Wicked Woollies blog now has a new home, however, this home will continue to exist in its current form. New posts will now be on the new site.
My computer recently failed but now I have built a lovely new computer and I have even managed to learn how to upload photos from my pc to my Instagram account. The new site will allow me to learn to create a nice new blog without adverts.
so please come and find me in the near future at
Before you attempt to make any ‘proper’ garments, you need to practice. This is good for several reasons. Firstly, you need to check that the machine is in working order… are all the needles working etc. Second, you need to learn how to use the machine. Third you need to test different types of yarns in the machine. Fourthly, you need to try out different stitches and patterns to see how they look.
In order to do this on a budget, you need to find some cheaper yarn to practice with. You can also use left-over yarn for ‘waste’ yarn. Waste yarn is used to protect the main yarn of the garment. It is usually used for casting on and casting off (binding off).
The cheapest type of yarn is usually acrylic. This is a light-weight man-made yarn that can look and feel like wool. Cotton is the next cheapest, and this is natural and can be stiff, heavy. A cotton/acrylic mixture is a very nice yarn to work with. Wool is the natural fibre spun from the coats of various animals, the most common being lambs/sheep and alpaca. Some people, like me, are sensitive to wool and cannot wear or work with it. Wool is more expensive to buy but there are wool/acrylic mixtures that make it more affordable. Cashmere is a yarn made from a special type of goat and is very expensive, but very luxurious to wear.
The best yarns for practice are acrylic and acrylic mixtures. If you look on Ebay you can find a good range, but the postage costs soon mount up. You may be able to find a job-lot of yarn at a suitable price near enough to collect (Try gumtree, ebay etc). However, it may take time to find it.
For most knitting machines, you will be looking for yarn on a cone as this is the most suitable type of yarn for most knitting machines. This also means that you have a lot of yarn that will not run out in the middle of your knitting. These cones can be put on the knitting table behind the machine, but the best place is down on the floor behind the machine. This gives more time for the yarn to smooth out before it gets into the mast. I put my yarn on a small plank of wood, raised off the ground. This stops my feet from knocking over the cones.
Small ball of hand knitting yarns are only suitable for simple types of machines like the Bond knitting machine or the Silver Reed LK150. If you have a mid-gauge or chunky simple machine and balls of hand-knitting yarn that you want to use, you need to rewind the balls of yarn into’cakes’. You do this with the help of a wool winder. The standard type of wool winder will rewind balls up to 100g. The resulting cakes can be used with your machine by taking out the thread from the middle of the cake and threading this into mast/carriage.
If you have purchased a mixed pack of cones and you find them too thin for your type of machine, you can use a twisting stack to twist 2 or 3 yarns together. You will need to put the stack and cones on the floor. My next post will give more details about yarns and thickness to help you to decide what yarns to twist. I twisting stack will allow you to twist up to 3 yarns. I have two so that I can twist waste yarn with my main yarn, or I can do fairisle with two colours.
I have a large/jumbo wool winder that I got cheaply on the Internet and love it. I buy large cones of yarn from BSK and wind off some onto a spare plastic ‘hat’ (also known as bobbin) and twist them together using my Hague twisting stack. I would get at least one more spare ‘hats’ or ‘bobbins’. (Alternatively you could tape some card around the hat and then take this off and slip on another spare empty cone!).
Best Practice Yarn Option:
I highly recommend going to Yeoman Yarns and choosing one of their starter packs of yarn. They cost £30 for 4 kilos and £35 for 6 kilos. The yarn is good quality and this is a fantastic deal as postage is free to UK.
You should specify your type of knitting machine and thickness of yarn needed. You can try and get your favourite colours, but this is practice yarn so colour does not really matter. However, I would ask to not have black or dark blue if you do not have good eyesight. You will not get everything you want as it depends upon what they have in stock, but they will try to meet your needs.
You will also notice that they have other 4 kilo and 6 kilo packs of specific type of yarn. For example, you can get a chunky/aran yarn pack for £45 and you can specify your favourite colours. These packs are a little more expensive but they are ideal for your next pack to try and make some garments.
Additionally fine gauge and standard gauge machine knitters can also buy thin industrial acrylic in cheap packs at BSK. BSK has clearance packs of coned yarn from 2 kilos to 10 kilos. The costs range from £11.00 to £42.00. You would have to pay postage, but if you were buying more yarn, spare needles, long brush etc you get free postage to the UK if your order is over £50. They have a good range of industrial acrylic and cotton/acrylic mixes as well as bramwell yarn, yeoman yarn, and some fancy yarns. I like to buy a stash of yarn from BSK each year. I particularly like their cotton/acrylic mix and hope that they get some more in.
So order some yarn and lets get ready to do some knitting.
Many of the domestic knitting machines contain a needle retaining bar also known as the sponge-bar. Passaps, Superbas, some plastic bed machines and some really old machines did not have a sponge bar. Check if your machine has one.
The sponge-bar is a long metal metal bar that contains a strip of foam that holds down the needles. The needles will not knit properly without a sponge-bar in good condition.
