Buying a knitting machine means first deciding if you want a vintage knitting machine or a new one. I went with the vintage knitting machines although I might some day add a newer one like the LK150 to my collection.
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Vintage Knitting Machine or New?
There are good reasons to choose either. While Brother, Singer, Elna and any other sewing machine brands have stopped producing the metal style knitting machines, you can buy Taitexma machines new. Of course there are also the plastic bed LK150 (affiliate link) machines. They have some advantages over the metal beds. They’re much lighter for one and also you can expand the bed for more needles and knit much wider items.
On the other hand if you choose to go vintage, there are more optional accessories that may either come with the machine or you can search for on eBay and other used marketplaces. Just expect to do some work before you start knitting.
You will also sometimes see reference to Japanese or Japanese style knitting machines. Typically, the Singer and Brother machines were made in Japan. Passap on the other hand, were made in Switzerland. I don’t have a Passap myself but there are some differences between them and the Japanese machines.
What kind of knitting do you want to do?
Mid to Bulky Gauge
To knit afghans and dish cloths with worsted weight yarn like Bernat Super Saver then you need a mid to bulky machine. The LK150 will absolutely work for you, but you can get vintage mid to bulky weight machines too. You just might have to search a little longer.
Circular Sock Machines or CSM’s
When socks and hats are your jam, then maybe you don’t even want a flatbed machine. There are the Sentro and Addi (affiliate link) type machines for not much money and a lot of YouTube videos showing what you can do with them. Then there are the expensive vintage metal CSM’s and even more expensive new metal CSM’s, or the 3D printed CSM’s such as Dean & Beans Sock Machine.
Fine Gauge
There are fine gauge vintage knitting machines out there that are meant to knit the finest of thread like yarns for lace and other lightweight fabrics. But unless you’re already hand knitting that type of yarn it’s not usually a first time purchase, and it’s one you would probably search some time to find.
Standard Gauge
Standard gauge machines are the most commonly available from eBay, Facebook Marketplace and other second-hand marketplaces. One of these will allow you to knit yarns from cobweb to fingering or sometimes DK weight. Because they’re more common the also tend to have the most optional accessories available – depending on the brand and model. Brother seems to have produced the most accessories by far and some of them are very useful.
Patterning or Non-Patterning
The most basic machines can do some patterning, it’s just a matter of how.
A non-patterning machine can do patterns, but it’s all done manually. An example of this would be my Simple Knitted Dishcloth.
My Singer 700 is an example of punch card machine. For these machines, a punch card is fed into a reader. This determines which needles will be knit on each pass. With your carriage settings you decide if the pattern will be tuck, slip, or fair isle. You can buy blank punch cards and create your own designs but generally restricted to either a 12 or 24 stitch repeat.
Then there’s the electronic machines like my Brother 930. Depending on how advanced the model is, you can do a lot more with these and with fewer restrictions on pattern width. Some of them can be connected to your computer and with the right software you can create patterns that extend the full width of your needle bed.
See what to watch for when buying vintage in my next post.
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