Machine knit coin purse project

I love the designs by Nicola Allison of Three Magic Sheep Co.! I just came across a TikTok video tutorial she made showing how to make these sweet coin purses using a 40-pin knitting machine. Such a super cute project!

@threemagicsheepco For links to the clasp, beads, and other supplies check out my website! Link in bio Or you can head directly to my Amazon storefront: https://www.amazon.com/shop/threemagicsheepco #howto #circularknittingmachinetutorial #circularknittingmachine #sentroknittingmachine #tutorial #knittingmachinequeens #threemagicsheepco #sentro #knittingmachine ♬ Beautiful Life - Vin Music

A pocket scarf for Morgan

Last Christmas I made a reversible beanie for Morgan with the Red Heart Super Saver Zebra colorway on the outside and lined with white.

When I asked Morgan's mom for some gift ideas for this Christmas, she told me that Morgan has worn her zebra hat quite a lot throughout the past year and suggested that I make her a matching scarf for this Christmas. Challenge accepted! 

I got a few more skeins of the Zebra yarn and decided that I wanted to make a pocket scarf for Morgan. But unlike last year, when the hat knitted up like a dream, the yarn this year was being very uncooperative. I had to restart the project four times because of dropped stitches, which was frustrating, but I kept on trying because I knew this was going to be for my grandniece (if I could ever finish it!!).

During the initial failed starts, I alternated between using my Addi King and the Sentro 48, but neither one was working very well with the yarn. I finally settled on making the scarf on the Sentro and went very, verrrry slowly at first, pushing each stitch down by hand as it passed the feeder (like the technique shown in this video), to make absolutely certain that the stitches were seated properly. Then, when I had enough length completed (around 40 rows), I added some aggressive weight using the pot lid trick. The weight made the rest of the project work smoothly. (You just have to stop about every 15-20 rows to stretch the work below the pot lid and then reposition the lid closer to the top of the work to keep it high enough to keep tension on the needles.)

I knitted 320 rows, closed the tube ends, and then turned up 8 inches at each end of the scarf for the pockets and stitched the sides together using the invisible mattress stitch.

The only thing about this project that disappointed me was the way the stripes came out looking so different on the scarf than they were on the hat. The colors on the two projects do match, since it is the same colorway of the same brand of yarn, but I have to wonder if the yarn isn't being made slightly differently now than it was a year ago. (???) It's hard to say. But I hope Morgan will be happy with it! Fingers crossed!

Light, wide infinity scarf

Another quick and easy machine-knit infinity scarf. Cast on with waste yarn, then switch to project yarn and knit through the entire skein, leaving about a 60-inch tail for grafting the ends together.

I wanted this scarf to be as wide as possible, so I used the Sentro 48 to knit it. I got 252 rows from one full skein of the Lion Brand Mandala Ombre in the Chi colorway. Finished scarf is about 54 inches long.

Although Lion Brand calls this a size 4 yarn on the label, it feels more like a DK (3) weight, and this weight works into a lovely tubular scarf that will keep the wearer plenty cozy and warm despite the fiber's light weight.

You can see how to seamlessly graft the ends of the tube together by watching a tutorial video like this one, although there are many tutorials available for this technique online.

I gifted this scarf to my daughter, LadyU! 

And I made another one for Rose, whose favorite color is orange. It can be difficult to find pretty yarns that include the color orange, so this Lion Brand Mandala Ombre in the Serenity colorway jumped out at me as being a great choice. I hope she likes it!

I also knitted this one on the Sentro 48 and got 267 rows from the skein (not sure why there's such a difference in the number of rows between the different colorways). Finished scarf is also about 54 inches long.

