I’ve been making good progress on the Legare 400 circular sock machine.  First I made a set-up bonnet, which is basically a knitted tube with a picot hem, and is used to cast on to the machine.  I’ll post pictures of it “in action” later.

Setup bonnet

It’s made from Patons Kroy, nice and sturdy. I used a similar technique to make this baby hat, but I tightened the tension towards the top and then threaded the yarn through all the loops at the top to make this baby hat. I added a pompom, but didn’t get a picture of that before I gave it away.  It was the first time I tried to make a pompom by hand, and was really not that spectacular, so don’t be sad that you can’t see it.

Baby hat with picot edge

The yarn is Filtes King Color Baby, and I used less than a skein.  I wasn’t sure if the baby will be a boy or a girl, so I figured that a yarn with blue and pink in it would be appropriate.  It’s more blue than pink, so I chose the picot hem to be a bit more “feminine.”  So it’s kind of an androgynous hat!

I also played around with the tension. Here are the extremes of gauge I can get on the machine, using 2/24 acrylic yarn:

Loosest and tightest

And here is the first heel I turned! I kept dropping stitches, but managed to pick them back up.

My first heel

Finally, here’s my first practice sock! It’s sport weight baby acrylic yarn, which I have been told is not the easiest yarn to use on the CSM.  It was somewhat difficult to crank, but it is complete, even with Kitchener’ed toe!

My first practice sock!

I used the 72-slot cylinder, so with sport weight yarn it came out much too big for my feet.  Next I’ll try it with my 2/24 acrylic, to see if I can get the right size.  I will also try mock rib, meaning that I’ll take out some of the needles rather than having them truly ribbed with purl stitches, since I haven’t figured out the ribber yet.  The 54-slot cylinder I got with the machine has such a rough surface that it’s unusable, and even after soaking in oil and cleaning it, I can’t even put needles into all of the slots.  Fortunately, my eBay seller is going to replace it for me, so I’ll be able to experiment with that one too.

Hopefully soon I’ll be confident enough to use actual sock yarn!