My Pretty Red Valentine's Gift NZAK

Looking inside the big Fed Ex box with the New Zealand Auto knitter! It had been carefully packaged, and once I removed the layers of foam, here were all these individually wrapped mysterious pieces.

I decided to unwrap pieces, lay 'em out, and see what was there.

Dear husband, who usually does mechanical duties, was off at his Model A club, so I went on YouTube and started watching the how-to-assemble it videos. (When he got home, he found me a washer I needed and an Allen wrench.) Luckily for me, the seller had only taken it apart only enough to ship it, so I just had to put the stand together, put the handle on, and attach the row counter and yarn mast.

I was especially puzzled about the row counter, but followed the directions.

. Isn't she pretty? Very Valentine-y. A little darker red than the photo.

There was a tube hanging from the machine, bundled up in such a way that I thought the machine might not have been used much - or ever, once they did the tube for a test and to ship to the customer. There are also no markings on any of the cylinders. I will mark them with red nail polish showing the number of needles for heel shaping. The machine and the knitting that came on it are with the compound 60-stitch cylinder, so I started up with that. The machine is very new and stiff, so I put on lots of oil and am knitting away and feeling it loosen up.

I tried short-rowing, and am fascinated by the needle lifter, since I'm used to lifting the needles by hand with one of Barry's tools. The needles are very stiff to bring up and down, so I think I'll save my fingers with "finger cots" (those rubber thimbles you use in an office for paging through papers). I bought a whole box years ago and keep them in my sewing stuff. They're great when you're sewing something where it's hard to pull the needle, say binding stitch in needlepoint. You get traction!

I haven't tried ribbing yet, and I am surprisingly bad at short-rowing for a person who has knitted hundreds of socks on the Legare. These things are all about practice. I was trying to use an unfamiliar machine Saturday, having not used it in months, and I was terrible, so why would this new one be any different? Then, once you've practiced a great deal, it's all automatic and you can come home tired and crank a sock. (Sometimes I came home so tired my socks had two heels...)

The row counter is awesome, absolutely accurate as far as I can tell! I've never had a row counter on a sock machine before. I tried a couple of add-ons but didn't work at it enough to get them going, probably because I was so used to counting in my head. In fact, I sometimes forget to use the row counter on the flatbed. Now I am going to reacquire the row counter habit because it's a real blessing if the phone rings!

I have knitted yards and yards of tubing, and I finally used too thin a yarn, which broke and now the knitting is off the machine. Today I will try the setup basket and ribbing just like the videos!

The girls at Knit Natters asked me Saturday why I'm doing this, since I've been talking downsizing, and I explained that every time there's an ad for one, I read it to my husband and this time, he told me to buy it. So it really is a Valentine machine!