Author: Lyn Leventhall

This meeting started with the AGM, a new committee was elected including a new Chairman – Kathy who took over the role from Brenda.  We would all like to thank Brenda for doing such a sterling job for the last 10 years, she has been inspirational and her breadth and depth of knowledge will be missed by the committee.  She will of course continue her membership of the club and so we will still be able to benefit from her experience. We wish her every success in the future.

After the AGM, the speaker was Liz Holness Chairman of  the Guild of Machine Knitters and Fleet Knitting Club in Hampshire.

She talked to us about using the ribber for more than just welts and cuffs. It was an extremely useful session, Liz passed around some samples she had made and showed us some garments including some lacy stoles that had been made on a Knitmaster machine in around 2 hours.  These were made in a variety of yarns, both natural and man-made. They draped beautifully. The original pattern had been created by our chairman Brenda and exhibited on the Guild’s stand at various exhibitions.

Then gave us a demonstration of how to adjust the ribber  on her Brother machine so that it was correctly lined up and the gap between the beds was the ideal one.

 An interesting demonstration of a simple rib pattern showed us how to create a patterned fabric simply by putting needles in and out of work on the ribber. The pattern has a vertical line throughout using one needle on the ribber – spaced out as you choose, then after a few rows a second needle is introduced adjacent to the first, then a few more rows then a third needle is introduced – this is repeated until a triangle is formed. All ribber stitched, except the one on the original needles are transferred to the main bed and the ribber needles returned to NWP.  This is repeated across the width of the garment and up the garment – to give a pleasing pattern.

Liz also talked about getting  machine knitting  better known, especially amongst the new generation of hand knitters. Many people come into machine knitting from hand knitting when they find they want to expand their craft skills, develop their skills into a business or have less time to make  garments, so recently Liz published an article in a knitting magazine. She has been manning the Guild’s stand at a range of exhibitions throughout the country and  has also made an appearance on the TV channel http://www.knit1.tv/

Traditional cables are made by removing two groups of stitches and swopping their position on the needle bed. Depending on the number of cables in one row this can be a laborious task. Magic cables are made by using a punchcard (or similar method for your type of machine). The pattern function that is used is tuck stitch, this places a loop of yarn over the needle to be tucked and builds this up over several rows. Subsequently, these are released with a knit row. After several rows of plain knitting you pick up the group of loops and place them on a needle to the left or right depending on the direction of the cable.This creates a sculptured fabric that has wonderful texture and is very similar to cabled fabric. In some instances there may be lots of loops and you will need to check that these remain on the needles. Weighting the work well will assist with this.

I believe the originator of the style is Rikki Mundstock and there are patterns to be had, probably the best source now would be eBay or Amazon. You may be lucky and find some in your favourite retail outlet.

After refreshments, April & Lyn kindly showed a film about the making of the knitted boat that was exhibited at Alexandra Palace in 2010 during the annual knitting exhibition there. It was extremely interesting and everyone enjoyed seeing how members of a community, knitters and boat builders worked together to create an original piece of art.

If this wasn’t enough, we had the opportunity to buy extra bits and pieces for our machine from one of our members who sadly has had to give up machine knitting.