Heart-shaped Valentine Wreath

I started working on this project on Valentine's Day itself, so I didn't finish it in time to display the wreath for the holiday this year. But I'll store it carefully so it will be ready for next year! 😆

I didn't count the rows on this project (my Sentro 40 doesn't have a counter on it), but I started with a few rows of waste yarn and then simply knitted through one entire skein of Walmart Mainstays 100% acrylic yarn in Pink Multi on medium tension. Finish off with another few rows of waste yarn before casting off from the machine. The full skein produced a knitted tube that's about 50 inches long, and I counted it having a gauge of about 4 stitches per inch, so we can do the math and estimate this tube being about 200-ish rows long. The tube from the 40-pin machine is about 6 inches wide.

To shape the wreath I used this 13.5-inch heart-shaped wreath form that I bought on Amazon. If you want to make a project like mine, any similar size wreath form should work well.

 

Full disclosure: My Sentro hated this yarn for every single stitch, but the colorway is just so fun that I kept going. (It wasn't bad enough to make me stop knitting. The machine just behaved stiffly, and I had to watch every single stitch like a hawk to make sure they were seating properly, so it was EXTREMELY slow going, but it wasn't any harder to crank than normal, so I felt safe enough to continue.) Actually, I first tried this yarn on my Addi King Size ... and the Addi hated this yarn, too. So be warned. But, dang, the finished product is just super cute!

Another reason to be irritated with this yarn is that my skein had three splice/knots all within what I estimate was the first 70 rows, which seems excessive. However, after that the rest of the skein was splice/knot free, so maybe I just picked a dud skein.

To add the knitted tube to the wreath form, I dropped one stitch on opposite sides of the tube, wrapped the tube around the wreath form, and then (using a 5mm crochet hook) joined the dropped stitches from alternating sides using a slip stitch crochet technique (catching two strands from each side at a time) similar to the technique used in this video by Shelby Acosta. (Shelby catches four strands from each side while joining, whereas I only caught two strands from each side, but otherwise the technique is the same.) The join itself adds a nice bit of contrast to the variegated yarn, so after finishing off the join I twisted it around on the wreath form until the joined stitches were visible on the front side of the wreath.

I whip-stitched the tube ends together at the bottom of the wreath, tied a few knots to secure the ends, and that was it.

Now all that's left to do is to add a hanging loop, and also to decide whether I want to add any trim pieces to make my wreath even cuter. Some white pompoms or even some silk flowers or greenery might look nice. What do you think?

Panthers Pride

I made this set to gift to the Perry Panther in our family, Daniel. These were both machine-knit. I made the scarf on my Addi King Size (46 pins), and the hat is made on my Sentro 48. The stripe pattern is based on the Years 3/4 scarves in Harry Potter. Perry High School's colors are maroon and gold, so I used Red Heart Super Saver in the Burgundy (main color) and Saffron (contrast color) colorways. I might decide to add some fringe to the scarf later.

Hat recipe on Sentro 48: Main color 30 rows. Stripes section: 2 rows contrast color; 4 rows main color; 2 rows contrast color. Finish hat by continuing in main color for another 72 rows. 110 rows total.

Scarf recipe on Addi 46: Starting/ending block 15 rows main color. Stripes section: 2 rows contrast color; 6 rows main color; 2 rows contrast color. Large block 30 rows main color. Repeat alternating sections of "stripes section" and "large block" five more times (for a total of six large blocks), ending with a "stripes section." Repeat "starting/ending block" to finish. 280 rows total. (Can add more large block sections alternating with stripes sections for a longer scarf, if desired.)

Perry High School's team colors are very similar to Gryffindor House. 😊

 

Sparkle Pumpkin

The Taylor Lynn YouTube tutorial at this link suggests 45 rows for pumpkins made on the Sentro 40, but I made this one 52 rows tall because that was how many rows it took to use up the small hank of this yarn I had on hand. I mean, after all, real pumpkins come in all shapes and sizes, so why not add a few extra rows to this one? 😉

I wasn't sure how this metallic yarn would work in my machine (wasn't sure if the metallic filament would get separated/tangled in the needles, etc.), but the yarn ran through perfectly smoothly. In fact, I'm used to having to constantly monitor the stitches on my machine to make sure none has dropped (because my machine ALWAYS drops at least one stitch during every project), but this yarn ran through without one single stitch dropping. Amazing!

