Knitting machines with 22 needles are the perfect size to knit cozies to cover a CPAP air hose.
I didn't precisely count the rows on this project on the Sentro 22, but it's pretty close to 390 rows of knitting (about 72 inches) with a few rounds of SC (5.5mm hook) on each end for stability.
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| Red Heart Super Saver Neon Stripes colorway |
I'll probably also add two straps with ends secured by small buttons at one end of the cozy so the straps can hold the wearer's mask end of the hose up close to the mask to keep the cozy from slipping down during use.
It only took about an hour to machine knit this piece. Attempting to knit the same thing by hand would have taken me weeks (and probably at least 12 hours) of work. So having a knitting machine available is a huge help to me for projects like this. I do love to hand knit (and there are lovely stitches you can hand knit that a machine like this will never be able to replicate), but I have chronic pain issues that severely limit how much hand knitting I can do.
**UPDATE**
I knitted another one of these using the Red Heart Super Saver Jumbo Stripes in the Bright Stripe colorway on my Addi 22, which has a row counter on it (hallelujah!!). On the Addi, I was getting about 5 rows per inch. At that gauge, it takes 360 rows to make a 72-inch-long tube, so that's how many rows I made the Bright Stripe cozy, plus leaving extra yarn at each end to crochet the edging and straps. (I forgot that I usually prefer to make the tubes more like 74 inches long to better fit the CPAP air hose ... so in that case the knitted tube should have been 370 rows. Mental note for next time!!)
Making a tube this long works best if you can mount your knitting machine on a table where the work can hang free down the middle, such as my Workmate table shown in the photos. Even at that height, I still had to tuck in the end of the tube for about the last 100 rows to keep it from dragging on the floor.
The mask-end straps are each 16 chains long, then slip stitch back across the chain to reinforce.
The colors are pretty similar between the Neon Stripes and the Bright Stripe colorways, but I think I like the Bright Stripe better because it doesn't have a black band in between every other color stripe. I guess whichever one would be better just depends on what you want your project to look like. They are both fun and funky colorways.