couqol!

"Just what," you may say "is couqol?" Well, let me tell you! "Couqol" is what happens when I try to knit my boyfriend's band "condor" using my mom's knitting machine. Seeing as how it's my first time using it, i didn't quite grasp that the thing knits a pattern *backwards*. Thus, upside down and backwards, condor=couqol. The hilarity is killing me, as i spent a good 2 hours making something totally ridiculous! What was going to be a personalized armband or something instead turns out into...well, something that's not :)


Anyhow, this knitting "machine" (and that's sort of a dubious word because it conjours up images of an electronic mechanized thing that you program) hails from the 80s and definitely speeds up the knitting process, but it's sort of hard to learn how to make a pattern work on it. It's a totally unromantic process and the sound of each "pass" of a row sounds a bit like plastic gears grinding into little pieces. But I'm trying to figure out some sort of conceptual angle to use it with--like, what about John Cage-inspired machine knitting? what the hell would that look like? or "freeform" machine knitting (huh?). The possibilities boggle the mind!!!