the Knitting machine course at Vaasa Opisto

I inherited my maternal aunt's knitting machine when she passed away due to breast cancer a few years ago.

Yes, breast cancer - and yeah, cancer in general - sucks as a disease. 

But the knitting machine, it came to live here with us. And I've wanted to learn how to use it ever since, but it's been just sitting on a shelf here at home, just waiting for me to get to it.

And this year, Vaasa Opisto is holding a short course in how to use knitting machines. I missed the first out of the three 5 h lessons, but this Saturday I could attend. Machine in tow and all.

This photo shows how far I got in those 5 hours. I learned how to clean it out, put is together, and learned what some of the major parts are called. Typical of women in my family, this Singer Memo 2 machine is the most advanced of all the machine is the class. When we buy things, we want the best...and thus my aunt's machine is one advanced machine with LOTS of features.

I also tried making it do basic rib stitch, and I would have made a swatch to save, but I didn't have any other yarn than the orange one with me. And I want to use all of it for a project I already have in mind. So I had to set it up, try to knit, and then rip it all out again and again. 

I tried to make it *[knit 3, purl 3] repeat from *. But all I managed to make it do was just make stitches that were long as 3 of the hooks, and then I managed to have it do that AND start stitching in the round. So annoying.

And that all took me 4 hours, and my head was by then already fed up with trying to learn how to troubleshoot the machine. So I just spent the last hour reading the instruction manual and thinking "you will not defeat me, you stupid machine".

Next time, in two weeks, I'll hopefully have the possibility to make some swatches, because I will then have more yarn with me.