Bond America The Ultimate Sweater Machine Deluxe

Being an impatient knitter, I was intrigued by the idea of a knitting machine. This one was the least expensive, and despite my fellow reviews being quite evenly split between "love" and "hate," I decided to give this a try.Upon receiving this machine, I immediately started playing the video, and set the machine up as per the instructions. Forget the fancy extensions and extra parts like the row-counter your first time, and set it up exactly like the video shows. Within twenty minutes, I had the machine set up for the first time and was ready to begin.The first item I made was hard. I started with a shawl-type piece, basically a practice item with the machine and the included yarn. It was extremely difficult, the stitches kept dropping and skipping and generally knotting up and being a bother. Within the first three rows, I set it aside and took a break.Coming back to it a half-hour later, I fixed a few stitches and kept going. After about ten minutes, I had about six inches of perfect stitching. Then the machine dropped more stitches, then I kept going, and at the end of the included yarn I had finished a piece about 4x1 feet. The edges do curl, it's okay.The first item I made was frustrating, for sure, but it was amazing when it worked and was able to make inches of stitching in minutes! My family and I were quite ready to call the machine Sybil, on account of its tendency to switch "personalities" so quickly.I started my second project soon after, a scarf that involved switching colors(by tying off), in Red Heart yarn(the cheap kind). I selected the 3.5 plate, and made sure to wax the active part. This is important! Waxing/lubricating is very helpful for making the machine work! This scarf, in contrast to my first piece, was quite nearly perfect. No massive dropped rows, no skipped stitches or knots or anything. It was not without some careful attention, and fixing of dropped stitches before they became a problem, but in general it was much much quicker than hand-knitting. The color change was extremely easy, too, and looked great.Since then I've done 5 or so scarves, the machine working very well and my projects look great! The machine works very well and does exactly what it promises- perfect knitting with a bit of a learning curve.In short--the machine works very well, but don't expect miracles from your first project.-you can indeed make a sweater in three days-be sure to keep tension on the yarn when you first start the row, but give it lots and lots of slack afterwards! The #1 reason for the machine stopping in the middle of a row was not enough slack on the yarn. The #2 reason was that one of the hooks, at the top end(keys?), was sticking up a bit too much for the machine to slide over. I press those down and continue. The #3 reason is completely unknown, but after making sure it was not one of the other two reasons, I used force to move the slider over. It typically works.One comment I do have to make is quality. Several of the loops on the hanging weight holder that came with the machine have broken(it didn't take long). I will be contacting the manufacturer about this and hopefully get a replacement. Besides that, the quality is fine on the machine and it works great.Don't get put off by the negative reviews! This machine is awesome, and if you take breaks whenever you get frustrated, you'll love it. :)

I had really high hopes for this thing. I am a gadget girl who can usually fix and/or figure out pretty much anything, plus an experienced knitter who understands how yarn/needles/stitches interact. So although I could see others had problems, well, I was optimistic that I could somehow get past the worst of the issues should they arise.Alas, I was wrong. This thing is hopeless. I've now spent dozens of hours practicing, looking up tips, fiddling...and have nothing but a few sad-looking sample swatches to show for it. There is no way I will ever get a usable item from it, without a lot of luck and spending far more time (and frustration!) than it would take just to knit whatever-it-is using two regular ol' needles.It jams. It drops stitches. It jams again. Sometimes it splits the yarn. And then...it drops even more stitches. Picking up stitches? Um, yeah. Good luck. You need to fix stitches FROM THE BACK SIDE (because it is the purl side that faces you) which is a joke since there is a TABLE EDGE right where you need to be capturing & re-knitting yarn stretched taught by a very heavy (but necessary) weight bar. Crazy hard to do. But don't even THINK about lifting the weight bar up a bit to relieve some of the pressure, because hey! More stitches will drop.There are a lot of people who love this thing (I know because I've seen their posts all over the internet in my quest to troubleshoot my own). I think mine is actually defective, despite being packaged very well so that nothing was loose or uncovered or rattling. Can't fault the shipping/handling. Nor did it look like a previously-used reject. However, just joining the two bed halves together (and I was not being forceful) caused a small piece to snap off completely, which was annoying (and doesn't seem to be part of any of the problems) but not surprising since the two halves didn't actually meet up properly. The instructions stress that everything must be LEVEL. Well, I used a LEVEL to set it up, thank you, (I've also switched surfaces, messed with clamps, used the non-skid pad, blah blah blah) but can see that the bed is warped ever-so-slightly in spots so that some needles are a trifle higher than others (probably one of the reasons why it won't knit well, regardless of how much leveling I do). It is also bowed, a fact obvious as you can see it does not run parallel to the desk top edge (the center is a good 1/4" closer to the desk edge than the end sections). Yes, I've tried to even and straightening things out. Ain't happening, it's the way the plastic