The manuals do not seem to mention anything about the sponge-bar. The sponge-bar on a Japanese metal bed knitting machine is found in a channel near the front of the machine. You need to pull or push the bar out of the channel. In the picture above, I pushed from the left side using a wooden chopstick until it was long enough to pull from the right side. You need enough space to do this. You can then check the sponge. Does it still have some height in spring in it? If not then it is time to replace the sponge. Remember to replace the bar with the sponge side down on top of the needles (use a ruler to hold down the needles as you push it in).
The sponge in these bars will decay with use, contact with oil and with UV light. This means that you will usually get between 4 – 6 months of use from a sponge depending upon how much you use the machine. You should not knit with a collapsed sponge as you can damage the needles and the carriage.
A good sponge should still have a good depth above the metal bar.
This bar shows how the sponge has collapsed down to the bar and needs replacing.
Word of warming. My cat Jenson looks cute lying on my clean covers but heavy objects can collapse a sponge bar. My sponge bar lasted 24 hours!! nothing knitted. It was flattened. It took a week to get a bit of spring back into it, but I have replaced it with a new one. Lesson learned. I am now putting lightweight, empty cardboard boxes on my covers to see if that stops him! If you have any other ideas, please add them in the comments.
Replacing the Sponge
There was little information on how to do this when I started looking a couple of years ago. Fortunately I found a site that not only sells good quality kits, but also provide detailed information on how to replace the sponge.
You can buy Zuusco sponge kits for Knitmaster/Silver Reed, Brother and Toyota machines from XenaKnits here. I made a mistake the first time I bought a sponge and had to start again. I recommend buying a double pack just in case.
This page details how you remove the old sponge and fit the new sponge. There is text, images and a fantastic video that I recommend watching.
You will need a flat-head screwdriver, some sticky tape glue remover (I use goo gone from Amazon), scissors, an old rag, cotton buds and a steam iron.
I do this on my ironing board which has been covered with plastic, newspaper and an old duvet cover… it can be messy. It can take a while and a lot of effort to get the metal clean.
In the UK there is also another option for machine knitters who do not want to or cannot change the sponge themselves every 4-6 monts. Robert Fountain runs a small company called Smartco, based near Manchester, that produces covered sponge bars that will last about 4 years.
As UV light and oil from the needles increases the decay of the sponges, he has developed a covered sponge-bar, that will not rot. The cover protects the sponge thus enabling it to have a life close to 4 years. It is not recommended to keep the bar in for more than 4 years as the sponge will wear out eventually.
The bars cost £16 for a fine/standard gauge machine and £19 for a mid-gauge/chunky machine. Postage costs about £8 in the UK and you can get up to 4 sponge-bars for this cost, so you might want to consider getting one with another knitter. Thus, although the sponge-bars cost more initially, they are cheaper in the long run. And they save you all that mess and hard work and the cost of the glue remover.
Robert (also known as SpongebarBob) does not have a website but he does have a Facebook page. Robert also sells knitting machines, parts and accessories so it is worthwhile giving him a ring to find out more. To place an order ring Robert on 0161 624 0757. He is very friendly. I have just ordered one and will keep you updated on its progress, although I need to use my old sponge-bar first. A good excuse for lots of knitting!
Hi, I am Carol and live with my cat Jenson. Finding myself with time on my hands and needing a challenge, I decided to learn the old art of Machine Knitting. I have been researching into machine knitting, learning what I can and looking for bargains. I am recording my progress, good and bad, in this blog for me and anyone else to learn from. I am also creating a contents list of useful posts to act as a beginners guide to machine knitting.
I used to knit and crochet when I was young, but stopped once I started work, probably because I had less time but more money to just buy my clothes. Now without unemployment, I have decided that 2019 is the year to get to grips with my long term ambition to add machine knitting to my list of crafty hobbies. My dreams are full of beautiful garments for me and my family (hoping this will come true). However, I now have to do this on a tight budget.
I bought and used 3 knitting machines in the 1980s. I had a Bond knitting machine, a Singer 90, and a Knitmaster 370. This fine gauge machine was bought second-hand. I had to go up to Scotland to get it. Unfortunately when I tried to use this machine in 2017 it got damaged and I found it difficult to find spare parts cheaply because of its rarity. I also found the lack of fine knit patterns and information a problem. So, in 2018, I started to look for a machine more suited to a beginner on a budget. It took some time but I did find some great bargains and now have a Knitmaster 700 punchcard and a Knitmaster 550 electronic and a range of interesting accessories and old cones of yarn. I found that the punchcard was simpler and easier to used and therefore more suitable for a beginner. After spending time learning the basics techniques, I created a simple jumper for my mum for Xmas. This got me hooked and now I am ready to fully embrace this hobby and expand my skills.
I want to make this site a place to hold all the useful knowledge and resources that I come across. This will help me to refer back to this knowledge in a quick and easy way. I hope to add information about knitting techniques and some basic patterns. I will also add blogs about my progress and the garments that I am making.
I am hoping that the knowledge and wisdom that I acquire may also prove useful to any other beginners that come across this information. I know that there is a HUGE learning curve to using a machine. Just getting the machine to work can be a problem, especially with old second-hand machines.
So let the adventure begin!
WickedWoollies 