March 2020 – Bookham Machine Knitting Club

At the March meeting we looked at different stitch techniques by the designer Bill King.
We chose to look at single bed work only. All involved hand manipulation of stitches and a discussion followed of where these patterns could be used. Various difficulties were discussed as to yarn and tension required for moving several stitches at once.

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It was a very interesting evening as most people had read his articles in Machine Knitting Monthly magazine and could see them demonstrated by members of the club.

There were several items in the show and tell section, our chairman Gill had created a cushion cover using the plating technique that was covered in the last meeting. There was a hand knitted blue childs jumper and a Batwing sweater using a Bill King design.

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This month our focus was the technique of plating. In this, two yarns are used, one appears on the knit side and one on the purl side. Using patterning such as tuck stitch both in single bed fabric and ribbed fabric, the yarns can appear on the opposite side. This makes an interesting textured fabric and also sovles some problems such as itchy wool yarn which can be backed but a silky acrylic yarn. It is also suggested that yarns which have a tendency to produce a slight bias can be knitted with a yarn which doesn’t although some small experiments suggest this is not always the case.

To start the meeting, we had a show and tell. Barbara brought a stripy child’s top, Anthea showed a V neck jumper, April brought a paisley patterned throw/blanket.