When I taught the Rib It! seminar, the knitters really noticed my tilt stand and how I use it. There are a lot of advantages to them:
Tilt stands are very sturdy. I have had really old ones (like 30+ years) and they are still rock solid.
Tilt stands don't rock or wiggle. The four legs are spread for a wide base. The legs have thick rubber pads on the ends that stay put.
These stands have a holder in the back for the lid of your knitting machine case. That lid holds a lots of miscellaneous necessities for machine knitting. Mine are chock-full of items, and I'm grateful to have them right there within reach. I might have to stand up and peer over the back of the machine, but this holds a lot more tools and books than a flat table, unless you have an enormous flat table.
Tilt stands have a relatively small footprint.
If you want them taller, you can put each leg on a bed riser and then stand to knit. I just put them on the floor, and use an adjustable office chair that I move up and down to change my body position from time to time as I knit.
They are just the right thickness to hold machine clamps.
They're expensive, but you can find them used, since they last so long.
Best of all, you can go from slanted operation with your ribber to flat and back again in seconds!
I was surprised at how many questions I got about tilt stands. This new video covers those questions.
Also, I originally had the very old style ones, which did not have a security bracket to hold the clamps. When I treated myself to a new one I discovered that the new ones come with these brackets. I promptly decided that the safety brackets are an absolute necessity. Without them, with the stand tilted, you could have your machine slip right off onto the floor or your lap! The machine is both fragile and heavy.
Other people had the same thought. Ronnie in Chicago has a source for these safety clamps that I put in the video description, below the video on YouTube. The ordering links are here, as well:
There are two sizes, 1" and 2", so look at your stand and see which ones you need. I do not have an affiliation to "feature" these items - I simply am very happy with the 1" ones I bought and I want to spread the word and support vendors who are willing to manufacture items we need and can't get elsewhere!
Important: Do not overtighten your machine clamps! Gradually, over-tightened clamps spread and then no longer hold the machine securely. I don't have great grip strength, and to tighten them, I grab a short dowel or chopstick for a little leverage. You could use a screwdriver shaft or a longer stick, but don't overdo it! Also, I avoid using the racking handle for tightening. It is probably strong enough, but I'd hate to damage it.
Now that the two 2020 virtual seminars are over (whew!), I wanted to announce that their contents are available on USB flash drives. We have caught up on these and have plenty in stock.
This is VERY new and different for me. Let me tell you the Readers Digest version of what happened.
In the springtime, with the pandemic, machine knitting seminars all over the country were cancelled. I was very disappointed, since I had some great seminars planned, and I started to think about doing a virtual seminar. I asked several very knowledgeable people about how to go about it and whether it could work for me, and then I recruited my son and husband to figure out the technical set up for the knitting video. Gradually, it started to look quite possible, and with just a few announcements on social media, the first seminar, Summer Seminar 2020, filled up.
As the summer went by, we solved our technical issues, putting a studio setup in the house with a new video system and a new sound system. I figured out how to run the seminar on Facebook, how to enroll people, and I worked to create an experience, not just a class. We had vendor advertising and discounts, online discussions, socials on Zoom (after trying and abandoning Facebook Rooms, which didn't measure up to Zoom at all). I put on extra sessions both before and after the main curriculum, and we worked out all sorts of minor technical issues.
Summer Seminar ended up huge - four planned half-day sessions plus two long bonus sessions, detailed handouts for everything, and a bunch of free patterns. The knitters were amazing, sharing all sorts of ideas, photos, patterns, links, and friendship on the Facebook page. A number of knitters asked me to put out the videos later without editing so they could have a permanent copy of the materials. There were so many hours of video that we had to rule out DVDs and downloads and I finally came up with the USB flash drive idea.
To my astonishment, the USB flash drives were quite popular. Feedback and reviews have been great!
When Summer Seminar was well underway, another club asked me to do a virtual seminar on the ribbing attachment. I went to work on fresh curriculum and offered that one (Rib It!) in early fall to that club and others who wanted to participate in a seminar specializing on the ribber. This was really different material, much more specialized classes, and it turned out great. A lot of knitters don't get nearly as much great knitting out of their ribbers as they could, and I am quite proud of that curriculum. We had four half-day sessions again and a bonus session, plenty of free patterns, detailed handouts again, and all those hours of video and documents went on another 64GB USB drive for sale at a deep discount to seminar participants.
If you couldn't make either seminar, the USBs are both available at www.dianaknits.com.
These little USB flash drives go into an envelope and I just drop them in the mail like letters. Since that's cheaper to mail than the padded envelopes we usually use for books and videos, we've been able to offer them with free shipping.
