Tag: Addi Express Professional Knitting Machine

Hannah and the CoalBear: Chickenitis becomes Crankitis

Hi. I’m Hannah.

Do you see this nice little blanket that the Mother of Cats made for me?

The Mother of Cats was cleaning up the yarn stash and found a little bin with all of these crocheted squares. Here’s the thing: the Mother of Cats had been knitting a chicken out of Noro wool yarn, and I wanted to help her… like a lot!!! I kept climbing into her lap so I could give the yarn a good grooming, and she just WOULDN’T let me help her the way I wanted!!!! I just love, love that wool yarn! The little squares that she found were made with the same type of yarn, so…

She crocheted the squares together one evening to make this blanket!!

The Mother of Cats has been knitting some chickens; she has two finished but not sewn and stuffed yet. Kind of cute colors, right?

These chickens look a little sad, don’t they. Sad, unstuffed chickies.

Why aren’t those chickens stuffed yet? Well… it is because of the knitting machines that the Mother of Cats bought. The new machine is large enough to make a hat.

The Sentro machine is the one that she uses to make the hats. Lots and lots of hats. The machine works when you turn this little crank on the side, and she has been cranking and cranking like crazy during the heat of the day. I hate the heat, so I just sleep on the coffee table next to the machine while she works. Hey, there is a fan blowing on the table! The Mother of Cats just needs to work around me because I am so cute, and I also have claws! Not that I would ever use the claws on the Mother of Cats… Anyway, she is making a couple of these hats every day and they are starting to pile up in the donation boxes. I like the hat machine, even if it gets used on my coffee table, because there is a lot of potential for fun.

It has a string hanging down under it that waggles around while she turns the crank. Yay! Cat toy!!!

This weekend the Mother of Cats pulled out the little knitting machine and spent hours trying to make some wrist warmers. It got a little ugly. She couldn’t get the machine to knit the sock yarn that she wanted to use. She watched lots of YouTube videos. She tried at least four different yarns. She hung weights on the knitted fabric attached to the machine. She forgot to give me my TUNA!!! Finally, today she tried one last yarn and bingo: it worked!!

Success! She needs to sew the stitches from the inside and the outside of the wrister together (she calls it Kitchener Stitch), but she has the lightweight wristers that she was trying to make.

She is pretty sure that she knows how to get the little machine to make more wristers, so the weekend ended up on a high note. That’s a good thing, because there certainly was a lot of cranking… the Mother of Cats has contracted CRANKITIS!!

Well, that’s all for now.

Time to hang out on my little blanket.

This is Hannah, signing off.

>^..^<

Notes from the Mother of Cats

  • Hannah’s blanket is made from the squares that I made following the pattern for the Square Scramble Sack.
  • The little knitting machine is an Addi Express Professional machine.
  • The big machine is a Sentro 48 needle machine. I bought the Sentro after seeing some hats that another Frayed Knots member had made using fingering yarn. Just what I needed! I have so much yarn in the stash that I need to get put to a good use.
  • The lighter weight yarn that worked in the Addi was Noro Silk Garden sock yarn. It is smooth, one ply yarn that isn’t very elastic. I think that it is about sport weight, but the manufacturer lists it as DK weight.
  • The Addi machine is more robust than the Sentro, but the Sentro is very easy to work with and quieter than the Addi.
  • The Addi machine is not knitting the fingering weight yarn yet, but I haven’t given up all hope. The Sentro, however, is knitting the fingering weight yarn with no issues at all. Since the Addi requires a heavier weight yarn, I tried making wristers using (duh) heavier weight yarns. I knitted with a worsted weight yarn, switched to a sportweight silk blend yarn, pulled one end of the tube up through the inside, and then closed the stitches with Kitchener stitch.

Pretty slick, right?

It’s exciting to crank away and get so much yarn that was languishing in the stash put to good use. This is fast, too. I can get a hat done in less than an hour.