Have a safe trip home. Will you be bringing the knitting machine home in carry-on baggage?

yes - ditto here - if it's bolted to a table, does that mean you only get to play with it when you are off in the hinterland? or will it be coming home? (p.s. uh-oh he's already in the 'rejection of mom's handmade garments' phase. that can be dangerous!!)

Ooooooooo, does this mean we'll be seeing you on Sunday? I feel the pain of your sad mom moment. Send Stefan to prep school where he'll be forced to dress up every day. That'll teach him. ;)

Gute Heimreise, Alison!
The vests are very cute and the boys look great in them with the white roll-neck-shirts underneath.
Don't worry about Stefans "no's". It might have been to hot for him that very moment. Try again, he will probably have forgotten about his protest. Could you take the knitting-machine home with you ? If you cannot find general instructions, maybe I can try and find some for you in a local knitting-machine store.

So glad the knitting machine is up and running. But oh no! You're leaving? Looks like a few yarn packages will be following the jet plane after a layover in Germany :-(

Have a safe trip!

Hey Alison! Thanks for your live-from-your-vacation posts. Have an easy trip home.

Safe trip home, how cool about the knitting machine. When do you get to go back and play with it some more?

ah, knitwear rejection

looks like it might be time to tack any of these words onto the word sweater--

train! (or variants)
car!
boat!
airplane!

i.e., "Look Benny! Here's your train conductor vest!"

Sometimes it works... :-)

oop, I meant Stefan--my bad!

Knitting machine cast off. Could it be like the Bond USM ? To cast off on a Bond you use a special hook and it is done by hand with the hook.

I have experienced the "no, that's too itchy or I don't like it," a couple times. Hard mommy moment for sure! But it's fun when they get older and can help pick out what they like.
This is probably a dumb question, but where do you purchase Phildar yarns from? Do you order from other countries? I love their children's patterns!

Hi Alison--

you might be able to find some machine knitting books at the library when you get back. There's a sort of funky intro one written by Hazel Pope? or Hazel Carter? which has good basic information. You might also like "Hand-Manipulated Stitches for Machine KNitters", and Susanna Lewis' book on machine knitted fabric. I also have a knitting machine manual I could xerox for you; it wouldn't be quite accurate but much of the info would be applicable to your machine. There are at least as many ways to cast off by machine as there are by hand. The problem I had most often was getting the bind of too tight.

Glad to hear about your tip for ribbing-- that's exactly what I started doing though I extended the difference to all my purl stitches. This method was confirmed by several expert knitters at SOAR this week so further adjustments are probably a matter of my personal tension. Have a safe trip home!

We're back and the knitting machine is still bolted to a table in the in-laws basement. They want to bring it over when they come next year to visit. So, I've got until then to read up on machine knitting. I was able to read through the original manual, but it wasn't very specific about binding off. It mentioned moving the stitches from one needle to the next and sounded like what you describe, Ruth. Thanks Carrie, for the book tips. I'll see if I can find anything in the library and if not there, I can order a book online. Inga, you have all the best stores by you - a machine knitting store?! Wow! If they know of a good general guide to machine knitting, I would be interested.

Amber, you can find Phildar yarns at www.knitntyme.com or www.breiweb.nl. I know of people who have ordered from both and haven't had any problems (the owners of the Dutch site speak english).