Keep an eye on this space - I am planning my first 2021 seminar for early spring!
Every so often, I get a bit obsessed with cables! There are just endless variations. Sometimes, you want a BIG cable to anchor your design. Here's one!
And now, a word from our Sponsor. ME!
I finally got all my products onto USB flash drives. This is an option. If you buy a book and video set, you can purchase the coil-bound book and the DVD(s), or as an alternative, you can get the USB flash drive. The flash drives are very nice for people who don't play DVDs anymore. But mainly, they're good for our international customers, because I am shipping them for FREE (instead of the current minimal shipping of $17 beyond the US and Canada).
I used the USBs as a way to make video and handouts available for my two 2020 virtual seminars, and I have gotten very positive feedback about it. I wasn't so sure...it was new and therefore a bit unpredictable, wasn't it? So these look like little credit card or business card sized flat plastic things with a swing-out USB piece. In fact, the front of it is my business card art and the back has a sticker with the contents. You push it in your USB port and the video is .MP3 and the documents are .PDF. files.
For such a little thing, they're are fairly large data capacity and more costly to me than the previous products, books and DVDs. I've kept the prices the same, though, for at least an introductory period. I have to see how this goes.
My international knitters have been asking me to do digital downloads for years. I can easily create patterns that are just written instructions and do that, but I want to include the videos of how to do everything, which has always been the heart of my patterns.
DVDs have chapter markers so you can pop over to the video you want. MP3s don't. As a solution to that, I created a READ ME file with a list of all the demos and where to find them on the video in minutes and seconds.
Some Apple products don't have a USB drive. If that's what you have, you'll need an adapter.
Over the years, I've come to admire Kris Basta's commitment to machine knitting. She's the lady who manufactures and sells the nice Kris Krafter garter bars. She makes them in gauges that we can't get anywhere else.
Kris now has a new product. It fits right into that same category of needed but very difficult to find machine knitting gadgets.
This one is called the Needle Beetle. What the Beetle does is select needles on your LK150, LK140, LK100 or GK370 knitting machine so you can more easily make pattern stitches. You pick out the first 8 needles on the right, you slide the Beetle along, and it picks out the needles on across the needles in work, copying those first 8 needles accurately. I found this was much easier and more accurate than hand-picking all the way across the needles in work.
The Beetle works on 6.5 or 9 mm gauges. You have to unscrew and flip over the cam inside to go from the 6.5 gauge to the 9 mm gauge. I haven't done that myself, as I don't have a Studio 9 mm plastic machine. I do have an LK150, though, and I had a blast playing with this new toy.
You can use this for tuck, slip, lace, tuck mosaic, slip mosaic, and fair isle. I tried quite a few stitches, but not wanting the video to go on forever, this video shows a tuck stitch and a slip stitch.
Here's my video:
Things I learned along the way:
1. The Beetle goes from right to left, only. You'll move it into position on the bed each time you want to select needles.
2 The Beetle does not work on other machines besides the ones Kris named. It's a slider, folks - it has to fit the needle bed size.
3. If you want to not tuck end stitches, you've got to move them back yourself. If you want to not slip end stitches, you need to move those, too.
4. Hold the knitted fabric against the bed as you slide. Fabric can come toward you if needles are being moved toward you!
5. Use your row counter to help you keep track of charts.
6. The Beetle would be fantastic in conjunction with the Fair Isle carriage, but those are rare. I don't have one of those. For Fair Isle, I did it a color at a time.
7. Have you got two LK150 carriages? I do! You can feed one color in one and one color in the other for color work.
8. The Beetle does 8-stitch repeats. You'll be amazed at how many 8-stitch charts you can find. In particular, Kris sent me to machineknittingetc.com to download some of the old Jones 8-stitch pattern books. You'll also be surprised how many of the stitches in the newer pattern books use a 2-, 4, or 8-stitch repeat.
If you want one of these, go to www.kriskrafter.com and have a look. Kris has an introductory price right now, so if you want a deal, you need to get your order in before that special ends.
I did two virtual machine knitting seminars this summer. It was a fantastic experience! I was able to offer far more content than I've ever been able to do in a seminar, we had a little community in a Facebook private group for each seminar, and the back-and-forth, including pictures of member projects, was inspiring and energizing.
Summer Seminar is winding up. I had a couple people who hadn't been able to see the content, so I left it open for an extra 48 hours. Tomorrow, Thursday), the Facebook private group closes. If you are a member and still need to see some content, go there today.
The Rib It! seminar live sessions are over, and the Facebook pages will be up all of September.
