My Knitting Machine Journey with the Halu Sweater, ep. 2

ep. 2 The Dropped-Stitch Lesson

(ep. 1 is here)

Working my Halu sweater on the LK150, I realized something wonderful: The Halu sweater is oversized. Which means if I lost some stitches under the arms when attaching to the machine, I didn’t have to sob dramatically into my coffee. (I have a plan for you and me to avoid this next time)

If hand knitting is a poetic stroll, machine knitting is a brisk walk with an energetic friend who keeps saying, “Let’s go!” And sometimes, a stitch or two decided to leap off the needles when I got too assertive.

So I created a new rule for myself for my next machine knit project:
👉 Inspect your knitting every three rows.
Every. Single. Three.

This would have saved me from several surprise ladder-y disasters and reminded me that learning something new doesn’t mean perfection—it means awareness.

Other discoveries from this phase for project two:

• After separating for sleeves and casting on under the arms, hand knit a few stabilizing rows. Your future self will thank you.

• Put in a lifeline before switching to the machine. 

• Reset your machine row counter when you work each side. 

The oversized nature of the Halu gave me room to learn. If you’ve ever needed permission to make imperfect progress—choose a sweater with generous ease. 

Once I finished machine knitting both the front and back (10 minutes each - it took me longer to attach my yoke due to the splitty nature of my yarn), I seamed up the sides and put back on circular needles to finish the ribbing. With my next project I may try the ribbing on the machine too. 

What makes it my sweater look so gnarly at this point was that:

1. I lost some stitches under the arm (turned out to be ok due the oversize nature)
2. I had some dropped stitches
3. My gauge was off from the hand knit yoke and machine 

All of these were very fixable

1. Lost stitches under the arm = ok due the oversize nature
2. Dropped stitches = repair from the inside to secure
3. Gauge was off = blocking minimized the difference!

I then picked up my sleeves as usual and knit those by hand; this may also be something I'll try on the LK150 with project two.

Where we’re heading next:
In the final post, I’ll share my checklist for anyone thinking about a first machine-knit sweater—and a few things I’ll absolutely do differently next time.

If you want to see me and the LK150 in action, we shared videos here.