First Impressions

Welcome to
Knitablogaglory !
My name is Virginia Anne, and although I am originally from Kent in the UK, I now reside in the Canary Island of Tenerife.
I qualified as a teacher of dress and design from Bath College of Education more years ago than I care to remember.
Now, for the first time in my life, I find myself with a few windows of time that I can call my own.
So, I have taken up machine knitting!! Hoorah!!
Having retired from the restaurant business in January, I set about my mission of aquiring said knitting machine and I duly went to ebay and found a Knitmaster 580, complete with a myriad of extra bits and bobs and even 150 bits of cones!
Well not knowing much about the whole machine knitting thing I thought I had made a sound purchase.
Of course the machine was in the UK and I was living in Tenerife. Not to worry I thought, I shall go over to the UK by car and bring it back. ( When I say I, I of course mean WE, Martin and I). Well a couple of months went by and I purchased a few more bits and bobs, including a chunky machine.
Well, I thought, if I was going all the way over to the UK to pick up the machine I had better make sure that I had everything that I needed.
Then in March, it was my birthday. Martin asked me what I would like and I said a passap machine and then I would really have this machine knitting thing covered.
Well a lace carriage or 2 later we made the journey by plane because we were not sure that all the stuff would fit in the car by now, and we organised shipping from Manchester to Tenerife, which only took 3 months!
Anyway, eventually it all arrived, including the hague linker and an overlocker and a small bedroom became "The Studio".

Now in the meantime I had decided that I would like to operate a mail order knitting yarn business from home selling spanish yarns. This turned out to be an amazing flop because no one wanted to pay the postage from here to anywhere so I have 2 wardrobes full of yarn now!
It was then that I embarked upon the most expensive sweater in the world for Martin. All he wanted was a zip up cardigan in black. It wasn't much to ask and he had been very understanding about all the paraphanalia that I had purchased.
Now please remember that I am living in Spain. I speak some spanish but machine knitting spanish..noooo. Which really doesn't matter because how many spanish people here use a knitting machine??? Well let's say not many!! It is after all pretty warm here most of the time. How many English speaking people here with a knitting machine? hmmm not many...well even less..no clubs to join...Yes I was on my own!!!!
It was now that the scale of what I had embarked upon dawned on me. I was like a goat between 3 bails of hay, not knowing which machine to approach first.
Luckily for me, hubby was a typewriter mechanic ( oops sorry engineer ) many moons ago and so he at least could come to my rescue when I shouted or screamed " mechanic needed" from the studio.
We first approached the box containing the passap duomatic and gingerly got it onto its stand ( somewhat incorrectly as we later found out). Then one evening after much cursing I finally exited the studio with a small piece of extremely tightly knitted stocking stitch and triumphantly placed it in Martins lap and tried it on him in various positions, as a sleeve, as a collar etc etc.
On subsequent days I produced several rows of patterns before it would refuse to knit another stitch, but my confidence was growing and the cursing became less. Martin on the other hand was by now getting impatient as I kept making scruffy samples which I saved in a plastic carrier bag.
Then he uttered those words, "lets face it darling, the machine doesnt work and you just bought a load of rubbish". It was like red rag to a bull. Just 4 days later and the black zipper cardigan was made!! ( not stitched up but knitted).
"I knew that would work," he said afterwards, "you are so predictable."
And so the first jumper was made, and the passap duomatic could stay!
More stories later but time to cook dinner.

By the way, this blog is my link to the outside knitting world so do feel free to post your experiences, patterns and suggestions.

By the way, the pictures below are some of my hand knitting projects. I love hand knitting, it is so easy to do some while the television is on and so much more sociable than being shut in the studio!