Category: The Club

This month we have Angie show us all the background to her amazing final show pieces for the Morley College Textile course.

She took her inspiration from rusty metals – the texture and colours.  

These circular saw blades  sparked her imagination.

Angie talked about the course and showed us 3 huge folders that contained her samples, notes and ideas. She then mentioned there were several more of these folders at home and that all the students were initially given a single folder to record their ideas.  She was so enthusiastic about the work that she spent vast amounts of time working on her samples and ideas to fill all these books.  She explained the structure of the course and the various elements including dyeing, embroidery sewing and knitting as well as drawing.

Several club members went to the course final show held, unusually,  at South Bank University, not Morley College due to renovation work in progress.

The focus of her work was knitting with wire using the colourse and texture derived from her inspiration of the rusty metal surfaces.

[Show slideshow]

Angie was absolutely inspirational – her enthusiasm and creativity shone through.

A last minute change of programme meant that Frances and Margaret stepped up to give demonstrations we hadn’t seen before.

Notices

• Reminder about the Xmas knitting challenge – see last month’s notices.
• The Slipknot magazine from the Guild gives a list of events – the nearest one is a wool show in Hitchin
• There is a Quilting show in Banstead, in St Anne’s church hall, Brighton Road. 1-2 November 10am-4:30pm. There is a small charge of £3

Show and Tell

Lyn showed an Aran weight, blue hat she had made on her Addi king size circular machine.  

April had a hand knitted cardigan in blue for a small boy.

Demos

Congratulations to all who put together this programme aat the last minute, they did a brilliant job.

Frances showed us how to make a raglan sleeve seam much more interesting using an adjustable 7 prong transfer tool.  The first had a row of eyelet holes several stitches in from the edge, the second had a delicate patterning by transferring 7 then 6 then 5 down to 2 stitches every 2-4 rows.  This is then repeated until the raglan decreasing shaping is done.

Margaret found an interesting technique on Youtube, first making a strangely shaped fabric with large holes, then threading the fabric to make a braid like appearance.  She assured us it was straight forward once you got into the rhythm.  

This was a regular club evening. 

The following notices were announced by the chair:

• Hounslow club is having a speaker in November, it is Fiona Morris.  If anyone wishes to attend from Bookham they will be welcome,  They will need to know numbers, the cost is £10 per person.   It starts at 1:30 on the same day as our November Meeting.
• The squares blanket has been sewn together by Gill and now needs an edging, Anthea volunteered to crochet around it.
• It was decided that this club will not be a branch of the Guild of Knitting and Crochet but remain a Machine knitting club as before.
• Members are remined that any electrocal equipment brought to club must be PAT tested and this should be a done within the past year.
• Subscriptions for the next half year are due in October – by cash, cheque or bank transfer.

Christmas Challenge:

By Christmas, members were asked to machine knit something for a “show and tell” – it can be any type of item, not specifically a Christmas theme.  All items should be new, not seen before at a club meeting.

This is not a competition but you will be expected to talk about yout item.

Show and Tell

Margaret brought a sideways knitted garment that she found was too small.  So she felted it and it now is a nice warm garment to give to a charity.

Tricia brought along a newrly fininshed raglan cardigan made in an acrylic crepe yarn.

Guild AGM

Margaret gave us a report on the new Guild’s annual AGM meeting held in Warwick.  She was very enthusiastic about the quality of the meeting and all the things she had seen and workshops she attended.  There was little for machine knitters as yet but this should change over the next few years when the members of the Machine Knitting Guild start to contribute to the AGM.  She particularly liked the accomodation (the neeting was held over a weekend) and commented favourably on the welcome games which helped people feel more at home.

Topic 

This month’s topic was to take and existing p attern and repurpose it for a different yarn and / or different stitch pattern.  The group divided up into 3 and Frances did a demo of using the Brother Knitleader and talked about setting it up for the tension user,  with  Lyn who for comparison showed two different Knitmaster/silver knit radars and discussed the differences.  Tricia demonstrated a mathematical approach and Margaret showed a different numerical approach.

photos and write up to follow.

This month was the AGM and this took up the first half of the meeting, after re-electing the current committee, there was a discussion about finances and it was agreed to increase visitors fees. Prospective members get their first visit free, a subsequent visit is £5 after which they must decide to join or not. Visitors are £8 if we have a speaker and £5 otherwise.

After that, we had a yarn and book sale in aid of charity as last month. Leftover items were to be given to charity.

There was the usual show and tell after that with several members bringing items (photos to follow).