Knitting Machines

I used to do machine knitting - still have the machines but haven't used them for years. I have other interests now, but now I have grandchildren I'm doing a bit more knitting.

I have two machines, a Bond Elite machine which is quite basic but simple to use and can knit thicker yarn e.g. DK and aran, and a fancy double-bed punch card standard gauge machine for 4 ply which I never really got to grips with. Hope to restart machine knitting with the Bond when I have time to figure it out again but I'll probably get rid of the other one. If you have the time and patience to learn, the punchcard machine can do a lot but I have neither time nor patience!

All machines can do stocking stitch, that's the basic stitch on a machine.

You need a double bed for ribbing, or else you can use mock rib or you can drop the stitch and hook it back up to create ribbing; or you can just knit the ribs by hand and then put it on the machine which is what I used to do with the Bond.

Any pattern which requires increases or decreases in the middle of a row is hard to do on a machine because you'd have to move all the stitches along after the increase/decrease to keep them together, so for example crowns of hats might be difficult; although, again, you could knit the hat on the machine and then transfer to hand knitting to make the crown.

This website might help kcguild.org.uk/sharing-knowledge/machine-knitting/

I use to design and sell knitwear, no idea what machines are available now. I used a knitmaster with a ribber ,a knitmaster with a garter carriage and a brother chunky with a ribber, the three were punchcard.

I wouldn’t knit hats, too fiddly.

Thank you, Jeannie - good site link. Annie, interesting comment - I do enjoy knitting hats the most, so may continue them by hand. Thanks for your expertise, ladies!

I like my Brother it has a ribber but tbh I don’t often use that as I prefer a mock rib.

Interesting, Grandmagrim - am I right in thinking that you can only get Brothers secondhand now?

Dorado

Interesting, Grandmagrim - am I right in thinking that you can only get Brothers secondhand now?

Mine was secondhand. After replacing the odd needle and the sponge strip it worked beautifully so worth looking out for.