The 20 Minute Knitting Machine Beanie

This Instructable will show you how to make an adult sized beanie on a circular knitting machine in about 20 minutes.

The examples where made with a 48 pin sentro circular knitting machine, but you can use any 46 or 48 pin machine.

 The short version: Because of cancer and a chronic illness, I have a lot of time where I can’t move around too much. I use this time to make beanies for low-income residents, doing everything I can to help people stay warm.

I can’t knit or crochet. I tried to learn a couple of times and, well, it did not go well. I made up some pretty colorful swear words trying to follow several online tutorials. I would love to learn, but now, after chemotherapy, my hands are a little useless (chemo can cause peripheral nerve damage). Then, one particularly cold, gloomy after-chemo morning, I was doom scrolling online and came across an inexpensive knitting machine. Needless to say, it arrived the next evening and it changed everything. Not just my ability to knit -at least a little bit, but now, I could make something. I could actually make something! And that was huge.

As a life-long maker, one of the hardest aspects of my treatment was the fatigue and mobility issues. There were days, sometimes 2 weeks at a time, where the bone pain was so severe that I had a hard time just standing up. On those days when my treatment kicked my butt, I started playing around with the knitting machine. I spent all of November and December of last year, making cute little stuffed decorations for a preschool’s Christmas pageant. They got elves, reindeer & snowmen. The pain was particularly intense in December, so I sat in bed and made an army of tiny snowmen that covered my mom’s Christmas tree.

I then realized that I could help people while I recovered, so I started making beanies. I work for a non-profit org that serves low-income families, so when our monthly distribution event came around, I thought I would make as many beanies as I could to distribute along with the food packages, diapers, period care products and seeds we usually distribute. Being immunocompromised, I was no longer allowed to go to our events, but I could send soft fuzzy beanies to keep people warm. This gave me a purpose and a task, something to focus on and even to look forward to. I could spend the recovery days or weeks doing something that would also help someone. 

• 48 or 46 Pin Circular Knitting machine
• Light or medium 4 weight yarn. One skein
• Scissors
• Tapestry needle (or the needle that comes with the sentro)
• Clamp (optional)

I will be using a simple grey yarn for this Instructable. But that does not mean that we can't have a lot of color. The beanies above were made using the exact same process discussed below, that is, they are all from a single skein of yarn each. Since I need to prep beanies with more basic or muted colors for our next distribution event we are using grey for the example.

A note on yarn: Yarn is sized like women’s jeans. There is no logic or consistency. Even in the same brand and line, some yarns are just not machine friendly and these machines are quite picky in the yarn they “like". I would recommend starting your first project with something like a Heartland from Lion Brand, Caron simply soft, or I love this yarn prints are great for a lot of color and patterns. Once you are comfortable with the machine, experiment with other yarns.

Now, lets get to machine knitting

There is a switch on the side of the machine that allows you to knit a tube or a panel. For our project here, we need to set this to T for tube.

Place the machine in front of you with the handle on the right, so that the yarn feeder is in font of you.

The Sentro comes with suction cups on the feet to help keep it stable, but, I find that on my table, they do not hold very well. I use a single clamp to keep the machine from wobbling around. If you find that your machine wobbles a bit, try one or two on the legs closets to the edge of the table. There is a pink base to the legs, place the clamp on this area and secure it to your working surface

Press the reset button on the row counter

a.     Rotate handle until the white pin is aligned with the yarn feeder. I like to start on the white pin just because it is easier to spot.

b.     Drop a 5-6 inch yarn tail into the center of the machine

c. Place the yarn tail to the right of the white pin

 To cast on, the yarn needs alternate between going in front and behind successive pins

a.    Loop the yarn under the white pin

b.     Turn the handle a little bit so that the next pin pops up

c.      Pass the yarn behind this second pin

g.     Turn the handle slightly until the next pin pops up and run the yarn in front of the pin.

h.     Keep going until the last pin. Alternating taking the yarn in front of and behind the pins

The last image, shows what the yarn should look like on the machine at this point. Under or in front of one pin, then over or behind the next all the way around the machine

Once you have gone all the way around, alternating the yarn in front and behind the pins, you should end with the yarn passing behind the last pin.

Place the yarn on the left side of this last pin and pass it through the slot in the yarn feeder

Slide the yarn into the tension slot closets to the machine if you are using a light weight #4 yarn as suggested.

a.     Slowly turn the handle for the first few rows.

b.     Once you feel comfortable you can speed up a bit.

a.     We are knitting a lot of rows that will eventually drag on the table or work surface, this might alter the tension on the pins causing dropped stitches. To avoid this, roll up the tube to keep the appropriate amount of tension on the pins. Keep doing this as you knit.

a.     Knit 150 rows for a slouchy adult beanie with a cuff or 90-100 if you like a more fitted beanie. The Gray beanie is 90 rows and is fitted, the burgundy and yellow hat is 150 rows and allows for a large cuff to roll up

a.     Once you reach your targeted row count stop at the white pin.

b.     Cut the yarn, leaving around an16 inches long tail. Take care to keep the yarn under or hooked onto the white pin.

c.     Thread the yarn onto the tapestry needle

d.     Slowly turn the handle until the next pin is all the way down

e.     Use the needle to pick up the stitch form the peg.

f.      By turning the handle and picking up each individual pin, we can be certain that we will not drop a stitch.

g.     Repeat this process for each pin all the way around

a.     Now, we have a long tube

b.     Stretch it out. This should even out the tension. I like to pull on the sides and then the ends

c.     Take one end of the tube and pull it into the other end

Gently pull on the yarn tail to close up the inside of the beanie. Don't pull too hard, you don't want to tear the yarn.

Now gently pull on the second yarn tail of the outer layer of the beanie until that is cinched up.

Tie the two yarn tails together. Again gently so we do not tear the yarn.

I like to do 3 knots. Each a little tighter than the previous one

Cut the yarn tail to 4 -6 inches

Take the yarn tail and thread them onto the tapestry needle

pull the needle between the layers of the beanie. We want to hide these ends in between these layers

Pull the layer of the beanie apart slightly to pull the ends of the yarn tails between the layers.

That's it. You have just made a warm fuzzy hat for someone to stay nice and warm.

Now that you know how to use the recommended yarn, you can try using 2 strands of DK weight, a chunky yarn or novelty yarn like this sparkly blue and white one above