8th Oct: Club Evening.
1. Reminder that in November we are donating items to charity.
2. Age UK have teamed up with Innocent Smoothies to raise money for Charity, patterns available for knitting hats for bottles and decorating them.
Machines available.
Author: Lyn Leventhall
Currently - webmaster for Bookham Machine Knitting Club.
August 2014 Meeting
We all thoroughly enjoyed the garden party held in August. Everyone who came also had the opportunity to admire Anthea’s lovely garden, avoiding the bee hives where there were a few angry bees apparently.
A big thank you to Anthea who made her garden available and put in a great deal of effort to make us welcome. Also to those committee members who baked delicious cakes and made sandwiches and desserts.
July 2014 Meeting
After some notices by the chairman about the August Knitting and Cream Tea event at Heathercraft and another yarn sale we continued with this month’s theme of Cone Ends, the idea was to use up some of those spare bits of yarn we all keep.
Members brought along some cones of spare yarn to experiment with. Each corner of the room had something different and members moved around to look at demonstrations and try out the items which could all be knitted using small amounts of left over yarn.
The items being demo’d were
- a hand knit and crochet corner, Gillian had some fingerless gloves and April had a phone cover to show us how to make
- a ruffled scarf corner – Frances used the pattern published in a previous Guild of Machine Knitter’s newsletter.
- a quick knit baby bootee – Margaret had some super quick little booties made using holding position and with no sewing up.
- a scrunchy – Margaret’s easy idea for a tiny amount of yarn.
- a knitted flower – Lyn used the pattern from the July issue of Machine Knitting Monthly.
- a hat – Anu showed two colourful hats and talked about techniques.
Various people had also brought along some small items, Tricia had made a phone cover on her machine and Barbara had made some lovely red flowers from the pattern in the magazine, she had improved it by using fully fashioned decreasing to give a better edge.
Anthea brought along the club electric wool twister and her own hand twister to show us. This could prove very useful for those who wish to ply together several yarns and do not want the random effect that simply knitting them together can create. These twisters are easy to use, just like a ball winder but the centre piece holding the cone also rotates in an elliptical orbit.
There was also a show and tell session – several members had brought along items they had recently made. (No photos unfortunately as the camera battery went flat!) One of our newer members had made an interesting asymmetrical poncho with an edge in full needle rib.
Thanks to everyone who took part making this into an unusual hands-on evening. We will definitely be trying something like this again.
June 2014 Meeting
Our chairman gave out some notices – in particular about the next few meetings.
- In July, we will be making small items using cone ends, members should come with any small left over yarn to donate and any finished items will go to charity.
- In August, Margaret has been arranging a trip down to Heathercraft for us, we will have an afternoon out down in Faygate with a talk from Brenda, a chance to get Doug to take a look at any items that might need fixing and a cream tea. Doug will also have his model railway working. It is an opportunity to buy yarn and accessories for your machine too. As well as look through the hundreds of magazines and patterns. We will arrange a car pool so we can go down in groups.
- In September we will be having a Knitters Question Time. There will be an expert panel who will try to solve your problems. Please bring questions along to the July meeting if possible.
This month our speaker was Elaine Cater who gave us an interesting talk on using the ribber for more than just ribs on garments. She brought along a range of samples and garments and some of her publications too.
Click on an image to see larger image.
There were two boards with garments and samples from her books – Ribbing Yarns and a book of ribber baby garments, and a rail full of lovely garments. She talked about a range of interesting techniques and passed around many samples for us to examine.
We thanks Elaine for her talk and the time she spent explaining her work.
Everyone found the talk most interesting and several members mentioned that they would be experimenting with some of the techniques.
September 2014 Meeting
Knitter’s Question Time – an expert panel will try to answer your queries this month. Please bring questions to the July meeting or email them to one of the committee.
Whether you cannot get your ribbing caste on tight enough or your machine drops stitches when you knit certain patterns, your panel will try to answer your queries. We will have a machine available to demonstrate tricky techniques.
August 2014 Summer Garden Party
There has been a change of plan. We are not going to Heathercraft after all due to unforeseen circumstances. Instead we will be having a garden party at Anthea’s house.
We are arranging a car sharing so members will travel together as there is limited parking.
We will be contacting members by email to arrange this.
July 2014 Using Cone Ends
We will be having an interesting time making some small items with cone ends. Both hand and machine knitted items will be demonstrated.
Please bring in as many cone ends as possible to donate, finished items, if any, will be given to charity.
This should give you give you lots of ideas to finish up all those bits and bobs of yarn in your stash.
Everyone who wants to can have a go at these items
If you want to create flowers, please bring in a copy of Machine Knitting Monthly – the July issue has a flower pattern.
