English Rib, also known as Half Fisherman’s Rib or Shaker Knit, is a ribbing variation you can machine knit on any machine with a ribber. Above you can see swatches of English Rib, Swung English Rib and Fisherman’s Rib.
English Rib on a Singer Knitting Machine
To knit English Rib on a Singer machine, we start by casting on as we would for a 1 x 1 rib.
We can see in the above image the Operation Table from the manual for my Singer machine. The first portion deals with the cast on if you use that method, but we see in the second portion our settings for the stitch pattern.
Starting with the carriage on the left.
- We aren’t using the punch card so we set the patterning lever to the circle.
- On our main bed carriage, we set the left side lever to the circle and the right side lever to the triangle.
- We set the cam lever to tuck.
- On the ribber carriage we leave both set levers on ‘1’
- Pitch is ‘P’ and swing set to 5.
- We set the tension or stitch size appropriate to our yarn and the same on both carriages
Then we knit
On the first carriage pass knitting from left to right, both beds knit as usual. I expect as I learn more about using knitting machines this will be proven wrong, but to me it seems as if setting that side lever on the main carriage to triangle allows the carriage to ignore that the cam lever is set to ‘tuck’.
Knitting from right to left, the ribber knits as usual but on the main bed the machine just lays the yarn in the hooks without knitting it. It knits on the next carriage pass when we go from left to right.
We can reverse this and have the machine knit right to left and tuck left to right. We just need to set the left side lever to triangle and the right side lever to the circle.
More on English Rib
You can see a full demonstration of knitting English Rib on the Singer knitting machine on my channel. While you’re there don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!
I prefer the eWrap cast on in all situations including when I’m casting on ribbing.
For a 1 x 1 rib, we set the pitch on our ribber to ‘P’ and the swing to 5. Using our 1 x 1 needle pusher we pull our desired number of needles from the main bed and the alternating needles of the ribber bed with our carriages on the right (COR).
For 2 x 2 Industrial Rib, we set our pitch to ‘H’ or half pitch. Swing is set to 5. With our carriage on the right (COR) and using our 1×2 needle pusher, we pull needles on the main bed and ribber bed so they look as above.
Casting on with the Ribber was one part of machine knitting I really struggled with. I still struggle with it some days. Getting the first steps exactly right and then completely bodging it up in the next one because I missed a carriage setting is the norm for me. But this is how we do the circular cast on with Singer Knitting Machines.
Now if you follow me on YouTube, I did a couple of videos on rehabbing my 
For the first row, I set my carriage to tuck stitch. For my machine that is done by setting the Russell Levers at the sides of the carriage to position ‘-‘ instead of ‘=’. Set the stitch selector to stockinette. On my machine, tension 9 is a good stitch size. Keep in mind the yarn shrinks in the wash which can make the cloth feel more like a pot holder than a dish cloth if the stitch size is too small. You can see how much the washed dishcloth on the right of the first picture shrunk compared to the just knitted cloth on the left.
Next leaving the first 2 needles in working position, I pull every other needle out to ‘hold’.
I continue on in the pattern until my row counter is around 70. Then I bind off after the last row of all needles knit.
By all rights that post should never even have been noticed let alone gone viral. The pictures were low quality and even the video I made showing the process was awful. But I planted it with succulents – Oh My! (heavy sarcasm here and it was actually hens and chicks or sempervivum) and one day a very popular site – 