The Knitting Machine

I was the amazed and overjoyed recipient of a knitting machine, donated to me by a very nice lady whose mother can no longer make use of it.
That was at the end of November last, 2017.

I was flummoxed at first - I had no idea ho big it was going to be - big as a piano keyboard - nor did I understand how the carriage or needles got together to form a piece of fabric.
I was much relieved to find that the original manual was present and correct.
It is a Mnit Master Model 155 and there are still many in active use out there.
I was particularly fortunate to find youtube videos by "theanswerlary' who is an expert in all thing knitted including the workings of knitting machines.

I made my first swatch on this chunky version of its king in December -

I don't have punch cards yet to avail of it's capacity to do a form of fair isle or intarsia but no doubt in time I will get some.

Meanwhile, I'm using it mainly to knit iCord (aka Idiot Cord). Turns out that knitting, in sucking stitch, strips just 3 or 4 stitches wide causes them to curl up into pseudo-iCord, thus saving me the trouble of knitting and knitting massively long stretches of garter stitch strips to bind plat into my knitted rugs. 

Thanks to theAnswerLady again, I decided to try crochet rather than platting these strips which I can produce in a much shorter time than by knitting them 

The result is interesting - not quite as elegant as my platted rug technique, but I'm warming to it.

Glad it handles my hand spun sheep wool very well!

Will see how it goes.