Both seminars are closed to new members.
The 64 gigabyte USB drives with the seminar contents from Summer Seminar 2020 were incredibly popular. We sold out of these but have more arriving this weekend. You can order the Summer Seminar ones, and I will fill orders in the order they were received. It will take me up to a week to catch up on the duplication.
I got great feedback on Summer Seminar, and with a favorite knit club requesting a seminar focused on the ribbing attachment, I've decided to do that one virtually.
This one is four sessions that focuses on
using your flatbed knitting machine ribber.This is more in-depth teaching than I usually
get to do on the ribber. This is NOT a general interest seminar - you'll really need a ribber so you can practice and benefit.
It's held in a Facebook private group, so you'll need a Facebook ID and some patience with the quirks of Facebook. The reason I've used that is it lets us record the sessions and you can watch them anytime as long as the group is open.
It will be next weekend and the weekend after, but as I said, you can watch them live or watch them later. There will be detailed written handouts.
Registration for the seminar (and a very detailed
description of curriculum and dates) is available here:www.dianaknits.com
I saw one of these at our knitting club, and I just had to go find one. Here's my video:
Wow, when I was a little girl, I'd have been crazy for a toy like this.
Now that some people have seen this video, I'm told that I should take it apart, then clean and oil everything and install a sponge bar. It actually was very clean, but I do want to take it apart. One lady said that there is probably an old rotten bit of felt inside that I could replace, and then the needles wouldn't flop around. Maybe when the dust settles from the virtual seminar I'm doing, I'll play with my Sister some more.
Today I'm putting the finishing touches on this weekend's seminar session, which is about making lace. I can't put in half of what I'd like to include, but I want to share videos of some of the other cool techniques.
I've always been crazy about Brother knitting machine lace. Here are some of my very best YouTube videos about lace:
Slant Lace Circle Scarf: Let's start with the ridiculously easy slant lace technique!
Did you realize that you can make mirror-image lace on Brother machines, and when you have a design that is asymmetrical, the effect is fantastic? This one is easy, too!
Now, how about a video showing exactly how to do short-row shaping in lace?
In the next video, I teach exactly how my automatic scalloped lace edging designs work on an electronic Brother machine, and I also teach how you can do something similar with certain Stitch World patterns. Enchanted Edgings, which is my book of automatic lace edges, are just for Brother and Knitking. They do not work on Silver Reed/Studio/Knitmaster machines.
You can also do Enchanted Edges on a punch card Brother, but you do have to use the charts for punch cards in the back of the book:
How about a lace ornament made with an unusual, extra holey lace?
And finally, a super cute lace to do on Studio/Silver Reed machines:
My little blog is in the top 5 for machine knitting: https://blog.feedspot.com/machine_knitting_blogs/
This really went to my head. (Nah, it's marketing. It's like being in "Who's Who Among High School Students," which gets your parents to buy the book.)
You should see Dear John making fun of me. First he said, "You mean? There are five?" Well, I am sure there are a few more than five...I follow quite a few, but most of us don't post often.
I certainly don't have such a good blog now that I haven't had much time to post. At least I'm getting my monthly video posted.
I might have picked some different blogs, and I knew some of these, but the best thing about this is I checked out a couple blogs I didn't know about, and they are awesome!
I like to film different machines. I think new knitters can benefit from seeing various machines demonstrated and getting ideas of what they could do, even with a non-patterning machine.
Here's a nice Studio 150 Chunky with a ribber, and I made a rather long video. I showed how the built-in Intarsia works, did a little tuck and slip and hand-picked a little fair isle. Then I did a very brief ribber demo.
I am reopening registration for Summer Seminar 2020 – Diana Sullivan
Machine Knitting Seminar.
After having so many people sign up early, I closed
registration. It really bothered me to
turn anyone away, but with this being a virtual seminar, I wanted to make sure the
new equipment worked well and that everyone would have a great experience.
In the Summer Seminar private Facebook group, we have now
completed two Facebook Live Video classes including a 3-1/2 hour Garter Bar session.The sound and video were good, and
participant feedback was excellent.Everyone
gets a look-over-my-shoulder view like the one in this screenshot!
These existing sessions are recorded and available on the
Facebook private group to participants for watch at their convenience. Eventually, I'll take it down, but everything will be left up until at least September 8.
Starting July 11 we will begin the regular seminar
curriculum.There will be four Saturday
morning classes from 9:30-12:30 CDT with a variety of machine knitting
demonstrations.All the sessions can be
watched live or watched later because they will be recorded.Detailed handouts with a number of free
patterns are included.There are vendor
discounts and specials just for seminar participants.Doing the seminar virtually has allowed me to
offer it at a very reasonable price.
