-Bubba Knitter
Hello, I'm new to knitting myself, I honestly picked it up out of boredom but was pleasantly surprised by how entertained by it. Don't get me wrong I'm by no means a natural born knitting legend or anything like that. I'm honestly atrocious at hand knitting, mainly due to my big boxy hands and sausage fingers.
Because of this I decided instead to go for a knitting machine - no regrets at all. It was a little difficult to figure out how to cast on but it was significantly easier for me to use than trying to hand knit. When casting on i kept putting it on backwards which the machine did not like - I did this 6 times... I use a manual knitting machine in which I push the carriage along so if it's not set up right it will either jam immediately or you'll lose all your stitches.
Once I finally cast on the right way, I did about 14 rows to start the piece just to get it long enough to be able to feed the weight rack thingy through the knitting so i could weigh down the knitting as i continue. This is surprisingly important because the machines tend to be a little more finicky for tension and if the tension is wrong the pattern you're making will get all messed up. Either being smaller than intended or the pattern warped in various directions. After I got it all weighed down I set up the ribbing bed and transferred some of the stitches over to create a pattern - no special design in mind - I just shuffled 'til I thought "looks good enough" and attached the ribbing bed carriage and did a few hundred rows (can't remember how many not gonna lie). About half way through I had to raise the weight bar so the tension was maintained since it aint much use sat on the ground. Something to note - when moving the weight bar take the weights off evenly to prevent stretching as for the move itself, you needn't worry too much about the slack whilst moving it so long as you've stopped moving the carriages. Once i got the scarf to the length I wanted I transferred back to the top set of needles and then did 14 rows to finish up. I wanted it to be symmetrical. Then i finally cast off. I think it turned out pretty good (nothing wrong with tooting your own horn - self affirmation is important).
-Bubba Knitter
