It has been a long time since I really did any knitting, but over the last couple of weeks I have been knitting christmas presents for the residents. Just small items like mittens, scalfs and hats. So far they have all been hand knitted, but yesterday I dusted off the knitting machine and sat down.

I wanted something easy to do and decided on a fishermans rib hat. I found a pattern I liked and selected a cone of yarn. The 40 row 1/1 rib was a doodle, after all I have done that thousands of time and could do it in my sleep. But thought I had better refer to the instruction book for the machine settings for fishermans rib.

I have fond memories of a bright yellow fishermans rib jumper I knitted for myself many years ago, and hope to make another, though not in bright yellow this time.

Anyway a hat should be easy enough. Famous last words. After only 2 rows I realised there was something wrong. The end stitches were bunching and not knitting off. Oh woe is me. What on earth am I doing wrong? I know from years ago that weighting is very important and I had 3 large weights on the comb. Ummmm, I stripped off the work and went for a cup of tea.

At this point a friend decided to visit. Not that I minded as I know that if I keep trying to work something out without a break, I end up making the same mistakes over and over again. So after my friend had left I went rummaging in my yarn stash and found some strange chunky wool I had been give years ago. There are 2 different colours and I had tried last winter to use one of them to make a jumper, but discovered there was not enough of one colour to do this. As the colours tone so well together I thought I woud combine them and have been doing a 2 row strip pattern. Is they are both multi coloured the strips do not show, but they work together really well.

Anyway I woke up this morning thinking of the knitting machine. Something in the dim recesses reminded me that with fishermans rib I really should have used the side weights - the funny wire things like a 7. I am now dying to try this out, but have aqua tone this morning. So it is going to have to wait till later. Hopefully this will work.