Getting Started

I was pretty lucky on many accounts when I got into machine knitting. My first machine was given to me. It was donated to a machine knitting guild. It was also in very good shape. Since then I am finding that there are knitting machines in garages, tucked under beds and in attics. Some are sold on ebay or craigslist. If you're lucky you can just ask around and have someone give you one or buy it fairly cheaply.

If you have no experience with knitting machines I suggest you look for people who have experience. I had a friend who knew how to use knitting machines. My friend Julia also had already found groups of people, who also like to machine knit. I have learned so much by having more experienced people help me.

These experienced people can be found at machine knitting guilds or groups in your area. It's fun to knit with other people and their experience can be a great help. Some local knitting stores have lessons for knitting machines. Don't count them out. Call and ask. There are some Yahoo Groups you can subscribe too that have very experienced and nice people to talk to and ask questions of. Subscribe to a few you'll find ones that you like the best.

The internet has also been a great source of info and learning. If you'll check out my links I'm putting the ones I enjoy and find useful on this blog.

If you have a machine and it hasn't been used in a while you'll want to clean it and probably replace the sponge bar. I'll be posting about refurbishing sponge bars soon. I took pictures of the process with the last sponge bar I refurbished. I've done 2 and both work great. So, the method works well.

Search You Tube there is amazingly a wealth of machine knitting videos on there. Here's the first one I looked up when I was in a bind. I couldn't remember how to do a latch hook bind off. This video is for a back stitch bind off. Not exactly the same thing, but you do acheive the same result. I found the video to be very easy to follow. This was a life saver for me. I had done my first project at home... alone... and couldn't remember how the heck to get the piece off my knitting machine. I didn't want to wait until the next day to get help. This video saved the day.