Finished it off with half of a cinnamon stick for a stem. I think the green color will make a nice contrast to more traditional color pumpkins in my fall display.

Update 10/20/2022: Two years later and I'm still tinkering with this pumpkin. 😊 I decided to crochet a stem to replace the cinnamon stick, figuring that the crocheted stem would fit the scale of the pumpkin better and also be child-friendly. The stem is made with a small amount of Big Twist yarn in the Taupe colorway. And then I went on and added some curly vines, one in Taupe, one in Red Heart Super Saver in Saffron, and one in a double strand of Fixler Brothers Quick Knit Sport in 018 (yellow). How you like me NOW?!? 😂

Montie's scarf, Chapter 2

I made Montie's first scarf in 2009, which was in my days Before Ravelry (I joined Ravelry on Dec. 1, 2010), so I don't have a Ravelry project page for it. Even so, Montie's scarf was based on my free pattern for Knitted School Scarf based on Harry Potter Hogwarts House Colors, which also existed in my days Before Ravelry. But Montie being Montie, he wanted to put his OWN spin on his scarf, so his request was that I make the stripe sections on each end with three bands of contrasting color while the middle sections have the usual stripe sections with two contrasting bands. He also wanted the contrast stripes to be a bit wider than in the original pattern.

Fast-forward after 11 years of wear and tear and Montie's original scarf (on the left in the above photo) was starting to look a bit ratty with woven ends popping out of place. (This is the one thing I hate about knitting vs. crochet - it's so much easier to keep ends buried in crochet but harder to keep them hidden away in knitting.) I wanted to make a new one for him with the same colors and stripe pattern, except I wanted the new one to be made in a tubular knit style (where the ends can be totally hidden inside!!). You can see the ends poking out of Montie's original scarf in the photo below.

Fortunately Caron still makes the same Dark Country Blue and Sunshine yellow colorways that I used 11 years ago to make the original scarf, so the new one will look nearly identical.

The only difficulty with wanting to reknit another scarf for Montie is how much knitting hurts my hands anymore. So I thought the Sentro knitting machine might be able to help me with this project. I know there are videos on YouTube (like this one and this one, for example) for how to make jogless color changes on the knitting machine, but I haven't figured that technique out yet so I worked this scarf with standard/stepped color changes. I figure I can always make Montie another scarf later when my knitting machine skills are more advanced. 😆

On my first attempt to make the new scarf with the knitting machine I followed the same row counts from the written pattern: I cast on several rows with a waste yarn before starting the first scarf row in blue. I worked a half-height block of 24 rows then a three-stripe section (4 rows in yellow / 6 rows in blue / 4 rows yellow / 6 rows blue / 4 rows yellow). Next a full-height block of 48 rows in blue. Then a two-stripe section (4 rows yellow / 6 rows blue / 4 rows yellow). Then alternated a full-height block in blue followed by a two-stripe section three more times. One more full-height block in blue followed by a three-stripe section and ending with a half-height block in blue. To finish, secure all color changes with knots on the inside of the tube; flat-close the ends of the tube; and secure any remaining ends inside the tube. Scarf is 454 rows total.

Unfortunately at this gauge the 454 rows turned out a scarf that was about 114 inches long, or nearly 9.5 feet. LOL!!! Montie is about 74 inches tall, sooooo ... this scarf is about 3.5 feet too long for him. Bah-ha-ha!

Amazingly, it only took about 4 hours to knit that length on the machine. (And the only reason it took that long was because I was working slowly to be careful with all the color changes and to keep a close eye on it for dropped stitches because this Sentro tries to drop stitches fairly often.) But clearly I was going to have to try again to get the scarf to a more manageable length. The machine produced a fabric of about 4 rows per inch, so to get a finished scarf of a length that's in the ballpark of 74 inches or so I was going to have to fit all the stripes into roughly 300 rows (300/4=75 inches).