Have you got a Bond, or an Ultimate Sweater Machine, or an Incredible Sweater Machine, or a Fashion Knitter?
These are 8 mm machines, that is, the needles are 8 mm from the center of one to the center of the next. This is a different spacing from Japanese machines, a Japanese tools and accessories don't fit.
Kris Basta makes garter bars for 8 mm machines, as well as stoppers, and now she has a new product, which she asked me to review. It's a cast-on comb. At last! I really wanted a cast-on comb for my Bond.
So basically my review is I just loved the thing. I thought it was so wonderful that maybe I lost all objectivity. I love that she manufactures things we knitters need and can't find elsewhere. I love that her stuff is well-made and polished so stitches slip properly and your fingers don't get cut. I love that the spacing is just perfect, and it's sturdy enough to not get bent easily.
If you're too busy to watch it, well, that's the executive summary.
However, before investing in a set, you might want my up-close evaluation of how it was made. You might wonder how best to use it. You might wonder whether to screw the two sections together (I didn't - I like them separate). You might even want to see what I did with it - I didn't film 100% of the cast-ons I did with it, but I did the quick utility cast-on, the e-wrap cast on, the latched cast-on, and the double-strand cast-on. The one in the video was the double-strand cast-on, which I really like and think we could all use more often. It's fast and easy, too.
I chose that one because I wondered if the 8 mm knitting "community" uses that cast-on. Besides, I'd love to draw them into my channel world where they can learn all kinds of MK techniques that work just fine on their machines.
Note: you will need some elastic thread for this item, just as you do for the vinyl "hem" that came with your machine. You can pieces of thread more than once, but you'll want to keep a spool of the stuff in your Bond things.
The response to the Summer Seminar has been absolutely, wonderfully, overwhelming! I have had a lot of discussions with my friends and family, about whether having more people will affect the seminar's quality for each person. Would having too many people mess it up? Probably not, because everyone will have a good picture and good sound. We are bringing in special equipment to enhance that. Will having a nice-sized group be fun? I think it will, the way we're using Facebook. I had no intention of closing registration early; however, as the registrations continued to grow, I decided to be cautious, close early and limit the number of people this first time. This will allow me to focus on learning the platform, equipment, and software, testing everything, setting up the rest of the group features and events, getting all the materials and freebies posted, and then, of course, preparing to do a great actual event presentation. Therefore, I'll close registration Wednesday evening.
Most of the live machine knitting seminars have been cancelled, so let's have a virtual seminar!
I'm excited to use technology to offer a high-value, content-rich Summer Seminar on a "virtual" platform. If you've never attended a seminar, here's a crazy-easy opportunity to see what the excitement is about. You don't have to travel, stay in a hotel, or eat in restaurants. You can spend your time and money knitting, instead!
I'm doing the teaching, four morning sessions of machine knitting demonstrations. This will be the equivalent of a good weekend seminar, but I am able to add LOTS of features by using technology.
What will I cover? This seminar will include a nice blend of machine knitting basics and fresh new demonstrations. There are four sessions: a hand-tooling session, a joins and edges session, a lace session, and a ribber session. In each session I have a basics section, a variety technique section, and then I'll present a free pattern and show its key techniques. I will be demonstrating on a Brother bulky, a Brother standard gauge, and a Studio mid-gauge machine.
What else do you get? In addition to the live seminar you will receive:
Membership in the private Facebook group, Summer Seminar 2020, from your registration date until September 8 (after Labor Day). This group will have all the materials and photos, which I'll be posting from now until the seminar. You can make new MK friends, reconnect with others, and share your progress, projects, and machine knitting tips, challenges and ideas.
The ability to watch the live sessions again, or watch later, if you miss a class (materials available through September 8).
My usual detailed seminar handouts in .pdf format.
Free patterns that are taught in the seminar sessions, also .pdf.
A 10% limited-time discount coupon code for any of my mail order products. I have never had a sale before, in fact, it is my policy not to run sales. This is a special one-time event!
When: Four Saturdays, beginning on July 11: 7/11, 7/18, 7/25 and 8/1, from 9:30 a.m. CDT (GMT -5) and running until about 12:30 p.m. John and I will begin a little early to help make sure people are getting access to the seminar. If you can't make some of the dates, no worries! The video will be posted after the session on the Facebook group, and you will have access to all the other materials through the Facebook files.
