Brief write up of meetings
This month’s meeting was the usual Christmas Party. Margaret supplied a quiz and everyone enjoyed the food and drinks.
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This month we had a workshop meeting where we worked on making some felted baby booties. The felt had been made my various members following the September meeting which described how to make felt from pieces of knitted wool.
Many different pieces of felt had been made, some plain and many coloured by felting fairisle or weaving in coloured yarns.
All the members made something – some made complete pairs, others worked more slowly.
Here are some pictures of our evening.
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We were pleased to welcome Fiona Morris back again. She is well known and respected in both a machine and hand knitting circles, a fuller biography is on http://www.distanceknitting.com/about-fiona/
She entertained us with a talk entitled Don’t Throw It, Fix It. Fiona showed us a range of garments she had made which needed resizing or changing in other ways to meet the current needs of the owner. This gave us the confidence to take in seams and add darts or tucks to change the shape of jumpers and cardigans.
One item had an additional insert in the side seam to give extra width and she showed us how she had added a small triangular piece in the sleeve seam to make it all neatly fit the new enlarged armhole again.
This was a hugely enjoyable talk and after coffee Fiona updated us on a range of newer, mainly hand knitting yarns, that were currently available in fibres such as viscose made from bamboo, flax, hemp, silk, cotton and linen mixes. There are some British single breed speciality wools which have particular properties depending on the qualities of the fleece. There was also discussion about where these were spun – mainly China, and the British companies starting up again having outsourced this in the past.
Everyone learnt something new from this – such as the fact that yarns made from different wood pulp have trade names we recognise – Tencel(c) for instance.
This month’s meeting was in two distinct parts:
The Chairman’s Challenge was a competition to create a bag. Using a piece of knitting approximately A4 size to create a mixed-media clutch bag using as many different elements as possible.
The results were absolutely amazing – everyone who entered created a lovely bag. Chairman April’s difficult job was to judge the results and award the £25 prize to the one she felt had best fulfilled the brief.
The winner was France whose bag contained many lovely features.
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The experimental part of the evening as demonstrated by Margaret – she took a metre long (approximately) piece of yarn, added a tiny amount of washing up liquid and a small amount of water and the scrunching up the yarn rubbed it around to form a ball. By constant friction, using the hands to rub it in a circular motion, it would form a small felted ball if the yarn did indeed felt.
making felt balls by rubbing yarn around in the hands.
Resulting felted ball
Samples of felting
For the November meeting when we will attempt to make some baby booties, Margaret asked everyone to try and bring a piece of felt they had made, big enough to make these booties. The pattern instructions are given here: nov-2016-feltbabybootee link to the template so that people can try them at home – we will donate them to a charity for Christmas.
A link to the template so that people can try them at home – we will donate them to a charity for Christmas unless you wish to keep yours for a small person!
Download the template here and make your own template on some thick paper or card. Bring thread and a suitable needle.
pdf of felt baby shoe template to print
This month, instead of the usual evening meeting, we had a cream tea at Margaret’s house. Although the turnout was rather smaller than hoped, we had a lovely relaxing afternoon and Margaret demonstrated her Designer Knit program. The weather was kind so we enjoyed exploring her garden and admiring all the plants as well. Then we had tea: sandwiches, cakes, scones, strawberries and cream. Thank you to all the committee members who contributed all the food, and especially to our hostess who provided the venue and all the other elements that made it such a lovely time.
This was a club evening and the topic was Charters / Knit radar. There was a talk and following the coffee break demonstration and a chance to try one out.
This was a club night and we welcomed a visitor from New Zealand – Aileen – who is an enthusiastic knitter and a member of a club there.
We started with a show and tell – various interesting garments were displayed, Margaret had made a chunky blue cardigan and also sideways knitted jacket from a pattern in a recent Machine Knitting Monthly, this was an interesting striped pattern which used up plenty of yarn from her stash. April had knitted a cream cardigan from a knobbly yarn, which she was hoping to get sewn up during the meeting. Frances talked about her “disaster” which happened when her charter got knocked into double length mode and she didn’t notice until the front of her jumper was twice the length it should have been!
The meeting had two themes:
The first part was a demonstration of the separate and complementary machine, the linker.
These machines neatly, quickly and simply sew up the knitting with either the same or a matching yarn smooth. The result is a neat chain stitch seam.
Our chairman April brought a Hague linker – a hand machine where you simply turn a handle to make a needle move backwards and forwards through the stitches. The pieces that are to be sewn together are placed, right sides together over a ring of prongs- each stitch on a separate prong – like the gatepegs on your machine. This done, the yarn is threaded and the needle lined up with the left-hand edge of the seam – then simply turn the handle and a chain stitch is formed along the edge of the garment.
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The Hague machines are still in production and both hand and electric models are available.
Anu brought along her 1980’s vintage Knitmaster electric linker – this worked in a similar way but has a foot pedal to operate it more like a sewing machine. The design is slightly different but the principle is the same and the garment placed over a ring of prongs in the same way as on the Hague.
Members of the club had the opportunity to try out the machines. April even managed to get some of her cardigan sewn up!
After coffee and a chat, we had our raffle and the opportunity to look through some old pattern books that were given away if people wanted them.
The second part of the evening was about bag making, it started with several members showing bags they had made:
April had a couple of crocheted bags demonstrating the effect of lining and interlining to give a bag body, she also had a fabric bag with a zip to hold a hat in a manner that was mothproof. Frances had a gold lame lined lace dolly bag Anu had a small pencil case style bag and a large padded bag which was a work in progress so she could show us how it was constructed.
Margaret brought a number of lovely bags including a masa bag knitted on the knitting machine and finished with a crochet edge and handle, a lace bag with devoré velvet lining and finished with crochet embellishments, a bag made from many tension squares and then lined and several others both crocheted and machine knitted.
Lyn brought a “string” shopping bag made from purple cotton this was knitted using circular knitting and dropping every other stitch to create an open texture.
There were also various items that make can be used to stiffen the bag, attach handles and make fasteners. Several members had saved items from old bags to reuse.
April issued a Chairman’s Challenge to design a mixed media clutch bag, more details later.
An interesting and exciting meeting as we had a speaker Samantha Elliott, a principal lecturer at Kingston University who gave us a presentation about fashion textiles incorporating machine knitting. She also brought along some of her own and student’s work examples of knitting.
We were able to see her own book as she brought some copies for sale – this is one of the few new books about machine knitting.
Here are some pictures of the things she brought along.
This started with the AGM – the usual reports and re-election of the committee. One new committee member was elected as the longest serving member is moving away.
This was followed by a club evening.
Unfortunately, the speaker was unable to come this month so April, Gill and Frances stepped in to demonstrate Punch Lace on the Knitmaster machine and Lace on the Brother machine and April showed us weaving on a Brother machine.
There were plenty of samples for us to admire and members had a go at the various techniques.
There was also a yarn and magazine sale as we had received donations from several kind members of the public.
(photos to follow)