Category: Meetings

This was another club meeting – we had a demonstration on Fisherman’s rib by Frances our expert on Brother machines, she added a nice embellishment – a small piece of cabling. This was a very interesting talk she showed us how to set up the carriages and what weights to use along with advice on sewing machine settings for cut and sew garments.

We also had a sale of yarn, kindly Gillian’s daughters have give us he stash to sell, with proceeds to her favourite Charity at St Georges hospital. There will be more yarn and books next month too.

Finally a show and tell – Angie had crocheted a huge blanket using many ends of yarn on a large hook. We also had an octopus destined for a premature baby unit. It was very fiddly to make apparently.

We had two main themes this evening. The members were asked to knit squares of exactly 15 cm. A whole pile were made and these will be turned into a blanket. A discussion ensued ot the best way to do this. In the end it was decided that a Hague Linker be used as it gave good consistent results and was faster than hand grafting or crocheting the squares together

This linking will be done over this and the next meeting – members are asked to take turns during coffee breaks and chat times.

The second theme was crochet and members not familiar with crochet were given some instruction.

Then, with a pattern Margaret had found, we all made some cotton make up removal pads which were washable so did not use up environmental resources like tissues or cotton wool.

Finally and very sadly, members had crocheted flowers to be put on wreaths at Gillian Quenzer’s funeral. Gillian had said flowers are for the living so her family had arranged to have knitted ones made by members of all the different knitting groups she had belonged to. She will be sadly missed.

This month was a club meeting and started with some notices about events. We welcomed a visitor – Emy.

After that, we launched into the topic which is how to accurately find the tension. For next month members are asked to make some accurate 15cm squares of  knitting so we can create blankets for a homeless charity.  Next month we will be learning to crochet the squares together. The squares should be in a variety of stitches – not just plain stocking stitch.

Margaret reviewed how to do a tension swatch and showed us her samples.

There was a discussion on using various techniques – the green and blue rulers (for Silver owners) then a method using a set number of rows and stitches and working the tension from that.  Then how to work out the number of rows and stitches needed to get a 15cm square.  Some people like to use a charter to avoid any calculations, others like to use a calculator or mental arithmetic method.

Tricia described how to best calculate the number of rows and stitches to match a pattern – she liked a garter stitch babies jumper but has not got a garter carriage and didn’t have the yarn given in the pattern.  She described in detail and showed us her handwritten working sheets with all the notes and diagrams.   Other members had used similar methods and some had alternatives.

We then had a show and tell – quite a few people had been busy over the Christmas period. April had made a bag full of fingerless mitts for charity.  Angie brought along a super hat knitted in wire, she had made this for a project at Morley College,  the brief had been the planets. Hers represented the colours of Mercury meets Jupiter. Gill had hand knitted a jacket in Shetland wool.

After coffee, Frances demonstrated a technique combining two different stitches.  One punch card had 4 rows tuck pattern followed by 2 rows of weaving.  It made a very attractive fabric.  She  show a sample of alternate tuck and slip using a 1×1 card, which made a firm fabric. 

After that she showed an example of fairisle with a blanked off section where she places a cable design. There were two techniques – a simple twisted stitch over 3 needles using two 3 pronged tools and another narrow cable.

By Tricia

Our speaker in November was Alison Ellen, a hand knitting specialist and designer, who presented a slide show of her ideas and techniques along with a very interesting talk and a display of her garments.

Click on images below for a larger picture with a caption.

[Show slideshow]

She uses wool from particular breeds, mainly Leicester blue face sheep, and has it dyed to her requirements (also experimenting with dyeing herself to get two-colour, tie-dyed or random dyeing effects.) She takes her inspiration from colours in her garden and the countryside, also from other things like classical mosaics and buildings, eg. lichen-covered brickwork. Alison prefers to work with minimal seams, such as guernsey-style sweaters knitted in the round, or using crochet, grafting and cast-off techniques to join seams. She showed how she uses modular knitting to produce square, diamond or shell shapes, knitting each shape on from the edges of the first shapes; short row techniques to make flares in garments and to create 3D sculptural objects; entrelac as we have never seen it before, with 2×2 rib instead of stocking stitch, making a stunning fabric; and increasing/decreasing within the rows, rather than at the edge of a piece of work to make flowing shapes and zigzag designs.

It was a pleasure to welcome several visitors particularly interested in hand knitting coming along with club members to enjoy the talk.

The following additional notes were contributed by April.

The Sussex Guild, to which Alison Ellen belongs,  has over 50 members, with a great variety of talent.   I thoroughly enjoyed her hour long talk, illustrated with more than a dozen garment samples and a splendid presentation. I loved her original use of colour blending and was delighted to hear her talk about her dyeing methods.   She has several different methods of dyeing her yarn which is uniquely spun for her.   These produce very different effects when knitted. The sheep’s wool is from Romney sheep and is superbly soft.  Many of her coloured techniques are specially designed for hand knitting but these could possibly be replicated on the machine by using  Fairisle.   She also showed us sculptured knitting which is produced by a variety of stitches and gave very interesting techniques. Her presentation was full of ideas, techniques and colour which I think will inspire me in the future.