Where: You'll be home on your device, and John and I will host from my home knitting studio. John's going to help with technical issues and facilitate any Q&A that's necessary for the group experience. I have a lot of content, and you might find it helpful to print the handout for that session ahead of time. I try to write handouts with enough detail so you very seldom need to take notes.
Pricing: Registration is $50, with early bird pricing of $40 available until June 10.
Requirements to Attend: You will need a Facebook ID and login, a device for viewing the sessions and viewing the electronic files and photos.
There are plenty of ways to seam garter stitch - but what are the very best ones? Can we get an beautifully reversible seam? How about an invisible seam? How about a very flat seam?
After a whole lot of experimenting - trying out all the methods I could find, then tweaking them - I've made a video to show you what I think are the two best methods:
I locked down rather early, because of some of the reading I'd been doing about this virus that wasn't quite in the general news yet. We've had a really easy time with lock-down at our house. John is working part-time from home. Our kids are fine, our house is comfy, and we try to be sensible and avoid too much news.
Best of all, we both have great hobbies, and we love to work on them.
After a while, the machine knitting seminars where I was booked to teach cancelled. I was faithfully working on my next MK project, knitting and filming a rather cool new pattern collection. I put a whole bunch of my monthly videos up ahead of time. I did some de-cluttering, but not too much, wouldn't want to go overboard. I watched other people's how-to videos on some of my favorite subjects (cooking, crafting, sewing, quilting, traveling, and decorating).
As I cleaned out, I ran across at least a half dozen unfinished quilt projects from over ten years ago! Let's face it, I just put everything else away when I got so involved with teaching MK back in 2009. I looked at them, knowing how many quilts I DID finish, and thought about why each one of these sad little orphans ended up on a drawer or basket.
Maybe a project was super fussy and I was just tired of it. Maybe I was convinced it would be difficult to put together. Maybe I didn't know what I could make out of a few blocks that I did just to try something new. By and large, though, I realized it was perfectionism - if I wasn't sure it was going to turn out great, I'd set it aside.
I looked at them with fresh eyes and decided these projects weren't so bad. I had been too critical...perfectionism is just another kind of fear, anyway. I decided to finish each one and find it a home.
I had done practically no hobbies other than machine knitting for over ten years. Why not take a little vacation from MK and finish these quilt UFOs?
When you haven't done something in a while, you feel pretty clumsy, but after the first few days, my skills were improving. I got up in the wee hours one morning, sorted my old quilting scraps and cuts by color and pressed them. I love scrappy quilts and the challenge of trying to make something from what I have without going to the stores. I had a pretty good fabric stash, even spare rotary cutter blades, sewing needles, and lots of neutral thread.
I just wanted to get 'em done on my good old Bernina, and I came up with a fairly simple machine quilting routine. I put binding on some of them, and on some of the charity ones, I simply made a bag with front, back, and batting, sewed around it, flipped it right side out, top-stitched around the edges and tied the quilt with perle cotton, tugged those knots tight and trimmed them neatly. As I did those, I thought about my grandma. As a small girl, I "helped" her tie a Sunbonnet Sue quilt - she was crazy about Sunbonnet Sue and I know she made a whole lot of them. She used to applique a little boy in overalls, too, but I forget his name. Do you remember?
My grandma, who raised seven children in the depression, didn't waste anything. She used an old blanket for the padding in that quilt.
On several of my UFOs, I used a very simple, shortcut edge treatment. I know people have done this forever, but I didn't find anyone teaching it on YouTube. I bring the backing fabric around to the front to form a self-binding, and I've got a very nifty way to make beautiful mitered corners - fast. Nope, it's not professional. It's not something you'd use for a quilt show or competition. It's practical, though, not too bad for a such a rusty seamstress.
I decided to do a YouTube of this shortcut method:
Now, knittin' buddies, I know many of you are quilters. Got any UFOs to finish?
My quilting binge was a fun diversion for a strange time, but I've got lots of knitting projects and plans to go back to.
I'm an avid machine knitter. I was the first YouTube creator to upload free machine knitting lessons. My goal was to get people to see these wonderful machines in action, Consider joining my Facebook group, “Knitting with Diana Sullivan,” where 9,000 members share their projects, ideas, and questions on just one topic: knitting! This is a happy, accepting place to share your MK challenges and projects.
I offer classes and patterns that make knitting easier and more fun, with key techniques shown, plenty of color photos, clear unabbreviated language, meticulous finishing techniques, and inventive solutions for better results.
I'm a retired CPA. My husband John and I will be married 50 years on December 21, 2024, and we live in in Austin, Texas. We have two adult sons and a beautiful daughter-in-law. John collects and fixes antique motorcycles, and also has a Model A.
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