Knitting Machine User Manual


in this tutorial weã­re going to be learningto knit a menã­s sweater, this one here. and if youã­d like your own copy of the patternto follow along, itã­s available over on my website, iã­ve also provided a link in thevideo description below. in this tutorial weã­re going to learn aboutmeasuring and sizing for a good fit, weã­re going to learn about getting started at theneck cuff and working an icord edge which will eventually allow for the zipper, weã­regoing to learn how to work raglan increases, and then eventually separate the sleeves toknit the body of the sweater, weã­re going to learn about switching from knitting a flatpiece to knitting in the round, weã­re going to learn how to put in a zipper in our knittedwork, and weã­re going to learn how to do

some tidy finishing work. so first up weã­re going to cast on and getstarted with the ribbing. the first thing youã­ll want to do if youã­refollowing along with the menã­s sweater pattern, is youã­re going to want to take a chest measurementfor the guy youã­re knitting this for, or of yourself. so take a chest measurement, and the listingin the pattern is for an actual chest measurement. weã­ve talked about ease in tutorials before,and in this one there is two inches of positive ease. meaning there is a little bit of extra roomin the sweater.

itã­s enough so that this sweater can be wornover a shirt, very easily. so youã­ll want to go with the exact chestmeasurement. this one is knit for a 42 chest measurement,but the actual measurement of the sweater is 44. two inches of ease, like i said. so youã­ll want to determine what size youã­reknitting, and then i always suggest taking a pen or a highlighter, and going throughthe whole pattern and highlighting the numbers that youã­re going to be using for that sweatersize. otherwise youã­ll be in the middle of knittingand watching tv at the same time and youã­ll

jump to the wrong number. ask me how i know this. so that is how youã­re going to determineyour size. next up, weã­re going to look at getting started. with, umã–well, let me start here. weã­re starting at the neck cuff. the cuff of the neck is two by two ribbingand then we move into a six by one ribbing for the rest of the sweater. so weã­re going to start here with the caston number and two by two ribbing.

letã­s take a look. youã­re going to want to leave yourself along tail for the long tail cast on. and if you are confused about how much toleave, start with like a six inch tail. and wrap the yarn around the needle, likethis, for every stitch that you want to cast on. usually iã­ll wrap half or a quarter of thetotal number of cast on stitches that i need, and then just double it, quadruple it, likethat. and if you need a review of the long tailcast on, iã­ll give you a link right here. so iã­m starting with a slip knot, and iã­mgoing to cast on my stitches.

and youã­ll cast on the number that the patternsays for your size. iã­m not going to cast on the whole number,i just want to demonstrate a couple of things. first is ã± let me pull in the sweater. along the sides of the zipper, we have anicord edge. and that makes it really nice and tidy aroundthe zipper. so we have to maintain this on every row forthe first part of the sweater. and to do this, on a right side row, it saysto slip three with the yarn in back. so you have the yarn back here. you slip three stitches without working them,and you always put your needle in as if to

purl, so you donã­t twist it. then you knit the next stitch. and weã­re going to be working two by tworibbing, so iã­ll knit the next stitch as well. and then yarn forward to purl two. yarn back to knit two. yarn forward to purl two. and when i yarn forward, iã­m just pullingthe yarn, the working yarn, forward between the two needles.

and then i want to show you on the wrong sideof the work, weã­re going to slip three with yarn in front to maintain that icord edge. so i slide ã± my yarnã­s in front here. islip one two three stitches to the right needle without working them, and then i purl thenext stitch. and then iã­m just going to continue in rib,with the way that i established it in the first row. now letã­s talk a little bit about workingreally nice ribbing stitches. i have knit up a sample here, and iã­ve reallymade a mess of this. this is the six by one rib sample.

and you can see here and here, i havenã­teven pulled this apart yet. there are the purl stitches hidden in there,this isnã­t blocked, so you canã­t really see the ribbing very well. but you can obviously see that the stitchnext to the ribbing is a mess. the tension is a mess, it shouldnã­t look like that. hereã­s the nice example! you canã­t even tell where the rib stitchesare, excuse me, until i pull it apart like this. then you can see. that is nice tension in ribbing.

