Look what I got:

Yep, a knitting machine. A Passap Duomatic 80 with all the bells and whistles. How did I come to own this?

1) Lamenting all the sock yarn I wasn’t going to be able to knit because of RSI had me investigating circular sock machines. They turned out to be very expensive new and not much cheaper second hand.

2) On the Australian Machine Knitters forum on Ravelry they began talking about how to make socks on a flat bed machine. I could even do them on the Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine, but they’d have to be done with 8ply yarn with a seam up the sides. To use my sock yarn I’d need a machine that would handle 4ply, and to do socks with no seams I’d need one with a ribber. Second hand flat bed machines were a lot cheaper than CSMs.

3) There were plenty of machines on eBay, but which one to get? I searched the internet and found that there was a lot of information available for Passaps, and they were one of the most common machines the clubs of the Machine Knitters Association used. I watched videos and browsed through discussions on Ravelry. I decided I was willing to pay more for one that didn’t need cleaning up and fixing.

4) A Passap came up on eBay. A bit pricier than others, but in the pic it was clean and all assembled, and it had all the attachments, manuals and even a ball winder thrown in. So I got Paul to bid for me, and won.

5) We drove out to Pakenham to pick it up. The lady who sold it was great – an experienced machine knitter with five other machines. She recommended a guy who fixes and services machines, and different clubs around my side of town.

The following Saturday I assembled the machine and, following the advice of the seller and Ravelry, started on the exercises in the manual. The first one was for an oven mitt, and since I didn’t really need one I just did enough rows of each section to learn the stitch or method. I couldn’t work out how to cast off, but it was late in the day by then.

The next day I did exercise two: slippers. A very simple pattern that I was tempted to skip, but by doing it I worked out how to tweak the tension to get the left edge stitches working better. I also worked out what I’d done wrong with the cast off, and this time it worked. I used up some leftover sock yarn, and liked the result so much I went ahead and knit the pair.

The next two exercises are for a jumper and skirt for a 3 year old. But I don’t have a 3 year old, friends who do would probably find it a bit too 80s, and I’d have to buy more yarn, so I’m thinking of either doing them a quarter the size, or skipping them and moving on to the tube exercise.

And a tube is exactly what I need to knit socks. But I’ll also need to learn to do short rows for he heels and toes, and the skirt tutorial covers those. Hmm. I guess I could always do enough of it to learn the technique, then frog it later.