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what knitting machine should i buy?

I normally knit by hand using wool needed for 3.5mm – 4mm needles. I want to knit childrens clothes from my own patterns punched into the machine. which machine do you reckon is suitable?

If you are a beginning machine knitter, the LK-150 is a good machine at a good price. I own one and I use it frequently. In addition, because it is lightweight, it’s portable–you can pack it up and take it with you easily.

I do not own an SK-280; I do own several standard-gauge machines, however. They do a great job and the machines themselves are compact. However, they are too heavy to be transporting around easily from place to place.

Here’s my best advice, based on many decades of hand knitting and maybe 6 years of machine knitting:

Machine knitting requires a totally different skill set from hand knitting. There is a steep learning curve between “never used a machine” and “made a jumper on my machine.” Among other things, if you want stitch patterns, you are going to make them in an entirely different way.

For example, if you want a 1 x 1 ribbed edge, you are going to have to make that ribbed edge by knitting the required number of rows, then releasing and raveling every other stitch and using a latch-hook to re-form the stitches facing in the other direction. If you want seed stitch, you will release and re-form every other stitch on every row as you knit. It’s a lot more time-consuming to do that on the machine than on the hand needles. The compensation is that the stockinette part goes very quickly, and the total time spent is much less than hand knitting a comparable garment.

If you get the SK-280, you will have a sophisticated machine that has punch-card patterning, a “knit radar” to read shaping patterns, can accommodate a ribbing attachment (another learning curve), and can accept a number of add-ons from a lace carriage to an electronic patterning device. It’s heavy and it requires clearance on all four sides for you to sit, for the carriage to be moved back and forth, and for the tension mast to work. If you have a space for it all cleared out where it can “live,” you can get many years of creative urges satisfied and a nice stack of knitted wearables. If you’re counting on using it in a corner of a room where you’ll have to put it up and take it down as other activities go on, you might want to re-think buying this heavy, space-consuming machine until you know how to use a knitting machine. There are ever so many perfectly good, barely used knitting machines living under beds because they are too heavy and bulky to drag out for just a few hours of knitting.

If you get the LK-150 (US $400–UK £265), you will have all you need to learn the basics of using a knitting machine. It’s small, it’s lighweight, and you can attach it to a kitchen counter for a couple of hours and then stick it in the broom closet, so you are more likely to get it out and use it. It will use yarn from a fine 2-ply up to DK weight. It will accommodate two colors of yarn at a time (although you do the yarn switching). It is amazingly versatile. Last spring when the knitting club went “to camp” for a 3-day “knit-in,” probably half of us–12 or 13–brought our LK-150s. One did an entrelac project, several did hand-manipulated lace or cable or faux-cable patterning, two did multi-color short-row shawls (Iris Bishop pattern http://store.dknits.com/pd-kaleidoscope-project-by-iris-bishop.cfm ), one made a circle-swirl baby blanket (Diana Sullivan pattern available here http://diananatters.blogspot.com/2009/11/swirl-round-baby-blanket-videos.html ), one made a skirt, and I’m not sure what the others were up to. I’ve made lots of baby-sized things on mine to learn how to do various techniques.

I personally own a number of machines, at least 8 and maybe more; three of them–including the LK-150–are set up right now in a room of their own.

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