My knitting journey

I'm really small. Small enough to have specific fitting issues that are largely ignored by the clothing and patternmaking industries. It's one of the reasons I sew, but not the only one. So I thought, why limit myself to sewing? I could have a go at knitting a custom sweater. I'm not one for slow tedious work, and I had a feeling going into it that it probably wasn't my cup of tea.

I taught myself to knit and purl and cast on and bind off and whatnot back in March. I finished the back of the sweater around mid-summer, while simultaneously attempting to knit socks. I don't mind telling you, knitting is BORING. Sitting still for hours at a time, doing little fiddly loops and needle manipulations while trying to keep track of the pattern and the increases every 8th row 20 times and...
I knew there had to be a better way but I didn't know what it was.

Completely by accident, I came across a Bond sweater machine on ebay while researching something else and was intrigued. I got myself one and had an entire sweater knitted within a couple of weeks, although not assembled because unfortunately homemade sweaters are apparently hand sewn together.

screw hand knitting

From learning 2 knit

The Bond is considered a "hobby" machine--made mostly of plastic and completely manual, very basic, so I began to learn about "real" knitting machines. They are some of the most fascinating contraptions I have ever seen. Of course I had to have one, so I got a model from the early 70's with punchcard capability. I could go on and on about the ingenious mechanics involved in selecting needles and making the different stitches, but I won't bore you with all that. Just fascinating...
The Fair Isle pattern in the photo above was manually knitted on the Bond, which wasn't exactly easy. My "real" machine can work 2 colors (and even more) effortlessly and with the proper tension.

what a beauty!

This is a slip-stitched pattern from a punchcard