May 2014 Meeting
April, our new chairman, gave out various notices and introduced our speaker for the evening. There was a request that someone else take charge of the club library. This involves bringing in a couple of boxes of books and patterns each month and keeping a check on who has borrowed what.
Speaker
This month, Anu Baldwin who is one of the members talked about her creative journey in the craft of machine knitting. Anu makes wonderful hats and other items.
She took up machine at college whilst on an Art and Design course and followed that with a City and Guilds course in machine knitting. She showed us some of the work from her courses.
Having started by making jumpers for sale and finding that rather uneconomic she branched out into making smaller more colourful items especially hats. Her success with this during the 1990’s meant her work was mentioned in a Machine Knitting News. She recently attended classes at Morley college where there is a course in more creative machine knitting. She has continued to create innovative items with amazing colours and textures.
Click on a picture to enlarge it.
Show and tell
April brought in a silver jumper with a pretty crocheted edge.
Yarn Sale
During coffee there was a sale of yarn offered by a former machine knitter who is downsizing.
After that we took the opportunity to look more closely at Anu’s garments and chat to her about them.
April 2014 Meeting
The April meeting was in two parts, the club AGM was held at the start of the meeting and that was followed by April Hardman who talked about some of the garments she had made over the past twelve months.
April had brought along a range of lovely garments for both adults and children plus some hats and scarves. Most of the items were her own designs and the work was, as we expect from April, of a very high standard indeed. She showed us some lovely dresses for a small girl, a very pretty pram blanket, various adult sized cardigans and tops as well as a throw and some scarves and hats made on the garter carriage.
Below are April’s own notes on her work and photos of many of the items:
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Dresses
- Yarn:
- 2 dresses in 4 ply acrylic, which washes well if hung up and doesn’t need ironing and is suitable for children. The multi coloured one was a vintage Denys Brunton yarn.
- Stitch Detail
- 3 x 3 cable with a stitch out of work either side to accentuate the cable, make a cable every 6 rows. There are cables centre front and back and on the sleeves.
- Garment Design
- Inspired by a dress in Mon Tricot, it has garter stitch at the lower edge, wrist and neckline, the first 3 were knitted on the garter carriage but the 4th was hand knitted because there were decreasing in the row. The frill at the bottom was knitted with extra cables and was 24 rows.
Red top
- Yarn:
- Black Grigna, unbulked acrylic with a small slub. The red multi yarn is a 76% wool and 25% polyamide. It came in 100g balls, approximately 4ply, and this top size 14 took approx 250g.
Both yarns were very easy to knit and were problem free. After pining out the pieces they were steamed. The edgings were knitted in the black yarn. - Stitch Detail:
- Slip stitch, there is a pattern/punchcard in the 950 instruction book.
- Garment Design:
- By Elaine Cater. I read her instructions and she indicated that a a colour changer would make the knitting much easier. I made a cut and sew neckline but the edging would not cover the raw edge, so I enclosed this with a 9 row turned hem. I used a charter to knit this design
Scarves
- Yarn:
- They were all knitted in pure wool, to be hand washed.
- Stitch Detail:
- 2 x 2 rib, alternated to make a checkerboard pattern.
- Scarf Design:
- Knitted on a garter carriage
Sofa Throw
- Yarn:
- 100% Shetland wool, washes well at cool temperatures
- Stitch Detail:
- The bands were dog-tooth check knitted on a garter carriage. The Fairisle pattern was from Iris Bishop’s Celtic Designs.
- Throw Design:
- There are two panels knitted on the main bed over 160 stitch, 700 rows each panel. Started and finished with a 2 x 1 FNR, half pitch which laid flat.
Two pink hats
- Yarn:
- 100% wool
- Stitch Detail:
- 2 x 2 rib alternated, knitted on a garter carriage.
- Hat design:
- They were both made up of four panels which were stitched together with the seams on the outside. One was knitted of straight panels and was shaped by pulling the excess on the crowns to the outside to make a feature. The second was knitted straight up to the crown and this was shaped. There is a crochet flower as an embellishment.
Fairisle Pram Blanket
- Yarn:
- Yeoman’s 4ply Panama. Washes and wears very well and does not need ironing.
- Stitch Detail:
- Fairsle, 2-colour knit, using feminine symbols for a baby girl.
- Blanket Design:
- The exterior was knitted in two panels with a turned hem to start and finish that has a picot edge. The inside is nylon wadding and the wadding is held in place by fine ribbons which are threaded through and tied in a bow.
Elaine Cater on “Ribbers were meant for more than ribs on your garments”
June 2014 – Elaine Cater will talk on Ribbers were meant for more than ribs on your garments