My fun Friday

I spent the most amazing day machine knitting on Friday, learning from a master (Dresda on Ravelry) who lives quite near to me in a charming converted two room schoolhouse. Her knitting room is in the old teacher's room above the front entry. I noticed there was an open grill between the back wall of the teacher's room and the former classroom below. Miss Smith would miss NOTHING that went on, even when she was upstairs and well out of sight of her pupils. 

But I digress.  

Dresda had offered to show me how to use my U100E, a fancy shmancy device that promises to transfer stitches from the front bed to the back bed, or vice versa, or only some of them (every second one or the specific ones you tell it to transfer) in a single pass. You save precious minutes that otherwise would be spent moving one stitch at a time by hand. 

I had bought this thingy with great enthusiasm shortly after I got my Passap Duomatic 80 double bed knitting machine because: Texture! I could do interestingly patterned textured knitting on my machine! Not to mention transfer from ribbing to plain knitting easily. 

Full of hope, I tried it. Hmmm, not so easy. It transferred most of the stitches, but dropped others. And it got stuck. And I mangled a latch or two in the process. I bought 50 insurance needles. Every time I tried the U100E the same thing happened. So it went back into the box. Which apparently is the same thing that happens to most of these devices. But Dresda said that she could unlock its mysteries for me. 

 And looky! I made an ugly twisted little swatch. But: garter stitch! Rib to stockinette! Stockinette to rib! Stockinette to chosen stitches purl! This is a tour de force people!