Another Machine Knit Toy Pattern

I almost forgot  to tell you that a few days ago I posted yet another of my machine knitting toy patterns on Beadknitter Patterns. This one is the Pillow Pickup.

It was a natural progression to go from car to truck. There is one more toy pattern I want to post, but it's not on the hard drive of my current laptop, so I need to find the cd it's on, load it, and do some small edits. Now, if I could just remember where I put that cd. (sigh)

Last night I spent the evening playing with the Droid. I never thought I'd be that much into a smart phone. When Sweet Hubby got his a couple years ago, I scoffed at him. Now, here I am, practically attached by umbilical cord to it. I purplfied it this week. It now has a nice purple case that matches my purple leather purse perfectly.

I downloaded some apps last night. One was a Tetris game (I'll never get tired of it), a collection of solitaire games. I found one that makes my phone able to read Bar Codes and then tell me what the current prices for said item is on Amazon.com.  Another app turns my phone into a document scanner that turns said scanned documents into PDF files.

My phone is a Row Counter. I was kind of surprised how many of these apps are available. Me, being cheap, went for a free one. I am quite thrilled with it too. It works great, and will supply most of my counting needs.

I installed Adobe Reader for Android a couple days before, and I was really glad I did. I went to Yarnies yesterday and forgot to take my pattern with me. I was able to download it on my phone and keep on knitting.

I hope the novelty wears off soon so I can get back to knitting.

Hmm...I wonder if Lemmings is available?

Live long and prosper. \\//

A Teddy Bear

I was going to do a WIP Wednesday post, but Blogger was down for a couple days, so I will save it for another day. Today I am showing off another one of my machine knitting toy designs.

Before I bought my first knitting machine, I got a few magazines to see what kinds of things I could make on one. Such beautiful things. One issue had 2 patterns that I wanted to make in the worst way. One was a blue plaid suit jacket with matching skirt. The other was an adorable teddy bear. Both were written for the 4.5 standard gauge Japanese made machines. However, I ended up buying a Swiss made Passap.

My Passap came with 10 free lessons (of which I got 6 before the shop owner closed up the shop and disappeared in the middle of the night. I went to my 7th lesson and discovered an empty shop. She was later found in another state-having fled there to get out of paying a lot of debt.) At one of my lessons I asked my teacher about making this teddy bear. She said "Oh no! You can't make stuffed toys on a Passap!" I thought her statement to be ludicrous and figured she just didn't want to be bothered with helping me figure it out. So I determined to figure it out myself.

Oddly, that magazine disappeared. At first I thought I'd left it at the shop by accident, but when I went back to look it wasn't there. I don't know what happened to it. I never found it, so I figured out how to make a teddy bear completely from scratch-after just 3 lessons on my Passap. It took me just one week. This is the result, Curly the Bear.

I took my first Curly to my next lesson so I could let that teacher know that stuffed toys can be made on any knitting machine.

I made the little one first. Then, when I decided to write up the pattern and publish it I developed the larger size too. I have put this pattern up on my pattern blog. However, it is NOT written for the Passap. I got so many requests from 4.5 standard gauge machine owners that I convert it to their machines I went ahead and did that. It is the version I make available, for free, now.

The weather has been up and down. Wednesday was abolutely gorgeous. It got up to 74F degrees at my house. I was too busy to sit outside and enjoy it though. Yesterday it rained, and we're supposed to get lots of rain over the weekend (like we need more-the local rivers are almost at flood stage now). For right now, though, the sun is shining-for just a couple hours. I'm going to go take advantage of it and finish that second entrelac mitt I've been working on.

Live long and prosper. \\//

It Was Another Life

In the 1990's I got into machine knitting in a very big way. I don't remember how I found out such a thing existed, but when I laid eyes on one I fell in love. In May of 1989 Sweet Hubby bought me my first machine, the Passap E6000 (I do not believe in starting small). It is a Swiss made double bed machine with a computer on it. It can do amazing things. I seem to have a natural ability for it because I caught on very quickly and made my first sweater within 2 weeks after bringing it home. I  became obsesssed. Soon I owned all the attachments that go with it.

They say knitting machines are like potato chips. You can't have just one. For me, it was true.

My next machine was the Brother KH970. It is a Japanese made standard gauge machine with 200 needles and a computer. I also acquired all the add-on's and attachments that go with it, such as the ribber, garter carriage, color changer, lace carriage etc.

All in all, eventually I owned 9 different knitting machines. When I closed my needle craft shop in 2006, I sold or gave away 5 of them so now I just have my favorite 4. The Passap, my Brother 970, a Brother bulky punchcard machine, and the Incredible Sweater Machine.

