Author: Lyn Leventhall

The theme of this meeting was The Ribber,  April and Frances demonstrated techniques using the ribber and Margaret brought along her Garter Carriage so that we could see it automatically caste on and create a rib using garter stitch.

This session concentrated on some of the straightforward techniques  for the ribber  including setting up the machine and a future session is planned to cover some more advanced ones.

Various machines were available to try out the techniques.

We also held a raffle with some very nice prizes including a hamper.

This was a club night and both April and Frances demonstrated various techniques for adding textures and surface decoration to knitted items.

April demonstrated how to inset spiralling cords into a seam of a garment.  See the instructions under Knitting Notes in the menu.

Several machines were available for members to try their hand at these techniques.

On 9 September, Vivien Graham was our guest speaker. Vivien (whose real name is Vivien Cooper) runs a successful knitwear design business, mainly using lambswool and merino to design and knit jackets in a myriad of styles and colours, which she then felts. Vivien can make garments to measure and regularly attends craft fairs to sell her goods.  Her website is www.viviengraham.co.uk.

Vivien started off her knitting career at age 9 when her brother bought her some knitting needle and wool, and became an avid hand knitter, knitting everywhere she could.   Years later, after seeing a demonstration of a knitting machine she bought one for herself and started knitting garments in cotton.  After completing a knitting course at Southampton Institute of Further Education in Fashion Design she started selling her garments at craft fairs, and took up a permanent stall at Stapehill Abbey in Wimborne. Over the years, Vivien has collaborated with designers and retailers, who have sought her design and production skills.  Vivien now sells her garments mainly through craft fairs and repeat custom.

Vivien gave the club attendees advice on felting, some key points included:

1. ALWAYS do a tension square, as the tension can be affected by each different batch and colour of yarn.   For instance an orange yarn may felt up differently from a green yarn, and the same yarn you bought last year compared to this year is likely to have a different tension. Always knit a tension square of [60 x ?].
2. Once the tension square is complete, felt this by putting it in your washing machine on a 30 degree cycle (Viviens machine usually takes about 1hr 15 minutes to do this). Do not add anything else in the washing machine as this will impact the tension square, and you would need to replicate exactly with your finished garment.
3. You should always spin the garment on as high a spin as possible eg 1400-1800 to remove all excess water, this is because when you hang it up to dry you do not want the weight of the water to drag down your garment and distort/lengthen it. Remove the garment and hang it up as soon as the spin cycle is finished.
4. If you are not happy with how much it has felted up, you can put the garment back in your washing machine on a quick 15 minute wash to felt it up a little bit more.
5. Once the felting is complete, iron it and you can measure the gauge/tension to work out the size of your final piece.
6. For washing a felted garment, Vivien recommended hand washing, then spinning as high as possible before hanging up to dry. If you have a specific hand wash option on your washing machine (one that just swishes the garment back and forth rather than rotating it) then you can use that too, but not the wool wash 30 degree option as this would felt your item/shrink it more.

Vivien had a large collection of jackets and colours on display for attendees to view and try on, and a selection of unique handmade buttons on sale.

This month we had a speaker – Rosie Rees – who talked about knitting with beads.  Knitting in only one of the uses she has for beads as she runs a beading classes and a craft club in Surrey.

She showed us how to use a fine crochet hook a 0.75 or 0.5 to incorporate beads into the fabric and brought various samples she had made.

A second element of the talk was how to choose the best beads for knitting.  One of the key points was to have a large enough hole in the centre to put the crochet hook and the yarn through.

Japanese #8 are good for knitting  whereas the Czech size #5 which had smaller holes were also good.

Also mentioned were the way size values differed: US beads are sizes as say #6 is 6 beads to the inch whereas the others have entirely different sizes.

Rosie brought along lots of suitable beads both Japanese and Czech in a whole range of lovely colours and sizes.