How to Add Half Milano Edging on Knitting Machine

In this posting, I'll switch the gear and talk about a machine knitting stitch.
There was a question on how to knit a half milano stitch on the Facebook machine knitting community, so I'm posting a tutorial on it.

A half milano stitch is consisted of one row of full needle rib and another row of jersey. It can be done across entire rows, but a lot of times it is used to stabilize edges of panels knit in jersey. It is often used along the side edges of scarves or blankets, the center front edges of open front cardigans without plackets, or the opening edges of hoods. I've met a couple people from UK calling this stitch a "semi-double" stitch, but the term "half milano" is more commonly used in the US fashion industry.

Depending on the yarn and the tension, the face side of half milano stitches could almost look like jersey, but the stitches look elongated than jersey on the back side.


OK, here's how you knit it on a machine.
I'm using my Brother standard gauge knitting machine (860 bed + 940 carriage) with a 850 ribber attachment.
**You can click pictures to open them bigger.

Step 1. Cast-on needles in full needle rib setting in half pitch;

Step 2. Knit selvage rows;

Step 3. Transfer needles from the ribber bed to the main bed for the jersey section. Leave needles that would create half milano edging on the ribber bed;

Step 4. Set the main carriage to knit plain jersey and the ribber carriage to skip when it's moving from left to right by lifting right cam lever. Also set the tension of the ribber bed slightly looser than that of the main bed. (I used fingering weight hand knitting yarn, and set tension to 6 on the main carriage and 8 on the ribber carriage). 

Step 5. Move carriage from right to left to knit a full needle rib row;

Step 6. Move carriage from left to right to knit a jersey row on the main bed and skip needles on the ribber bed;

Step 7. Repeat these two rows until the knitting reaches the length you want. Once you're done knitting, move all stitches from the ribber bed to the main bed to cast-off.

That's it! Happy knitting!