No Boring Bits Machine and Hand Knit Projects

I'm interested in putting some hand knit panels onto the machine and getting the machine to do the boring bits.


I know there are many ways to do this already. Tried and true, but I thought I'd like to see which one I liked best.


The most obvious one is to sew the pieces together with mattress stitch, but I didn't want to do that, mostly because I thought it would pull in an unpleasant way along the bustline.


Firstly, daughter decided to try our hand at a Drops dress/tunic pattern and I decided to do Climbing Vines, both have a varying stitch count over a number of rows and is too much of a pain to do on the machine.


On this one, daughter hand knitted the bands on the train to and from work, and joined the "bar" up on the KX350 Brother machine. As best described in Diana Sullivan's single bed sock tutorial. However, this is excellent for thinner sock wool, on this 8ply yarn, it's not quite so good.


Next bright idea we had was to pick up the "bump" not the "bar". As Best described as being the bit between the bar, very each to pick up on thick work.


This brings me to my second project that I've been trying to figure out the best way of making, the Climbing Vines Jumper.


So I decided to knit up the leaf panel on 4.00mm needles, but first I did the ribbing on the Passap, cause it's quick and easy. Then onto the plastic KX350:

Here is a pretty clear shot of the "bump" that we decided may give a tighter "seam"

I used the single prong to get the stitch and put it back onto the machine.

And put it onto the needle, which is done every second row and really worked well.

I've made some Shawls

It's been a bit longer than I thought, since I blogged. Daughter moved in for a few weeks, which of course turned into about a month longer. We've been stuffed into a 2 bed apartment, my son, my cat and my darling daughter had a bed in the dining room where I had my machines set up, so they got squashed into the only spare space left. Daughter is more important than machines! Time to do some handknitting - with beads. Why not?

Anyways, she has left this morning, visiting friends, then staying with her Dad until she leaves for the UK to spend Christmas with her new soon to be inlaws.

I've made her a shawl from some gorgeous silk I bought from the Bendigo Wool and Sheep Show in July, direct from the Moseley Park stand - Moseley Park 100% silk laceweight in Ice Glow.
















Loz chose Haruni and I bought the silver lined silver beads from Empire Beads, the 3mm (8/0) and 4.5mm (5).

Then I decided to make up my silk/merino I won as a monthly prize from theknittery, when Daphne was in Victoria, she's now in the US and not dyeing. Such a shame, I loved her work.

So, while I was looking at shawls I came across Frozen Leaves and decided it would be perfect. I ordered the beads for both and here is mine:
















This month, I hopefully will be machining again.