Addi-ctive

I wish I was clever enough to come up with that title, but my friend Asuka used it after seeing my new Addi Express machine in action.... and it is addictive!

Asuka is the Director of Education and Public Programs at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and had hired me to teach a couple of workshops at the Museum. For the 2nd workshop I brought the Addi machine and was so glad I did. It's hard to offer a workshop or to teach a class where you walk out with a completely finished project but it happened that night! We all walked out with finished hats having cranked out the bulk of the hat on the knitting machine. To set it up and crank it out takes probably 10 minutes tops. The most involved part is getting the work off the machine then knitting the ribbing on the bottom edge and binding off.

I first saw it in action at a trunk show the rep for Addi had at The Little Knittery and Kat and I were immediately taken with it (you can check out videos on youtube to see it in action.) After my daughter kept asking if we could get one I thought, what the heck and justified it by thinking of all the Christmas gifts we could crank out... as of yet not one :(

Here's Wilhelmina, my 6 year old working on it. It's a very simple machine to use, she has no problem doing the set up row, making the piece and taking it off by herself. The flat pieces are a little trickier but she's trying.

Here's a flat piece on the machine. Kat and I were making fingerless mitts and were getting a little frustrated with how it would sometimes skip at the ends and we would have to redo it but we weren't sure if it was our inexperience with the machine or if flat pieces are just trickier.

Here's a flat swatch and a bit of a hat showing at the top of the picture. The hat I used Misti Alpaca Chunky and it worked great. I used a 10.5 US needle for the ribbing and did a kitchener bind off. The flat piece was a lighter worsted and it worked great too. I want to work on a sweater with a lighter worsted... I think the needles on the machine are the equivalent to a US 10 or 10.5 so the lighter worsted would have a nice drape.

Here's Ursula wearing the hat she made (with a little help from mom). Again we used Misti Alpaca Chunky. For the bottom we held it together with a thin strand of something sparkly. There are a few rounds of this yarn that was like ric rac that she wanted but it was such a pain to work with we nixed it before it ruined the whole thing.


But what threw me off track with the machine and my intent to make lots of Christmas gifts was a job I had knitting for The Ellen Show last weekend. They wanted a matching hat and scarf in a bulky yarn (unfortunately the yarn was too thick for the machine.) It's always a good feeling to finish within a deadline and although I didn't get to see it a friend of mine sent me this photo and I thought it looked pretty good!

OK finally, hope everyone is having a great Holiday Season... better sign off to get cranking on some gifts! All the best in the New Year!