is formed and fits together!And yes, I used the wax. And when the needles still jammed constantly on the keyplate(s) I pulled out some silicon lube I've got in my automotive toolbox. That worked a bit better. But the needles were also rather stiff. Following a tip on the 'net, I tried "breaking it in" by just running the cartridge (no yarn!) back & forth to work the needles and loosen them up, and guess what? It would STILL jam and stick in spots. That's when I pulled out a small bottle of liquid teflon and applied it to the needle bed. That also helped things run more smoothly, and eventually I got to a point I was ready to try actual knitting with yarn again...But ultimately, even though I can now at least get the cartridge to run back & forth without jamming on nothing, it still gets iffy when actual yarn is used. It completely struck out on most of my novelty yarns, even using the biggest keyplate. We aren't talking super-chunk here...just bulky weight (5) stuff. It likes worsted weight, and light worsted. And that's about it. And don't try fancy things like Fair Isle, it will drop stitches. Or eyelets, as it will again drop stitches. Or cables, unless you are using an extremely stretchy yarn and a loose tension (larger keyplate) because otherwise it's so tight you will invariably drop a stitch trying to move it (or worry about bending or breaking a needle because the resistance is so stiff!). Hand-ribbing sections was (after practice) actually one of the easier things to do, because the latch tool works well for that (once you get the knack) and hey! You get to work on the side you can see and reach! But it was still very time consuming to do very much of it.If you are brave, lucky, or stupid, then go for it. Like I said, there are as many lovers as haters out there for this lil boondoggle. Me, I'm about ready to throw in the towel (that still isn't knitted). Wasted money. :(****UPDATE****Spent more time poking at it today (I'm on vacation this week for some badly needed down-time...so I spend it like this? Gah!). No joking, I really did get a defective one.Underneath, each half of the plastic bed sections (which are multiple sections themselves) are held together with a metal bar. The metal bars in BOTH of my halves were riveted in too tightly. You can actually see it bending the plastic supports it's attached to. Thus, the bowing, and possibly the warping. I tried to pry them looser, but alas, the rivets defeated me. I'll try researching that another time, perhaps. Would be nice to fix it so that the entire bed was truly square (rectangular) and flat, yes?Also, I discovered why the one piece broke off as soon as I tried to assemble the unit. The green metal bar that runs across the top? On my left half piece that bar extends just a fraction of an inch too far over, preventing the right half piece from fitting properly. So when I tried to "snap" them together as per the instructions the lower corner of the right piece immediately snapped off instead (brittle plastic!). Grr. This also means I can't get my extension piece in, or it will suffer the same fate--I gave it a tentative try and realized it was a no-go. I will need to see if I can pry that green bar off and move it, or something.I also discovered that the actual depth of the needle bed on right half was ~1/16" longer than the bed of the left half. Well, duh! No WONDER the carriage was still very sticky and prone to jamming on that side even after the silicon and teflon applications! The carriage was literally rubbing up against the edges in spots! And since I had been dutifully "centering" my practice pieces per the instructions, I'd been using at least part of that side (and sticking and jamming and dropping stitches) regularly. Once I tried running a practice piece on the slightly shorter left side exclusively, I stopped dropping stitches etc. and was able to make some progress! As for the other side? Well, I took a handy flat edged metal file to the sucker, heh. The carriage runs much more smoothly across it, now that it's been filed down to size. (Although, my daughter pointed out I probably have now voided any warranty I might have had. Hm...)While I was mucking with that side, I also gave a really hard scrutiny to the carriage itself. The small pieces attached below the carriage edge that guide the yarn? You guessed it. Both had small sharp plastic bumps on them--remnants from the mold used to make them, it looked like--right where they would run along the edge of the knitting bed...which also meant potentially snagging on any work hanging down--particularly such as when I had needles moved into forward holding position (used in Fair Isle knitting). Argh! Well, I had my file out already, right? Off went THOSE flaws, too! (And I might just use that file on that green bar to take it back a notch, if I can't reposition it...I will be really angry if I can't use my extension piece at some point!)So after a ridiculous amount of identifying, solving and then "fixing" manufacturing flaws, I actually am getting somewhere with this knitting business. I've got a Fair Isle swatch--sans dropped stitches, this time--to prove it, heh. Oh, and I picked up a tip from a knitting forum, seems you can use just every-other needle to better accommodate bulkier yarns. I don't know that I would have thought of that. But, I tried it on one of my current favorite bulky novelty yarns (that was a complete FAIL yesterday), and hey! It worked! I actually got a full swatch of that knitted too!If I ever figure out the rivets on the bars underneath, or the over-extended green bar, I'll update again. Just in case some other very stubborn gadget-minded person foolishly buys this and also gets a defective one (because where there is one, there is bound to be others, and some folks are too senseless to give up--like me!). Still only one star, though, because seriously--this thing in the condition I got it is just WAY too full of flaws!