In the mid 90's I started designing patterns for machine knitting. I started with a few toys, then went into afghans. Some of my patterns were published in Machine Knitters Source magazine and others I sold at various machine knitting seminars around the country and by mail order. I also did quite a bit of teaching both at seminars and here at home. I wanted to have my own knitting machine dealership very much, but it was not to be. I did have an Artisan dealership for a short time, but gave it up in disappointment due to lack of support and broken promises.

I had plans to write garment patterns too, and even had some in the works, but the industry took a serious nose dive, eventually coming very close to death, so those plans got shelved. Now the Passap and Brother are no longer being made. In fact, the factories were actually torn down and replaced with what the companies felt would be more profitable endeavors. Now, as far as I know, the only machines still being made are the Silver Reed.and the Artisan and there is very little support for them, which is a shame because knitting machines are a barrel of fun. By the way, it's not cheating. Machine knitting is a whole unique craft unto itself.

I stopped machine knitting around 2003. I seriously injured my back, resulting in surgery for a burst disk. I wasn't allowed to use my knitting machines for several months. I just never got back to it after that. One of these days I hope to find, or make, the time to get back to it.

In the meantime, I have decided to put the few machine knitting patterns I wrote up on my free knitting pattern site. I'm starting with this one, the Pillow Car.

The idea I had behind this toy is something little guys could play with that would be relatively quiet and could be used for a pillow when nap time rolled around. It's about 10 inches long and the little passengers are 5 inches tall. It's written for the 4.5mm Standard Gauge machine and made with 3/15 weight (fingering) acrylic yarn. It's designed to be completely machine washable and safe for babies. If you happen to be interested, the pattern can be found on the Beadknitter Patterns site. And just so you know, I am working on a hand knit version of this toy.

So, how was your Mothers Day? Mine was very nice, despite the severe lack of sunshine. Sweet Hubby took me to a Verizon store and bought me a Droid 2 for Mothers Day. He and Ruth also took me to see the movie, Thor, which I declare to be awesome. I enjoyed it a lot. After the movie we went out to dinner. I wanted steak in the worst way, but all the places around here that serve good steak were packed with 2 hour waiting lists, so we went to the Mongolian Barbeque instead. It was very tasty, and probably a lot healthier than the meal I originally planned to have. ;-)

I didn't get much in the way of crafting done over the weekend because I was playing with my new phone. First thing I did was download Angry Birds and start playing it. Now I understand why it's so popular. It's a fun, not to mention addicting, game.

Rumor has it that we are supposed to be having some really nice weather with temps getting up into the 70's. I say IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Live long and prosper. \\//

Knit Wits and Toys

Went to my Knit Wits meeting yesterday. This is a knitting group that I joined last month. It meets on the first Wednesday of the month at the Coeur d'Alene Senior Center. There's about 2 dozen members. I'm not sure, but I think I'm probably the youngest one there. I'm sure enjoying it though. I've missed being in the company of other knitters since I closed the shop.

Knit Wits is a group that knits for charity. They accept yarn donations. The yarn is brought to the meeting each month. We can pick out the yarn we want, take it with us, and bring it back as a finished project for donation. We knit at the meetings. I'm working on an afghan.

I didn't know, when I started it, just exactly what they'd be wanting, so I just pulled a couple skeins of yarn out of my closet and started knitting the infamous diamond dishcloth pattern. You know the one, you start out with 4 sts, increase at the beginning of every row until you get to the right size, then decrease every row. You end up with a square, but it's been knit diagonally. Looks kind of cool.

I've not tried it as an afghan before, so I'm kind of winging it. I'm using 2 strands of worsted weight yarn and size 13 needles. I'm over halfway done now. When I got to 130 sts across I started decreasing, so there are less sts with each row. I'm using red and white acrylic yarn. I'm anxious to get it done. I don't really enjoy knitting afghans. They need knitted or crocheted toys, so I've volunteered to fill that need. I LOVE making toys.

In fact, years ago, I used to sell machine knitting patterns for toys that I'd written and published. Here are some pictures of my designs that I found hiding on my hard drive (from when I used to have a web page). The pics aren't very good. They were taken before digital cameras, and the scans of those pictures didn't turn out as good as they would now. So I apologize for the quality.

These are Curly the bear (and Curly small), Dancing Dana (that's my daughter Ruth when she was little dancing with her), A little red car, a blue pickup truck, and 3 dolls I called Precious Friends. All of these were made on a Brother standard gauge knitting machine.