This is already the most iterations I've done on a single knitting project, and I'm not 100% certain that I'm done. I was able to wear the hat to an event today, so success, but we'll see if inspiration and opportunity lead me to try again.
green knit hat with two 3d-printed half-sphere eyeballs sewn to the top
I wanted to go for the "half ping pong balls floating in pistachio pudding" look, so I 3d-printed some half-spheres and sewed them to the top of the hat.
green knit hat with 2" googly eyes
I experimented with traditional googly eyes, which looked kind of fun, but not what I wanted:
The nice thing about the knitting machine is that once you're underway, the difference between 150 rows and 180 rows is only a few minutes of cranking, so I ended up with a 180 row hat, which I now realize was too long for my purposes, so I went back to one of the lime green acrylic hats.
180 row beanie knit on the Sentro Circular Knitting Machine in dark green Wool Ease yarn
So I proceeded to knit a new hat with Wool-Ease wool/acrylic yarn - my new favorite, it's soft, has a nice feel, works well in the machine.
green and blue variegated yarn used in a hat and scarf. The scarf also has black sections. I think the green/blue is wool yarn, and I don't know what the black is.
Also, it's acrylic, which is OK, but maybe I'd be happier with yarn that's a wool/acrylic blend, or just straight wool? A while back, I made this hat/scarf combo which is really soft and I love the colors:
Ok, but not great - I was finding the yarn to be a little too "tight" on the machine, I just wasn't happy. I took some time to take the machine apart, clean and lube it, reassemble it, try again - I kind of think maybe I don't like that yarn.
150 row beanie hat, knit on my sentro circular knitting machine. I used Red Heart Super Saver yarn, which is economical, but wasn't giving me good results on the machine.
I made a 150-row hat, and it seemed OK
I wanted to make my own frog-hat for my own purposes. Around that time, my #Sentro #knittingmachine had been gathering dust for most of the summer months, and I had forgotten the muscle memory of cranking out (no, literally) hats on the device.
I made a 120-row hat, and realized it was too short.
A thread (ha!) about a knitting project.
Back in October, I saw some people wearing hats that I clocked as frog-hats, green, with white discs on top with black spots in the center. Roughly similar to mickey mouse ear hats, but a different color scheme.
The water is a "flow field" that traces paths through a vector field generated using noise. I clip the paths to the bounding boxes of cells - I should have clipped against the actual cell boundaries, but I got lazy.
I made the cells using Bridson Blue Noise to generate cell centers, then generated Voronoi regions.
The map images (mountains, cabins, snowman) were all hand-drawn SVGs that were imported and 50% of the time flipped left/right
For what it's worth:
I decided to make a map, like from an old Tabletop Role Playing Game, of a snowy mountain valley - around the edges, you will see mountains, closer in, hills, some cabins, and a lake (spilling over its edges!).
First sighting of one of my postcards at their destination! Happy Plotting in 2026!
Red and white knit scarf, using Red Lion "Super Saver" acrylic yarn. Alternating white bands of 30 rows and red bands of 20 rows.
Made a #scarf on my #sentro #knittingmachine for Mom's birthday, in candy cane colors for the holidays.
230 rows, which turned out to be 44" in the finished scarf, a little short, but better than my previous scarf with 400 rows, something around 6 feet long.
"Santa Hat" in "Cranberry" and "Wheat" Wool-Ease yarn. I wanted to make this in time for the holidays. The total hat is 180 rows, with 20 rows for the brim in the "wheat" colored yarn. 20 rows is about two inches, and I didn't plan it out well, so the inside of the hat is the cranberry red color, which is visible at the bottom of the brim. Still, a mostly satisfying Santa hat for the season.
Red and green Santa hats. Maybe the green hat is for Mrs Claus? Or for one of the elves? The green hat has a more generous cream brim, contrast with the red hat which has a narrower brim, showing the red showing through at the bottom.
"Santa Hat" in "Wheat" and "Forest Green Heather" Wool-Ease yarn. The hat overall was 180 rows, with the outside being 75 rows of the green yarn, then the brim a generous 45 rows, finishing with a final 60 rows of green for the interior (that adds to 180, right?) This provides plenty of opportunity to turn the brim up for an inch and a half to two inches without showing the interior of the hat at the bottom of the brim. The hat is pleasantly warm, the length feels appropriate for a holiday Santa hat. I like it.