and i want to show you really quickly howto achieve this. some people think that if you just pull thestitches really tightly in ribbing that it will give you nice tension. thatã­s not exactly true. thereã­s a place where you want to tug tomake sure that it stays nice. and iã­m showing you this in the six by onerib because i was able to make a better example using this rib. but itã­s the same with six by one or twoby two rib, that youã­re working in the cuff. so here i am at a purl stitch. iã­ve workedsix knit stitches.

iã­m going to yarn forward and purl, and yarnback. and this is where i give the tug. right here.before i go on to the next knit stitch. now the reason that ribbing ends up lookingsloppy sometimes is itã­s the action of pulling the yarn forward or back to change from knittingto purling, that leaves a little bit of extra yarn between the two stitches, that makesthe stitches next to that look loose. let me show you again on this. iã­m going to work up to the next purl stitch. what we want to do is eliminate the yarn thatã­sdragging between the needles on the yarn forward and yarn back.

so iã­m going to yarn forward, and sometimeson this, well, usually on this iã­ll take my index finger and actually push that knotforward right there. to eliminate distance between the last stitchand the next stitch. iã­ll do that again. the last stitch was knit, so the bottom ofthe stitch is here. yarn forward, and push that forward, likethat. purl the next stitch. and iã­m going to go back to knitting now,so i yarn back, and i tug right here to eliminate drag between the two stitches.

next up, weã­re going to talk about workingthe raglan increases and placing markers. once youã­ve finished knitting the neck cuff,then weã­re ready to move on to the body of the sweater and start the raglan increases. the increases are increases that happen here,here, and the same thing in the back. and knitting a sweater like this allows usto knit the front, the sleeves, and the back all at the same time. itã­s also a way to make sure that youã­regoing to end up with a sweater that really fits well when itã­s finished because youcan try the sweater on while youã­re knitting it.

now, um, youã­ve finished the neck cuff. weã­regoing to start with placing the markers and knitting the raglan increases. and your first row is a setup row, where youã­regoing to be purling and placing the markers, so letã­s take a look. i have an itty bitty sample here. your neckcuff will be longer than this. okay. but your purling, and to place a marker, youjust need a little ring marker like this, you put it on the right needle, and you keepgoing. and thatã­s all it takes to place a marker.

and once i get to the end of this, iã­ll showyou what it looks like all together. we have four markers. this is the front, thisis actually the left front. this is a sleeve, this is the back. this is a sleeve, and this is the right front. i promise that it all works out! [laughs] and this is a right side row. and every rightside row is an increase row. iã­m still going to maintain the icord edging,so iã­m going to slip three with the yarn in back. and knit one.

and youã­ll be following your pattern here,because iã­m just going to knit because iã­m not reallyã–this sample isnã­t really bigenough to do the six by one ribbing. but youã­ll want to follow your pattern tomake sure that the ribbing stays on track. okay, so here we are. weã­re left with justone stitch left before the marker. iã­m going to do a make 1 right, and iã­lldemonstrate this more slowly in just a moment. iã­ll knit one, slip the marker, knit one,and now i do a make 1 left. those are the two increases around the marker. iã­ll work in ribbing, following the patternup to the next marker. make 1 right, knit one, slip marker, knitone, make 1 left.

let me show you the make 1 stitches a littlebetter. the make 1 is a one stitch increase, and wehave a right leaning and a left leaning version of it. we use the bar between two stitches to makethis stitch. and to do a make 1 right, we take the tipof our left needle and put it in front to back. whoops! i just did that backwards! we put it in back to front. show you again, back to front.

and we knit that stitch through the frontloop, like this. and weã­ve made a stitch where there was notone before. so make 1 right, you pick it up back to front,the bar between two stitches, and knit through the front loop. to do a make 1 left, weã­re going to takethat same bar, pick it up front to back, and knit it through the back loop. one more time. take the tip of the left needle and the barbetween the two stitches, pick it up front to back, and knit it through the back loop.

