Be careful what you wish for!

I've always wanted to be a knitter. I actually do own some knitting needles, and somewhere in my mountain o' crafting stuff there is a bag with yarn and a little itty 2-inch-long test piece I knitted last year sometime. But I never really caught the bug. "Maybe if I had a knitting machine," I wondered.
Several months ago, one of my friends told me she had a knitting machine she was looking to relocate, to make room for more of her crafting obsessions (of which she has many). She had acquired it ten years ago, when her husband received it as a barter payment for some work. It had not been touched since, and she had no idea how to use it, nor did she have the time to figure it out. Would I be interested in housing the machine? Maybe I could figure out how to use it, and teach her, and we could merrily knit garments. Sure!
Finally, I went to pick up the machine yesterday. It's a monster... certainly not the little portable machines sold at JoAnns. I had to do some serious cleaning out of the furnace room to make room for it (which is why it took several months before I could pick it up).

It is a Passap E-6000 double-bed computer-controlled knitting machine. This is some serious piece of equipment!! It's got more knobs and dials and settings and switches than I thought were possible on a knitting machine.

I wonder how long it will take me to figure it out and actually produce some knitted stuff from it. I certainly hope it will be less than ten years. But I'm not taking any bets.