Holiday "Santa" hats, knitted on #sentro #knittingmachine #circularknittingmachine
Using Wool-Ease yarn, which is maybe my new favorite, it has the feel of wool, a nice wooly texture and mottled appearance.
With a thinner yarn, I thought that I might need to add more rows - I could have tested a sample, but I dove in and knitted 200 rows instead of my familiar 150, and it ended up being a longer hat than I normally produce. But maybe that's OK for a holiday-time stocking cap.
Most of the advice online that I've been seeing about yarn selection for the #sentro #circularKnittingMachine is to prefer soft weight 4 yarn, and definitely not thicker/heavier yarn.
I will report that this yarn went through the machine just fine, came out with a lightweight hat, it feels soft.
blue and white knit cap, made on a Sentro circular knitting machine
Another hat experiment, a gift for my sister (don't tell her). I wanted to buy some nice yarn at a local yarn place, and I think I misread the yarn weight on the shelf - normally, I buy worsted, weight 4, and I think this might be weight 1 - I don't know a lot about yarn, but that seems significant.
Bayshore Yarns in Silverdale, Washington
my yarn being rewound at "Stranded by the Sea"
The two yarn shops I visited were "Bayshore Yarns" in Silverdale, Washington, and "Stranded by the Sea" in Edmonds, Washington.
Both are neat little stores, helpful, friendly staff. I look forward to buying more yarn from each.
knit beanie hat, with 20 rows of "wheat" at the top, followed by 20 rows of "forest green heather", followed by a stripe of 10 rows of wheat, then 20 rows of "cranberry", except that the brim of the hat covers up most of the cranberry stripe.
top of the hat, after affixing a pom-pom reusing the three colors of yarn from the rest of the hat
I made this hat in wheat / cranberry / forest green heather yarn, which has a "New England Christmas" vibe to it.
You can't see, but the cranberry stripe extends down under the brim - if I were to remake this hat, I'd adjust it to show a little more of that stripe.
A large proportion of my machine-knitting knowledge comes from Quinn Bender: www.youtube.com/@quinnbender
who mentioned (in some video) a few yarns that work well with the Sentro circular knitting machine, including "Wool-Ease" yarn, a wool/acrylic mix, it's soft and scratchy in a way that I like.
I had a long holiday weekend, which I filled by visiting two yarn shops and making two hats.
I look forward to wearing the combo through the holiday season - blue and gray isn't super on-theme for holidays I celebrate, but neither is it blatantly contrary.
#sentro #knittingmachine #circularknittingmachine #hat #scarf #wool
hat and scarf in blue and gray wool
hat and scarf in blue and gray wool
I *only* knit 165 rows, still had enough for a little pom pom at the end. As I was casting off, I dropped a few stitches, but I managed to rescue them using my crochet hook and newfound skills. Also, I hid the mistake inside the hat.
So, to go along with the scarf, I decided to make a hat (I know how to do two things on my circular knitting machine, and one is a scarf, and one is a hat). So I weighed the scarf, weighed the remaining yarn, again did math, realized I could knit another 200 rows, which sanity told me would be nuts.
When I set out to make my most recent scarf, I weighed the yarn I had purchased, did some math, made a design (of sorts) that I expected to approximately use all my yarn.
The scarf ended up being 400 rows, 6 feet long, which is a little ridiculous, but it didn't use all the yarn I planned to use.
I'm pleased with the look and feel of this yarn, and the scarf makes me happy.
#sentro #knittingmachine #knit #scarf #luckyscarf #wool
You can see by the yardstick that the scarf measures a little over two yards in length, which is unnecessary, but gives me numbers for future scarf projects - this particular yarn works out to ~6 feet for 400 rows.
I watched a handful of YouTube videos, including talking about using a "joining stitch" with a crochet hook. I practiced a bit with a throwaway bit of yarn, and got enough of the hang to plunge forward with this scarf.