so youã­ll follow your pattern. youã­ll continueknitting in the ribbing and the raglan increases until you get to a point where the front zipperopening of the sweater is 12 inches long. weã­re going to go from knitting a flat pieceto knitting in the round. thatã­s what weã­ll cover next. now youã­ve gotten to a point in the sweaterwhere youã­ve knit the raglan increases for 12 inches, which is length of the zipper openingof the sweater. since this is a pullover, from there on downthe sweater is one piece. and itã­s not a cardigan with a zipper all the way down. so when we stop knitting a flat piece andstart knitting in the round, we need to do

something to make sure that the point wherethe bottom of the zipper is, is secure. and itã­s not just going to ã± if it was justnormal stitches, it would be a weak spot in the sweater and pull apart. so this is a little technique that i madeup to fix that. here is my itty bitty sample. and i have too many stitches on here to reallyflatten it out and show you what it looks like, but here are my four markers. the first thing i do is iã­m going to needa double pointed needle for this. iã­m going to tink back. tink is the wordknit backwards.

iã­m going to take out the last three stitchesof the last row. and put them on to this dpn. this is a little bit fiddley, but itã­s onlythree stitches! these three stitches also happen to be theicord edge that weã­ve been working. so iã­m going to hold the dpn behind the work,and line it up with the first three stitches on the left needle. the right needle is just going to hang therefor a moment. so, three stitches here, weã­re going to workwith these three stitches on this left needle. now i need the right needle. iã­m going topull it out. no, iã­d better not pull it out.

itã­s not long enough for that. iã­m going to knit the first stitch from theleft needle with the first stitch from the dpn. so i put my needle in to the front of thatstitch, then through the front of the stitch behind it, wrap it, and pull it through bothstitches. so iã­ve just combined two stitches into one. put it in to the front of the left needleã± the first stitch on the left needle. the first stitch on the dpn, wrap it and pullit through both stitches. and a third time.

now the dpns empty, we can put that away fornow. and we have a nice join here at the bottomof the zipper. next up weã­re going to talk about separatingthe sleeves. up until now weã­ve been the front, well,the two fronts of the sweater, the sleeves, and the back all at once. now weã­re at a point in the sweater wherethe body of the sweater is wide enough, and we want to separate the sleeves and reservethem to knit them later. so weã­re going to just be working on thetrunk of the body from here on out. but we need to get those sleeves separated.

so, um, letã­s just take a look. hereã­s my little sample. this is the openingfor the zipper here. and weã­ve followed the pattern to knit upto where we need to separate for the sleeves. iã­m just working to the first marker here,following my rib pattern. and when i get to the first marker, iã­m goingto leave this marker in. iã­m going to take out all of the rest of the markers in my sweater,but this is going to be the new beginning of my round, so iã­m going to leave that onein. now iã­m going to take some scrap yarn. i always use brightly colored leftover sockyarn. so i can really see it when i go to

take it out its easy to see, and itã­s alsovery fine. so my tapestry needle and my sock yarn. iã­mgoing to slide all of the sleeve stitches, which are all of the stitches after the firstmarker, on to this scrap yarn. and you always slip the stitches as if topurl. put your tapestry needle in like youã­re going to purl the stitch, and slip it on tothe needle. i do this up to the second marker, and thatmarker i want to take out. i donã­t need it anymore. okay now i can break the sock yarn, and iusually tie a little knot here to make sure [laughs] god forbid, the dogs should get ahold of it or something. i want to make sure

this sock yarn is not going to come out andleave all these stitches live. now weã­re at the underarm part of the sweater,back here at our working yarn. whoops. i lost the marker that i put here.there it is. thereã­s my marker. i want to make sure thatstays there. iã­m going to use the backwards loop caston method to cast on stitches here under the arm. and to do that, this is a way of casting onstitches when you only have one strand to work with. iã­m going to put my thumb on the yarn likethis, flip it, and just slide that loop on

to the needle. the yarn is in my palm like this. thumb onthe yarn, flip it, slide that on to the left needle. and youã­ll follow your pattern to get theright number of stitches. iã­m going to cast on four there. and now skipping all those sleeve stitches,just pretend that theyã­re not even there. just continue working the rib pattern withthe stitches that are waiting for you there and you see these sleeve stitches are juststuck here on this scrap yarn. and youã­ll continue around until you getto the next marker. slide all those stitches

on to scrap yarn until you get to the finalmarker, and then youã­ll remove those two markers, cast on using the backwards loopcast on the number of stitches your pattern tells you, and just keep going around. from there on out youã­re going to be knittingthe trunk, the body of the sweater. no more increases. you just need to maintain the rib patternas you have it set. and next up weã­re going to talk about doingthe icord bind off. in this sweater we use whatã­s called theicord bind off on the bottom of the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater, which givesit a really nice plain edge.

