row before putting the comb back on.  Honestly, I know I could have picked up the stitches and knit the five rows on needles faster than I did on the machine.

Now, all I need to do is sew up the other shoulder, ease the sleeves on to sew them up, and sew up the sides.  I’m going to get professional help tomorrow to get that done.  Then, in less than a week I’ll have a sweater for T3.

Back to my computer decision.  After begging time from my DH and trying to make our old G3 (running Mac OS 8.6) work for me, I’ve decided I can’t live without a machine of my own.  I’m cruising by the Apple Store, looking for refurbs.  When the right one comes up I’m ordering it.  I think I’m going for a 15" MacBook Pro with a GB of RAM.  We’ll see what comes up this week.  There was one I wanted available this morning, but when I went back this afternoon it was gone.  I won’t be so slow next time.

Look forward to a picture of my completed sweater tomorrow!

Friday.  We were supposed to get a lot of snow today, so the school district canceled school.  But we didn’t get any snow (though the ice was wicked until the sun came up).  So, I had all three kids home.  After finding out that school was canceled, I went back to bed. When I got up my PowerBook had passed away.  Now it makes horrible whirring sounds and occasional clunks.  I’m writing from the DHs Mac, which is usually being used by him.  I won’t have much time on the computer until I can save enough to buy a new one

But the knitting machine and I did some bonding today.  My sweater now has arms.   I had to knit a total of three arms, but I now have two acceptable arms, plus an adequate front and back.  The first arm was just, well, wrong.  Then I tried to start piecing it together, but my brain just isn’t that sharp–when I put the shoulders together I put one right side against one wrong side.  Instead of the wrong sides together.  I took that out.  Here’s what the pieces look like.  They are obviously unblocked.

I should have taken a picture of the bad sleeve.  Maybe someone with more machine knitting experience could tell me what I did wrong.  My guess is that somehow one row got knit twice.  I don’t exactly know hot to explain it.

Tomorrow I will attempt to sew one shoulder up, put the neckline on the machine, and knit a 3/4 inch roll collar.  If I am somehow successful, I will then sew up the other shoulder and the sides/arms.  If all goes well, that means I’ll have a completed child’s sweater in less than a week.  And, if everything I had knit was usable, I’d have about three sweaters (let’s see: four backs, one front, three sleeves).  The other two children have already asked for sweaters off the machine.  I guess they’ve decided that machine made is better than handmade.  Where did I get these kids?

I’m making progress.  And, there have been fewer &%*!# today.  After four tries I got the back of the sweater "right".  Then I did the front of the sweater and I have no idea if it’s right.  I just completed one sleeve (after rewriting the pattern so I could keep track of the rows), just to discover that the machine might have knit one row twice.  I don’t know how to explain it, but the row is thicker, like the same stitches were knit into twice.  Of course, it was at the beginning of the sleeve so I need to take the whole thing out.

I’m considering just leaving it.

Hummmm.

Opinions?

The good news is that you can make four child-size sweater backs in one morning on a knitting machine.  The bad news is that, due to 1) the machine and 2) my utter lack of skill, I’ve made the same sweater back four times this morning.

It’s now done.  Now the machine has decided its worked too hard already today and refuses to knit the front of the sweater.  I’m eating popcorn and posting in my blog rather than continue the fight.  Perhaps after a bit of chocolate I’ll be willing to square off with the beast again.