Hand knitters who machine knit have an advantage. Understanding yarn and how stitches are formed can go a long way to added success with your machine knitting.

Even if you don't hand knit, you can take inspiration from the hand knitting world. Sadly there are very few knitwear designers that publish patterns for machine knitting. Learn to "translate" hand knitting patterns to knit them on the machine (it's not hard). The Knit it Now Machine Knit-Able offer weekly inspiration from the hand knitting world.

If you do hand knit, consider knitting the fun stuff by hand and the boring stuff by machine. A fairisle circular yoke sweater is a perfect example. Knit the yoke in lots of colors, then pick up and knit the body and sleeves on the machine. You'll be wearing the sweater in a fraction of the time.

If you don't have a ribber, pick up those sticks and knit your ribbing by hand.

Want to add a bit of garter stitch or seed stitch? Instead of manually re-forming the stitches, consider hand knitting those sections.