My brain doesn't like to math very much, so it took me a couple of days of mulling to come up with a new set of row counts to rework the scarf on the knitting machine. My new plan is to start with a half-height block in blue (16 rows); then a three-stripe section of 2 yellow, 4 blue, 2 yellow, 4 blue, 2 yellow (14 rows); then a full block in blue (32 rows); then a two-stripe section of 2 yellow, 4 blue, 2 yellow (8 rows); [repeat the full block/two-stripes section four more times] (160 rows); one more full block (32 rows); a three-stripe section (14 rows); and lastly a half-block (16 rows). This adds up to 292 rows, which should result in a scarf that's close to 74 inches long.

It took about 2.5 hours to knit the scarf the second time. There is one spot when I was about 3/4 of the way through where I dropped a stitch and didn't see it until a few rows later when the big run opened up. I was about to scream and throw everything into my "to work on again later" pile, but I watched two videos that show how to fix a dropped stitch, this one and this one. I used the crochet hook method in the second video, but you can see in my photo that the fix turned out a little funky. Oh well - this is literally only my second knitting machine project, so I'm not going to freak out over a minor imperfection.

My first machine-knit infinity scarf / cowl

I’m so excited! After lurking for months on various machine knitting Facebook groups and absorbing lots of helpful wisdom and tips, I finally took the plunge and bought my first knitting machine, a Sentro 40. 

I selected the 40-pin machine as my entry point into the machine knitting world because it was affordably priced, and I think its size is a good compromise between the biggest machines and the tiny machines. I’m also glad I spent months studying the experiences of others via the Facebook groups and also YouTube because that knowledge made it possible for me to hit the ground running (or if not running then at least walking) rather than to have to stumble through the learning curve that these machines invariably have.

My Sentro arrived yesterday, so as soon as I got off from work I assembled the pieces (i.e., put the legs on) and started cranking through one of the little sample balls of yarn that came with it. I already knew the trick for how to cast on because of my earlier research. 😊 On that first run-through I wasn’t paying attention to whether stitches were dropping (many of them did); I was just trying it out and having fun.

 

This infinity scarf (or cowl if worn double-wrapped) is the second thing I did with my Sentro. I cast on with the gray yarn, but I decided later that it would have been smarter to have cast on with waste yarn because that would give a neater starting edge. Mental note for next time. 😉 Jojo Juju (one of the goddesses of machine knitting on YouTube) recommends about 4-6 rows of waste yarn at the beginning and end of most projects. 

I was a lot more careful about watching for dropped stitches this time. I don’t have enough experience yet to say for sure whether the Sentro was dropping so many stitches because of the yarn I was using, or because of the way I was cranking it (my tension or whatever), or because that’s just a quirk of the Sentro. Time will tell. But even having to stop several times on just about every row to pick up dropped stitches (this video shows one method for how to correct it), it literally took less than two hours of work TOTAL from start to finish to whip out this entire project, which used all of a 315-yard skein of Caron Simply Soft. TWO. HOURS. Including the finishing work. These machines are basically miraculous.

I finished and joined the edges with the faux turban twist knot join used in all those trendy turban head-wrap patterns, like this one. The full skein of yarn yielded a tubular scarf that’s about 6 inches wide (laid flat) by about 60 inches long. I didn’t count how many rows that is (the 40-pin Sentro doesn't come with a row counter); I just used the full skein of yarn.

Which brings me to another, much more personal point about why I wanted to try working with a knitting machine: Chronic joint pain in my hands and arms has gotten bad enough over time that it has become nearly impossible for me to finish any yarncraft projects anymore. I would start a project, work on it for a couple of days, and then have to set it aside for several weeks while I waited for my hands and arms to recover before I could even think about continuing. As you can imagine, this makes for really slow going. But I think having a tool like this knitting machine will make it possible for me to keep creating, which is what I want to do, despite my disability.