Ohhh...Brother!!!!

 This is the Brother knitting machine that was hoisted upon me by my well meaning Aunt.  I didn't ask for it, she just gave it to me.  I'm sure there is a story about it somewhere.  I feel a weird about getting them, (this one and one that does lace as well as a rib attachment), because they are VERY nice and in perfect condition and probably worth some good coin.  I'm guessing she asked her three daughters and they all said no.  My mom had one and since I (somewhat) knit she decided to gift it to me. I am so amazingly grateful for it.  After sitting at my mothers house for untold years while our construction went on, my mom, who was tired of them being at her house in Utah brought them to my house in California when she brought me some antique furniture.

My mom was going to teach me how to use it when she last visited but she happened to come while we were in our winter quarantine and she got really sick.  I mean really sick.  My sister who came a week later and missed the epidemic of stuffy noses helped me figure it out.  We did it mostly by ourselves, some Youtube videos, the books that came with it and when were were about to give up...we called Mom.

After my sister went home I had one more week of unexpected winter break (long story, end lesson... read the bulletins from school more closely) so I locked myself away and got to work.  I was trying to use the knit leader that went with it but couldn't get the gauge right.  There was a lot of converting to metrics, measuring and bad word choices by the time I realized I didn't need it.

I have this wonderful book, "A Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns", and boy is it handy!  After some measuring, math and some prayers I made all the parts in three days.  I did some more research to learn how to do the seams.  I'm not very good at seamng seeing how I rarely get that far.  All my knowledge of seaming is academic at best.  I put it all together and realized I forgot about the ease.  I wanted to put in a zipper but without the ease it wont work so I need to do button bands.

I wanted to have something nice for the edges and wanted to use some of my hand spun.  I had this very warm alpaca scarf that I spun and knit severally years back that had a couple holes in it and I almost never wore.  So I undid it and worked the edges in Icord.

The button bands were quite the conundrum.  Mainly because I didn't have buttons and I wasn't sure how to proceed.  Fortunately, Saturday my spinning guild meeting and those women are GENIUSES! They always can help me out.  I decided, after some consultation, to do a 2 inch 2x2 rib button band with the red then crochet along the outer edge with the brown to tie it in as well as making the button holes for additional inches since it barely goes across my front.

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Today I was able to spend a lovely half hour in the sewing store with actual money and purchased some wooden buttons to go on. Hopefully, if all goes well, it will be done this month.  

One (almost) down, dozens to go!