The hills are alive, with the sound of knitting...

Sharing this picture because it's always cracked me up slightly. It's from an old Jones (later Brother) pattern book with the striped cover (I reviewed my copy here), which came out with the 8 stitch push-button machines. A lot of it could easily be converted for 24st punch-card or electronic machines. A lot of it is hand-manipulated anyway - so you could use your punch-card to preselect the needles, and do the hand-manipulation, well, by hand of course. There's also a section on what it calls "embroidery knitting", aka vertical knit-weave, except this method uses a piece of card to keep the weaving yarns in check, and I'd only ever thought of doing it with the garter bar.

Altogether a fascinating resource, and not one I've seen for sale online much. Why am I telling you this? Well, a scan has just appeared on the wonderful machineknittingetc site.

Mood is currently frustrated - now I'm getting pins and needles in my left hand just sewing up, which I was doing Weds and Thurs night. Which leaves me in a pickle - I can machine knit pieces, but who is going to sew them up nicely for me? I don't really rate the Hague linker I'm afraid (yes I do have one!), it's almost impossible to get a completely straight seam and I much prefer the neatness of mattress stitch. Managed to book an advanced doctor's appointment - and it's almost a month away. Feh. "A woman could die from hands like this!" (to misquote "Fiddler on the Roof"). Oh, ok, I'm being melodramatic - I had innocently thought advanced would only mean a week or two, though. Clearly not! It's also a morning appointment - I distinctly asked for an evening one, because we don't have enough parking at work so if you arrive late it's a bit of a lottery. Oh well - it's better than nowt I suppose.

Last night I finally sewed up the last charity jumper (ie it's from the last full cone of donated yarn I set aside for charity). It's brown with a fairisle pattern. Picture to follow (it's not very exciting). Now I'm down to cone ends, assuming my RSI/carpal tunnel or whatever it is clears up anytime soon. I can see me machine-knitting scads of things and just collecting the bits, pending being able to make them up. Not fun. Meanwhile, my alter-ego steelbreeze taunts me by buying a job lot of 80s Sandra magazines on Ebay. Rats... and ooh, pretty! :)

Current mood: frustrated