After knitting on my Bond USM for a while, my interest for knitting machines just increased and I started looking for a machine that could knit finer yarns and also with a ribber. One day a friend on Facebook shared an ad for selling a Brother KH820 with a ribber and I knew that I had to have this machine. After agreeing on a price, knowing that the machine would probably weigh a lot, I asked my son to come for a drive with me and we went to pick up my “new” knitting machine. When I came home again, some trials started. After some problems and a lot of bent needles, I figured out that what probably ailed it was that it needed a new sponge bar, which was easily found on eBay. Having received this I continued to make some small projects mostly baby clothes and simple sweaters, and I absolutely loved my new tool.
Now many projects are being knitted on this machine and my latest creation are these mittens. I made three pairs, one in the yarn Mini Alpakka (Sandnes garn) with the blue pattern colour in Alpakka royal ( Mayflower ). The green one in Yeoman Yarn Sport 4 ply and the third in Mini Alpakka (Sandnes garn) with the yellow pattern colour in Estelle by Permin
The patterns are a Brother knitting machine standard punch card pattern and two patterns that I have modified from old Icelandic pattern shown in the book Ornaments and Patterns in Iceland. A wonderful book where old Icelandic ornaments from the 17th, 18th and 19th century have been collected and as it says in the book “ to be used freely by creative people who wish to understand symbolic values and the divinity of symmetry.” ( Sjonabok) This view on symmetry as being divine does touch a string in me as an engineer and it encourages me to continue on with my very symmetric mindset in my designs.
I look forward to continue sharing more of these easy to make designs along with yarn suggestions and video tutorials with all of you through this web-page kwl.is Eventually the database will grow and one will be able to search for sizes, yarn and even knitting machine used in the designs.
The Blue and white mittens are knitted with fair isle using card number 17 that came with my Brother knitting machine. The other two are made with designs from the book Ornaments and Patterns found in Iceland. I cast on with tension 1/1 and hang the small cast on comb and two large wights. I have used 3 rows of selvedge for this project before knitting the required rows of rib.
After transferring all the stitches from the ribber to the needle bed of the knitter the knitting machine is set to knit fair isle. The required rows of knitting up to the thumb are done and then 12 stitches are knitted on a different color of yarn for making the thumb later on and these stitches are then knitted again in the pattern. Make sure that the carriage is on the opposite side when you hand knit those stitches for the thumb.
Continue with the remaining rows of fair isle knitting. The decreasing of stitches is done by first using the 2x transfer tool to move every third stitch to the adjacent stitch, set the tension to one lower than your knitting tension and knit two rows. The next decreasing is by taking every other stitch and transferring to the adjacent stitch and again lowering the tension to one lower than before, knit two rows. Cut the yarn approximately the length that is required to sow up the mitten. Gather the stitches on to the yarn and pull up tight, I use a large needle to do this, and pull the yarn twice more through the stitches so that the pulling together of the stitches becomes a bit stronger.
Next you need to pick up the stitches for the thumb. Remove the yarn used to hold the stitches. Pick up extra two stitches in the middle and add one at each end as well, you should have 28 stitches now (12 on both sides of the yarn pulled out and those 4 extra stitches that you have added at both ends of the original 12 stitches).
Rehang the project on the knitting machine, wrong side facing you.
I use a piece of cardboard on the ribber to make sure that the project does not get hung up on the pegs of the ribber while I am doing this. Now knit the rows of the thumb and decrease stitches in the same manner as for the mitten.