a lot of times youã­ll see the same ribbingthat we used at the neck cuff at the bottom of the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater,but this is more straight fitting. it doesnã­t cinch in anywhere. so iã­ll show you what icord bind off lookslike and then weã­ll take a look at how to do it. this is a little sample i knit up that weã­regoing to be using later in the tutorial. this is just a normal cast on, but this isthe icord bind off. you see itã­s just a nice rolled edge, andit doesnã­t cinch in like ribbing would. just really, really plain.

okay, hereã­s my big chunky sample so youcan see how to do it. this is just plain stockinette stitch, andthe icord bind off is going to be the same for the sleeves and the bottom of the sweater. to start out, we do a backwards loop caston on to this needle. and iã­m using dpns here, but youã­ll be usingthe circular needles or dpns that you were using. so just like the underarm casting on, weã­regoing to put three stitches on to the needle. that will get us started. we start by knitting two.

this is kind of a slow going bind off, butitã­s worth it. knit two, slip the next stitch as if to knit.meaning you put your needle in there like youã­re going to knit it, but donã­t workit. just slide it over. and then knit the next one. then youã­re going to take the stitch thatyou slipped, which is the second one in on the needle, and pass it over the other stitch,binding that off, essentially. then slide those three stitches back on tothe left needle. so thatã­s the process. you knit two, slip the next stitch as if toknit, knit one, and then pass the slipped

stitch over the last stitch on the needle,leaving you with three. slide those back on the left needle. slip one, knit one, pass it over. and then thereã­s your icord edge. this is very chunky. [laughs] you can see. next up weã­re going to talk about doing finishingwork on the sweater. i want to quickly talk about doing some nicefinishing work on the sweater. youã­ve put all this work into it so far,so we want to make sure its nice, and the last little bits you do are really nice andfinish the sweater up nicely.

the first thing that i want to talk aboutis the neck. and this is the full sized sweater. and when i was doing this, i wanted to makethe ridge between the neckline and the rest of the sweater fixed. and not something that could be loose andspread out over time and over wearing it. and so thereã­s one trick that i did, thati want to show you. if i open up the zipper. iã­ve put in this cord right between the neckcuff and the rest of the sweater. it is just this cord that has no give to it.you could also use bias tape, i suppose.

itã­s something i found in my sewing basket,i donã­t even know why i had it. but itã­s perfect for this. and i just used a regular sewing needle andregular sewing thread, no yarn or anything. to stitch this down, just grabbing a littlebit of the back of each stitch here as i went across. so that makes this fit up around the neckreally nicely and not spread out at all. just a little trick you can decide to do ifyou want it to fit like that. now i want to show youã–well, iã­ll show yousomething else now. while youã­re knitting this, youã­re probablynot seeing the rib as it is here like this.

and thatã­s because the rib doesnã­t reallyshow until you block it. an when you wash it and block it, you wantto take a measuring tape and make sure that this is being stretched out to the size thatitã­s supposed to be. and when you do that, the purl ridges willcome through and then youã­ll see the pattern in the sweater. but yours is probably all smushed up likethis right now if itã­s still unblocked. the last thing i want to show you, hereã­sthe little icord bind of sample again. i want to show you how to weave in this endand correct this gap right here. so we have our tapestry needle.

we want to connect this end of the icord tothis end. and to do that, iã­m going to take my tapestryneedle and go into a v over on this side, the first v over on this side. and when i pull that tight, that pretty muchseals it up. iã­m going to go back down into the same holei came out of, and there, that looks a lot better. but we still have a little gap underneath. to fix that iã­m just going to weave in theend, whoops, around that gap to close it up. and that looks really good. and youã­ll dothat at all the icord edges, the edges of

the sleeves and the bottom. so now you want to go ahead and block yoursweater so itã­s full size when we go to put in the zipper, coming up next. so now you have a completely knitted sweater,and the last thing we have to do is to put in a zipper. you want to go ahead and wash and block thisand set it out flat to dry before we do the zipper. we want the sweater to be the full size, blockedand everything, before we put the zipper in. and to put the zipper in iã­m using a techniquei learned from interweave knits magazine which

is really smart. itã­s a way of making the zipper into anotherknitted piece, which makes it seam really nicely into the sweater. if you are going to try to machine sew orhand sew the zipper into the sweater, it will never ever come out as well as it does withthis technique. iã­ve put a little bit of a twist on the technique.let me show you how it goes. hereã­s my little sample piece, and of coursemy sweaterã­s not finished, but the part that weã­ll be using is finished, and this is blockedto be the full size. the first thing iã­m going to do to save myselfa lot of math is to create my own ruler.

