Oh Brother! Profile 588 is out of the closet.

I recently acquired a Profile 588 to go with all the books and manuals that my mother in law saved from going into a dumpster a few years ago. I gave like $10 for the machine, the carriage was broken but I was able to purchase one from the UK and it just arrived the other day. A fellow knitter from the Machine Knitters Yahoo group mentioned a stitch pattern book, a light bulb went off "I have that book!" I had glanced at it but didn't understand it at all. Now even though I've been studying my White 1602, I had to set up the 588 and try out this old machine and WOW!


This is the first lace, I did a couple of tuck patterns too, but frogged them before I realized I wanted to post pictures. You can see where I started to mess up. You have to really pay attention to what line of the instruction you are on. I'm thinking I might want to copy the chart to a bigger piece of paper and then use a ruler to help keep track of where I'm at.

As I was amazing myself with what can be done on these machines, I remembered the first time I saw a knitting machine. There was yarn shop in the little strip mall that we used to buy cards of angora yarn to wrap our boyfriends class rings with so they would fit our fingers. We would brush and brush that yarn until all you could see was a gem stone in a nest of fur, then we started using dental floss and embroidery thread coated with clear nail polish. We'd build the layers up and end with setting words like LOVE or PEACE or little peace signs using snips of colored embroidery thread and burying it under more coats of clear nail polish so we could flash our boyfriends ring around. Sorry, guess I'm having some sort of flash back LOL!!!

Anyway, this machine was plugged into the wall and the carriage just went back and forth all by itself. It was astonishing to see, the price was pretty astonishing too and I never gave it another thought. That was for rich people. Funny how things impress us when we are young and how those impressions stay with us. Little did I know!

Now my Grandson wants to know if I can knit anything else except swatches! "You sure have to practice alot Grandma, are you ever going to just make something?" Kids, gotta love 'em.