I'll admit, I have never used a knitting machine. I'm intimidated for some reason. (And I think my grandma would disown me, lol)

You have me curious! Off to google...

I often wish I had one...I have Enchanted Knitting and it has the most gorgeous designs, but I can't imagine having the time to knit an entire sweater at the fine gauge needed (for one pattern, I think I'd have to knit at 12 sts/in to fit in on the back of a sweater). Can you do color designs on your machine?

I started with a Bond Incredible Sweater Machine and used it a bit, then it went into the closet. 3 years ago it came out of the closet and I made 2 baby blankets.
www.flickr.com/photos/bogiebogie/

Since then I purchased an LK-150 which I like a lot more, primarily because it has a tensioning device which allows for faster knitting and less risk of getting the yarn caught or hung up which can cause the tension to be too tight, the carriage to jam, and/or dropped stitches. I made a baby sweater with the LK-150.
knitflix.blogspot.com/2006/10...ket.html

I like the knitting machine and don't mind manipulating stitches to make something other than stockinette. But, I handknit just about everything because handknitting is small, portable, and quiet. I enjoy knitting in the family room while watching TV or a DVD, and to do that with the knitting machine means I have to clamp it to the kitchen table and then move it again when we want to eat. Besides, it's noisy and not pleasant to be around if others are trying to enjoy a show. With that, it's set up in an extra bedroom which is in serious need of decluttering, so that's another reason why I'm not using it more. But some day I'll roll up my sleeves and work on the room and have a MK project on the needles.

20 years ago I had to take in piecework to make money to stay home with my infant son. I got some work stringing beads for a company called Sparkle Plenty that made semi-precious bead and pearl necklaces with real gold findings that were sold at Nieman Marcus and Saks.

The owner of that company decided to get into luxury fiber sweaters, and because it was production work she used to come up with designs that used knitting machines to save time. She bought a few knitting machines and some of them came home to my house where they took up a lot of room. I used to hand-knit bottom ribbings (because machine ribbings are clearly not hand-made and usually ugly) then hang the stitches and run off most of the sweater by machine. The designs were complex and involved a lot of intarsia or areas of pattern stitching. Sometimes I hand-knit the front because it was too complicated to be faster by machine, Sometimes a design would require taking a partially completed piece off the machine, hand knitting a portion and then re-hanging it to finish by machine. I knit pretty consistent gauge, which was fortunate. The sweaters were sold as "handknit", so it was important that the knitting match front to back.

As I say these were luxury fiber sweaters and most of the yarn came from Europe in small yardage balls designed for hand knitting (25g. balls of angora for instance). They had to be re-rolled to check for and correct knots and make sure they would run through the machine smoothly enough. I could do a typical entire sweater in about half a day. We assembled the pieces with crochet hooks by hand (because machine linkers are evil), and then I'd pick up and hand-finish the neck and arm holes and sew on buttons, etc. Sweaters sold for $500 to $1000 (they paid me pretty well, typically 20% of sale price).

All of this was fine and then Kaffe Fassett became popular and everything had to be hand-knit for awhile, LOL. By then my kid was big enough for day care so I went to work for lawyers instead.