Why You Want a Ribber for Your Knitting Machine

If you are looking to buy a knitting machine or you already have a metal bed knitting machine, you want a ribber.

Why you Want a Ribber

When hand knitting, a knit stitch is created by pulling the yarn through your loop from the back, a purl stitch by pulling the yarn through from the front. A knitting machine can only pull the yarn through from one direction. So on a single bed knitting machine, the “knit” side faces the back of the machine and the “purl” side faces you.

Since stockinette tends to curl, when we hand knit we usually have borders to the pattern that are some combination of knit and purl so our finished project is less likely to curl. And of course we also use ribbing for cuffs and waist bands where we want a closer fit.

By adding a second bed, or ribber, to our flatbed machines we have a way to create the “purl” stitches for our finished project. With some limitations…

Ribber Limitations

With a ribber you can knit any combination of ribbing on your knitting machine – 1×1, 2×2, 2×3 and so on.

What the ribber can’t do is automatically transfer stitches from bed to bed. So to knit garter or moss stitch, you would have to manually transfer stitches back and forth. There are tools to help and it is easy enough to do on a small scale, but maybe not so much if you’re knitting a full bed afghan and want a garter strip edge. That could get tiresome. It can be done, it just depends on how determined you are.

Also if you have a machine with patterning capabilities, some patterns use the ribber but the patterning doesn’t extend to the needles on the ribber bed.

Beyond Ribbing

Adding a ribber to your knitting machine does allow for more than just ribbing though.

Circular or Tubular Knitting

With a ribber, you can knit circular. So seamless, or nearly seamless socks and hats are possible without investing in a CSM (Circular Sock Machine)

Racking

A ribber is made to adjust the ribber bed from left to right and back again. Shifting, or racking, the bed back and forth creates interesting zig-zag and wave effects with your machine knitting.

Pintuck & Plating

Two techniques that use thinner yarns but give some interesting effects.

Double Bed Jacquard or DBJ

I think this is the ultimate reason to have a ribber. Colorwork like Fair Ilse but without the floats! With DBJ you can have your colorwork design on one side with either a plain backing, striped or birds-eye backing. If you’re willing to work for it, you can even create a reversible DBJ.