Thanks!! That is the info that I wanted.

This group once again shines the light of experience on the darkness of
ignorance.

Aaron
"Leah" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 13 Mar 2006 17:20:30 GMT, wrote:

Hi again Aaron,

Is *manual* knitting machine knitting, (even doing the cables etc. by
hand)
MUCH faster than hand knitting? I.e., Do we hand needle knit because we
can
do things that machines can not do? Or, because we enjoy the touch and
feel
of hand needle knitting? Or, because we do not have a knitting machine?
Or,
because we need something to do with our hands while waiting, and a
knitting
frame will not fit in our pocket?

If you are doing the same type of cable with the same crosses on the
front of a sweater, say 6-8 cables on a background of stocking stitch
or reverse stocking, it definitely goes substantially faster, even
with all the hand transfers, because the rows between the crosses are
usually plain stitches and only require you to move the carriage
across the row, move weights up if needed to keep tension/gauge even,
and to pull the yarn up for the beginning of the next row to prevent
loops and presto you're ready to do the next row. Lace, if it's not
too complicated, also is very fast, since doing most lace patterns on
a manual machine you are simply moving stitches from one needle to
another, no YO or PSSO to worry about to create the holes. Fair isle
if not too complicated goes much faster too. Intarsia, I think that's
hard by hand and by machine, whether you are using bobbins or just
long lengths of colors. I think having a machine doing intarsia the
advantage is that even though the back of the work is toward you, it's
easier to see the pattern and not lose your place, since you have both
hands free and can move back from the work to look and see if you
crossed off the right row on your chart. However, if you invest in a
row counter, every time the carriage passes, it counts rows for you,
so that's also a helper.

Or, is it net, net; that manual machine knitting of complex knitting is
not
enormously faster because of the all hand work? And thus, for a
reasonably
good knitter producing nice consistent stitches, there is simply not that
much advantage to investing in, and supporting a knitting machine?

You can get a knitting machine and use it to do all your stocking
stitch pieces and save your time and effort for doing the more complex
work by hand. If you want a single cable panel for an afghan or some
other type of insert, you could make it in a single afternoon on a
knitting machine, and do a really nicefair isle sweater in a week, so
it does save weeks of time, but unless I was doing mock cables, I
definitely would not use my machine to do an all over aran sweater.

Leah