what where and when
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.
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.
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.
June 2014 – Elaine Cater will talk on Ribbers were meant for more than ribs on your garments
May 2014 meeting – Anu Baldwin will talk on some of her current projects
The Knitaholics Spectacular
Harold Hill Community Centre in Gooshays Drive, Harold Hill, Romford RM3 9LB
Saturday 20th September.
On Saturday 9 November, 10am to 4pm
The Iris Bishop Workshop will be held in our old hall in Effingham, the Catholic Church hall,
for those of you who are not familiar with the hall, it on Lower Road which runns through Bookham Village and is nearly at the end, just past the British Legion and on the opposite side from the Howard of Effingham School (but further along).
The entrance to the drive up to the Catholic Church is next to the exit from the hall car park but the hall is behind a large hedge and the entrance is at the far end of the hedge (if you are coming from Bookham). It is easy to miss but at the end of the road you can go right round the mini roundabout and try again.
We welcomed Jo Thompson from Morley College today. She gave a lovely talk about how she got into machine knitting and her progress from student through until today via making garments and swatches for a living and supplying a knitwear boutiques in the USA and elsewhere with beautiful hand crafted garments of her own design.
We were fascinated by the variety and originality of swatches she had brought along and the examples from the student’s work she had collected together from the class she now teaches in experimental machine knitting.
Here are a selection of items from the huge pile of exciting items she brought to show us.
There are a variety of hats here with different styles of decoration.
This was a club night where members of the club gave a demonstration.
Our Chairman Kathy welcomed Sue Potter, the new Surrey regional officer from the Guild of Machine Knitters, who was visiting us for the first time.
We also extended a welcome to two more guests who are interested in machine knitting.
The first demonstration was by Brenda who showed us how she does button/button hole bands on a cardigan.
he gave us a rule of thumb for the band length – as a starting point then described various types of button bands – edges picot, plain, tucked to give a scalloped effect, single or double (better).
The tensions relate to the garment tension – in general the button band should be T-1 and the fold row T+2.
The final row after picking up the garment edge on machine should be the same tension as the garment.
Choose the number of rows to be even so buttonhole is central (excluding the turning row) 8 or 16 for example as this ensures top button in particular is central as it would show up more.
A quick tip: you can put button small holes on the join between the band and the garment, done when picked up so no separate button hole required – easy to do but garment needs to be V neck or top button will be offset to one side! It is suitable for narrow bands only.
In general, the button band should run up and over the neckband for more slimming look.
Older styles of garment were the opposite, finishing below neckband.
Generally bands are stocking stitch even if other bands on the garment are ribbed, a ribbed band it can cause a problem with tension matching.
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Frances then showed us how to put a pocket in a cardigan or jumper. This method needs no sewing up apart from catching in the pocket top after the rest is completed. It makes a neat and flat pocket with your own choice of trims at the top.
Full Instructions will be available later.
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Last but not least, the show and tell
Gill, one of our newest members brought in a cardigan she had made on her recently acquired Zippy 90, a plastic bed chunky with only 90 needles.
Gillian had made some bunting and brought that along for us to see.
After the formal business of the AGM, we were delighted to welcome Iris Bishop who is a favourite speaker at our club. Her talk was very entertaining and the garments and samples she brought along were a real feast for the eyes. As usual her emphasis was on creating lovely fabric using her trusty machine. Many of the items had woven elements and her combinations of colours and yarn made some really fabulous innovative fabrics. The yarns used varied from the industrial fine yarn to really chunky yarn and all, amazingly, worked on a standard gauge machine.
She showed us various garments and samples as well as giving detailed descriptions of how these were created.
We all enjoyed such an inspirational speaker whose no nonsense approach to knitting gave us all hope that we can achieve some of those lovely fabrics by following her patterns.
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