Ravelings: Ich Bin Ein Knitting Machine

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In the Fall of 1998, Robbie Fanning wrote this memorable Ravelings about languishing projects and what it took to finally start finishing what she started. More and more knitters are learning the quick success that comes from using machine knitting. In fact, Shetland knitters use knitting machines to create the body and sleeves of their gorgeous Fair Isle sweaters and knit the stranded colorwork yokes by hand!

Above: Image source – Getty Image.

Read Robbie’s story, then share your thoughts on knitting machines in the comments below!

Ich Bin Ein Knitting Machine

By Robbie Fanning

In seventh grade I decided to learn to knit. My mother took me to a department store and the saleswoman taught me to knit and purl. We bought yarn for a sweater, and I plunged in. Our family traveled by car to visit relatives in the east that year and I remember obsessively knitting gray wool the entire trip. 

When we had a flat tire, I sat on a suitcase beside the busy turnpike, knitting, purling, knitting. Assembling knitted pieces, however, did not appeal. The gray sweater parts languished in a drawer for years. Nevertheless, I would periodically knit again, usually after discovering an outstanding knitter’s book, such as Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Without Tears or Ida Riley Duncan’s Knit to Fit. My knitting was always obsessive and unfinished. 

One spate occurred when my daughter and I wanted to understand knitting. Interweave publisher Linda Ligon had told me that although she had handknit all her life, she didn’t truly understand knitting until she worked her way through Jacqueline Fee’s The Sweater Workshop (Interweave Press, 1983). 

Kali and I began an oceanic, telephonic correspondence course (she’s in England). We both knitted the odd-looking tube sampler from the book. Then Kali whipped out a sweater and her husband made a hat in the colors of Newcastle United; I made a hat and scarf (unfinished) and a sweater vest (unfinished). I got stuck because I started the sweater vest so long ago, I can’t remember what I was doing. It may be too tight and too short, perhaps because I worked the gauge sample on straight needles but the sweater vest on circular needles. 

Finally Finishing

But I’ve discovered machine knitting. The technique appeals to me—and works—because I can adjust tension, knit a lot of yardage in a small amount of time, and actually finish what I make. 

As a newcomer I found the machines weird and unfamiliar, like plastic aliens with keyboards and antennas. But they are easy to understand once you grasp the fact that instead of choosing two needles in a size appropriate to your yam, as with handknitting, with machine knitting you choose an entire machine. 

Related: The AI That Tried to Learn to Knit

If you want to knit both fine baby items and heavy wool sweaters, you need two machines. I’ve been working on a babylock Baby Knit with a Bond ribber, a Studio LK-150 mid-gauge, and an old. Brother standard gauge. But now I understand that to build any pattern, hand-manipulating the same group of needles over and over is pointless when a computer can select the needles and do it effortlessly. 

What I don’t like about knitting machines is the space they take (I’m already full-up on sewing machines and sergers) and my uncertainty that a pattern shaped on the machine will fit. The beauty is that I have options other than all-machine-or-nothing. I can machine-knit some, handknit some, shape some parts, and cut-and-serge others. What I like most of all is that it’s fast. 

Related: Your Yarn Stash Needs Organization

The test came one weekend when I machine knitted a v-neck vest for my husband in three evenings. During die first two evenings I made the front and back. On the third, I joined the seams and then handknitted the rib. A study in Psychology Today found that women have a stronger urge to finish tasks than many men have (called the Theory of Closure). For me, it’s got to be fast or I don’t finish. 

Perhaps long ago I knitted so obsessively because I was afraid that if I paused, I would quit for good. Perhaps I wanted to be a knitting machine.   

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Robbi Fanning is editor/publisher of The Creative Machine Newsletter.

Originally published in Interweave Knits Fall 1998.

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