i want to look at purl bumps, so i just turnedthe sweater inside out. and i found the ribbing section here withthe purl bumps. iã­m going to take a piece of paper and markevery ã± iã­m lining up with one column of purl bumps. and mark every other purl bump along the wayhere like this. thus creating my own ruler. iã­d want to use the length of this wholepiece of paper. then i jump over here to the zipper. and if youã­re using a light colored zipperitã­s easy to see, if you use a sharpie or

something, but since iã­m using a black zipperiã­m using a white colored pencil to make the marks on the zipper. so iã­ll line this up, you can see that ialready have some marks on here. well, actually, iã­m not sure if you can seethem! but iã­ll make them darker. and i learned to go ahead and do this in sections,because the colored pencil does rub out and you end up redoing it. so iã­ll do like half the zipper, and thenmark the other half, and do the other side. but thatã­s enough for now, for demonstration.

now itã­s time you need this little tool calleda knit picker. and itã­s available at any craft store ã±i was surprised. i had never heard of one before. it is a little tiny latch hook. iã­ll putit against the black background. do you see this? black background. thereã­s this littlelatch here. a hook and a little latch. itã­s actually made for fixing snags in sweaters,but it works so well for this. so iã­m going to take the knit picker andpoke it through the first spot that i marked on the zipper.

take my working yarn. put it around the hook and then close thelatch. iã­ll pull that through. now i have a loop in my zipper. i need one thing that i donã­t have here. there we go. this is a size 7 double pointed needle thati used ã± the same size that i used for the sweater. iã­m just using this for size.

iã­m going to put it in that loop and tightenit up. now i know my loop is the right size, i canpull that out, go back to the knit picker, open the latch, put it through that loop,and poke it into the zipper in the next marked spot. take the working yarn, put it around the hook,close the latch, and pull that through. and when i pull that through i not only pullit through the zipper, but through the loop, the last loop that we made. get the double pointed needle in there andtighten it up. and make sure that itã­s tight on the backas well.

you can end up with a pretty messy lookingback of the zipper if youã­re not careful. like what i have going right here, right now. thatã­s better. back to the knit picker, open the latch, throughthe loop, poke it into the next marked spot. whoops, iã­m trying to do this with the wronghands. into the hook, close the latch, pull it through,size it with the dpn. and this is a little fiddely, but you do getinto a groove where your hands just kind of know what theyã­re doing. you donã­t haveto think about it so much. okay one more time.

okay so youã­ll want to finish this. well, let me show you what we have here, isnã­tthat awesome. little vs just like knit stitches, along thesides of the zipper. thatã­s going to make it really easy to seamit into the sweater. letã­s go back to the sweater. or the little half sweater here. so youã­ll want to use your own judgment here. put the zipper in like this. you can have it lined up so that the zipperã­scompletely hidden, or so that a little of

it shows. thatã­s up to do. it depends on how far you sew it in here,of course. so, what youã­ll want to do then, to sew thisin is to take your tapestry needle and a piece of yarn, go sideways through the first v thatyou see, and vertically through two purl bumps over here. back over here and this way through a v, andthen down and through two purl bumps over here. and you know itã­s going to work out, becausewe actually made the ruler that we used on

the zipper from the purl bumps in the sweater. so grabbing two purl bumps over here willmatch up perfectly with one of the vs over and then youã­ll want to fold these ends downand hand sew them with just a needle and sewing thread. thatã­s what i did. just tack themdown. once you get the zipper put in youã­ll probablywant to use a steam iron to smooth the whole thing out without pressing down. just use steam and then pat it out with yourhands zippers can melt under really high heat, dependingon what kind of zipper youã­re using. so just steam is fine.

good luck. [music]