Hi all,
I am having the best day ever! As a member of the local fiber arts group, I get to borrow equipment like spinning wheels, drum carders, and books.
Today, thanks to the group, I'm playing with an Addi Express knitting machine. Its a 22 needle machine that I thought would be perfect for socks. Oh boy was I surprised when I found out it can do so much more!
Now, I have used a knitting machine before. It's an Inspiration and looks a lot more like a Sentro. Unfortunately, it was a charity shop find and doesn't really work that well.
(C) Olwen White
Although I have had some success with it, most of the projects I tried ended up as knotty noodles and in the to-be-frogged pile. Nothing dents your productivity quicker than a gadget that doesn't work properly.
These two hats are the only decent items I have made on it:
(C) Olwen White 
(C) Olwen White
Even so, I was constantly sorting out dropped stitches, skipped stitches, and general tension issues. Oh, and the lack of any kind of row counter meant I was stopping after every row to make a note of how many I had completed.
To get the two hats above I ended up changing the yarn I was using. Some knitting machines can be fussy about yarn. Up until this point I had been using Red Heart Super Saver. It was a disaster! So I tried two other yarns in my stash.
Up first was the cream and blue-grey hat. I made that one with a Caron Big Cake which I think is a size 4. It worked quite well the first time I used it. My second attempt using the same yarn wasn't as successful. Granted, it was in a different color, but... seriously... are knitting machines really so... fickle?
Next, I tried the multi-colored yarn. It turned out to be the easiest to use. It has a shiny kind of coating that made it simply glide through the Inspiration knitting machine. Unfortunately, I picked that up at a charity shop too and I think it's discontinued.
The last thing I want to do is start buying different, or specific yarn, to use a knitting machine. Besides, at some point, I'd like to use handspun. I really don't need a machine that is picky about the yarn it will work with.
Which is where the Addi Express comes in.
The instructions say it can use nearly any yarn.
So, me being me, and in the interests of science, I've put it to the test. I used 100% cotton. Unfortunately, other than knowing it's cotton, I don't have a clue what brand it is. In the time it took me to set up the machine, the label has gone walkabout.
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| (C) Olwen White |
Anyway, for the initial test, I thought I'd try a familiar pattern. I made a hat. I cast on 80 rows. The first attempt is the bigger one in the picture below.
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| (C) Olwen White |
The Addi coped without any issues at all. No glitches or skipped stitches. It just knitted. Better still - the Addi has a counter so all I had to do was turn the crank. Even better still - the larger hat took less than twenty minutes.
The finished hat also gave me an idea.
I started a crochet project a couple of months ago. It's for an amigurumi dog. The project was going great. Until I realized I'd made a bit of a rookie error.
You see that hole in the top of the dog's head? Well, that's supposed to be the bottom.. where the head gets sewn to the body. It kind of turned my project into a bit of a dog's dinner.
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| (C) Olwen White |
I didn't notice that the nose and eye patch were upside down until after I'd sewn them on. Now, I could unpick them and turn the head the right way up... but I made another hat on the Addi instead.
I cast on 40 rows for this smaller hat...
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| (C) Olwen White |
And I think it works a treat! From dog's dinner to paw-fect project in less than 10 minutes! All thanks to the Addi Express.
I'm impressed! And it's such a joy to use!
There is a book that goes with the Addi Express called Addi Express Turbo-Knitting 2 and it has instructions on making actual garments. On a knitting machine with only 22 needles!
Basically, you use the flat knitting feature and make panels that you sew into garments.
How cool is that? Some of the patterns in this book are adorable. So much so, that I feel there is a poncho in my knitting future!
Have you ever tried an Addi Knitting Machine? What did you think of it? How did you get on? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now
Olly
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