After some notices by the chairman about the August Knitting and Cream Tea event at Heathercraft and another yarn sale we continued with this month’s theme of Cone Ends, the idea was to use up some of those spare bits of yarn we all keep.
Members brought along some cones of spare yarn to experiment with. Each corner of the room had something different and members moved around to look at demonstrations and try out the items which could all be knitted using small amounts of left over yarn.
The items being demo’d were
- a hand knit and crochet corner, Gillian had some fingerless gloves and April had a phone cover to show us how to make
- a ruffled scarf corner – Frances used the pattern published in a previous Guild of Machine Knitter’s newsletter.
- a quick knit baby bootee – Margaret had some super quick little booties made using holding position and with no sewing up.
- a scrunchy – Margaret’s easy idea for a tiny amount of yarn.
- a knitted flower – Lyn used the pattern from the July issue of Machine Knitting Monthly.
- a hat – Anu showed two colourful hats and talked about techniques.
Various people had also brought along some small items, Tricia had made a phone cover on her machine and Barbara had made some lovely red flowers from the pattern in the magazine, she had improved it by using fully fashioned decreasing to give a better edge.
Anthea brought along the club electric wool twister and her own hand twister to show us. This could prove very useful for those who wish to ply together several yarns and do not want the random effect that simply knitting them together can create. These twisters are easy to use, just like a ball winder but the centre piece holding the cone also rotates in an elliptical orbit.
There was also a show and tell session – several members had brought along items they had recently made. (No photos unfortunately as the camera battery went flat!) One of our newer members had made an interesting asymmetrical poncho with an edge in full needle rib.
Thanks to everyone who took part making this into an unusual hands-on evening. We will definitely be trying something like this again.
