A recycled lifestyle…

Some time last year I posted a comment over on “Casaubon’s Book” to the effect that I needed to learn to spin and also to machine-knit. The spinning I cracked fairly soon afterwards, and have enjoyed so much that I’m saving very hard to add a brand-new (handmade) spinning wheel to my stable of workshop tools, now that I have a clear idea of what kind of spinning I like best and what features will be most useful. But the machine-knitting was proving a little harder to get to grips with. I tried contacting the nearest machine-knitting group I could find online, but they’re 30 miles away, which is too far to go on a regular basis, and they didn’t know of anyone closer.

But on Saturday, on my way back from the monthly Weavers, Spinners & Dyers Guild meeting, my elderly Louet wheel fell over in the back of the car and smashed an already-cracked demijohn that was awaiting its final trip to the Tip. So I popped it straight down there whilst the engine was still warm. And there sat a battered box containing a Singer Designer 2 knitting machine… naturally it had to come home with me. It’s so much less complicated than any of the other full-size machines I’ve seen that at first I thought half of it was missing. But the instruction book listed the parts, and there they all were. And this machine is extremely simple; it’s probably not very versatile, but who cares? I can work it! It’s just one step up from my Simpleframe knitter; basically the same, a bit bigger, with a carriage!  No complicated tension devices or impossibly-intricate storage cases which you can never shut again, just a bed, a counter, a carriage and a few straightforward weights, combs and hooks. I’d made a scarf out of scrap yarn within a couple of hours of getting it out of the box…

Now I know I will eventually be able to master those great complicated beasties up in my loft (a Passap and a Toyota, with hundreds of bits and manuals and pattern books) as I’m beginning to understand what’s going on and how. But in the meantime, I have a tool with which I can churn out simple scarves & jumpers that I can embellish with other techniques, and maybe one day I can use it to help other people in the same position.

I never cease to be amazed how things work out…