Utimate Sweater Machine Instructions

The Ultimate Sweater Machine can be used to make almost anything that can be hand knit, including sweaters, hats, scarves and afghans and can do it in half the time. The machine is also capable of creating specialty stitches such as lace, cable stitches, Fair Isle and intarsia or blocks of color.

Mount the machine on a flat surface. Screw the clamps that came with the machine down onto the table to secure it. Slide the weights into the machine's black plastic hem. Push the needles that you will be working with forward into a holding position. A knitting machine has four needle positions--non-working, working, forward working and holding. Holding position is all the way forward at the edge of the needle bed. Put the weighted hem over the open needles, placing a piece of elastic along the row of open needles. Fold the weighted hem over the elastic and push the needles to a forward working position, which will enable you to move the yarn over the needle bed.

Put the keyplate into the carriage. Thread the carriage with yarn from a yarn ball and push the carriage back and forth along the bed of the needles. The keyplate pushes the yarn into the hooks of the needles on the bed, knitting it. Push the carriage back and forth along the bed until the knitting is at the desired length. Spray the keyplate with silicone to make it easier to move the yarn through the needles. Beginners should go slow and make sure there is enough slack on the yarn as it is being fed into the carriage so it does not pull.

Remove the completed piece from the sweater machine by stopping the carriage to the left of the knitting. Pull the yarn out of the carriage and cut a tail three times the length of the completed piece from the ball. Using a blunt-edge needle, thread the yarn and pass through the first stitch still on the needles and pull the yarn through. Pass the yarn into the second stitch on the needles and then the first stitch again. Move to the third stitch and second stitch. Repeat to the end of the row.

Use the machine's latch tool, which looks like a crochet hook. Insert it into the last stitch that was bound off. Pull up a loop from the yarn tail through the first stitch. Insert the latch tool through this first loop and into the second stitch from the end, pulling up a loop from the yarn tail through the first loop. Repeat to the end of the row. Remove the weighted hem and knitting from the machine and cut the elastic cord every few inches with scissors, making sure not to cut into the yarn.