I learned to crochet when I was 10 years old from my mother. She did beautiful crochet items but never knitted and never made sweaters but did trim clothes with crochet. I taught myself to knit when I was in my 30s because I wanted to make sweaters, etc. It took so much time to accomplish anything that I never really finished anything I could be proud of. I took up the threads again last December and I'm almost finished my first sweater jacket. I practiced on scarfs, both knitting and crocheting and agree with posters above. Crocheting is much faster. What takes a couple of evenings or a day in crochet will take at least aweek to knit unless you drop stitches. If someone has some tips in how to speed the process up I would really appreciate a post in that regard. I switched to continental and it goes fairly fast for me now but I think it's still slower than crocheting. I am now finding beautiful garments one can crochet and they are not granny squares! Although at this age I can appreciate both crafts and their beauty. And sense of accomplishment while watching TV.

Well, I have been home from work for 3 days now. I had hoped to go in tomorrow, but who am I kidding? The cast they have me in is not a full cast, but rather a sort of trough, but it goes from just below my shoulder all the way to my knuckles. My job entails a huge amount of time at the keyboard and the only thing I can do with my left hand is to lay the outside of my ring finger on the keyboard to hold down the shift or tab key when appropriate. I'd say that cuts my speed by at least 80%, not to mention that even that hurts the muscles in that arm. I can't believe how long the days are with nothing much to do. I've watched lots of television and done some reading. I was a bad girl and decided to try knitting. I managed to get a couple of rows done on a sock using the throwing method, but DH caught me and gave me a little lecture about possibly doing some permanent damage. But I was done after those couple of row, it just hurt too much. I can't take a shower and even a bath is difficult. The short time that have to hold the arm up to wash my underarms and chest area just about makes me cry. On the other hand, I don't have to do any dishes, and DH is doing all of the cooking (I get to help with menu planning and technical advice). I have an appointment on Monday with Orthopedics and I'll let you know how that goes. It looks like I will miss one entire paycheck, which is going to make things even tighter than usual. I'm hopeful that I'll be compensated for lost wages, but I suspect it will be some time before that happens.

That was different. I cast on with the long tail method--much easier for me. My daughter uses another method that looked so awkward to me but it works for her. I knit continental or English--just depends on how bad my hands start to hurt. I too think there is no wrong way--the way that works for you is "your" right way. I would love to be able to get together with someone who has been knitting for a long time--I taught myself and have never been around anyone else who knits except my kids--both my daughters taught themselves too. We sometimes have knit and crochet days where that is about all we do.

Ooooh, this topic hits me on the right spot. Welcome to the world of machine knitting! Warning: it is an addictive hobby. Machine knitting is my current main hobby which I've been doing ir for a few years now. Looks like you have a bulky machine which takes medium to heavy weight yarns. It's a plain, no pattern maker machine. However, you still can create many beautiful patterns by hand-manipulate technique (more on this later). The 1st thing you'd need to do is check and replace the sponge bar (aka: retainer bar). Do not use it without replacing this bar first. Otherwise, you can ruin the machine. There are quite a few information on machine knitting, models, forums and tutorials online these days. I'm going to leave you some information but don't let this overwhelm you. Machine knitting should be taken in 1 step at a time. Not necessarily slowly but like everything else, you should understand the basics first. This is a hobby that takes alot of practice. Be patience and soon you will enjoy it as you create wonderful knitwears. Some info on your Toyota KS610: http://www.aboutknittingmachines.com/TOYOTAKnittingMachines.html Forums that will help you, all are free registration: http://www.knittingparadise.com/s-20-1.html https://www.ravelry.com/account/login (love this one most because the topics are categorized and easy to search). There are a few Yahoo groups as well. Be awared that there are machine knitters all over the world. You will often see many from England, Europe and Australia in these forums. They will use different terms sometime (eg: wool in UK & AU = yarn in US) and they will come online at different hours than us in the US. Yet, they're full of experience and ready to share with us. Among one of the name that you will hear often is "Diana Sullivan". She has many years of experience as a machine knitter. She also created many tutorials available for free on YouTube for beginners to intermediate machine knitters. She also sells these lessons inexpensively if you rather not using YouTube. Here's her blog with beginner lessons: http://diananatters.blogspot.com/2010/01/links-to-beginner-lessons.html. Explore more on her blog to even learn further. The next teacher, also one of my favorite, is Susan Guagliumi. She's brilliant! She wrote a few machine knitting books. A great one for the beginner is her recent released "Hand Knits by Machine", I highly recommend it. It is available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Hand-Knits-Machine-Ultimate-Knitters/dp/1503065758/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421376766&sr=1-1&keywords=hand+knits+by+machine Susan Guagliumi also wrote 2 books on using hand manipulating technique for machine knitters. Later on, when you're more familiar with your machine and the basic techniques, you can get both of these books. They're available on her website or on Amazon.com. The books: "Hand-Manipulated Stitches for Machine Knitters" and "More Hand-Manipulated Stitches for Machine Knitters". http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_09?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=susan+guagliumi&sprefix=susan+gua%2Caps%2C271 S. Guagliumi's website: http://www.guagliumi.com/ Some other useful websites: http://knittsings.com/ http://www.yarn-store.com/ http://machineknittingetc.com/ Patterns for machine knitting (all free downloads): http://machineknittingetc.com/brother-knitking/patterns-and-magazines.html http://machineknittingetc.com/silver-reed/patterns-and-magazines.html Although, many patterns are made for specific model, you can still use them for your Toyota model machine. You just need to use ones that were designed for 'bulky' or 'chunky' (machine gauge) knitting machines. There are many suppliers on eBay. I often use Lenneco, an eBay seller located in NY, USA: http://www.ebay.com/sch/leanneco/m.html?_ipg=50&_sop=10&_rdc=1 List for other suppliers in the US: http://machineknittingetc.com/dealersales.html Well, these should be plenty for you right now. Best wishes with your new hobby! This post was edited by ntt_hou on Thu, Jan 15, 15 at 22:22