Circular Knitting Machines

 I recently acquired an antique  circular sock knitting machine in the hopes of knitting socks. Yikes!  These are facinating machines, but not as simple as one may think. Originally developed late in the 1800's these machines were  used by women to knit socks for the war effort.  There were even yarn companies that purchased the finished socks and supplied the knitters with more yarn.  From what I have learned, it was not so easy to meet the "quality" required, and my own experience attests to the huge learning curve required.

A hand crank is turned, moving the yarn around in an anti clockwise motion.  I found I mastered simple tubes quickly, but was anxious to move onto socks.  The set up in the image below, shows the machine ready to knit a heel...the back needles have been disengaged so the heel stitches can be knit. As the number of stitches decreases, the heel is formed.  Gradually the needles and dropped, so they become engaged again and the instep of the sock is stitched.

 My first completed pair of socks is shown in the second image,  not very pretty, but at least finished.  I estimate this pair took about 75 hours.  It would have been faster to knit these the old fashion way with DPN's.

There are numerous videos on U tube showing how these machines work...well worth checking out. For mow,  am now creating different stitch patterns by kntting two stitches together. The alternating rows pick up all stitches, forming the pattern