Meeting Notes and notices

This month was a lovely club evening.  To start, as we had made some scarves and other items for charity,  Gill, our chairwoman, suggested we talked about our items. The aim was to use up some yarn from our stash by stranding together or knitting in stripes or just plain colours to use up yarn left over from other projects.

Previously Margaret had demonstrated a non-roll edging which was useful for single bed stocking stitch scarves. There were a range of techniques used, ribbing, tuck. tuck lace, garter stitch as well as stocking stitch.  edges and fringes were added to some. In addition to the scarves,  a hat and some dolls were also made.  All these will be donated to the charity Knit for Peace.

[Show slideshow]

In addition, some items were given in for a Christmas stall which Gillian is running in support of the Hospital Kidney Unit.

We followed this with a show and tell where some members had brought along their recently made items and discussed them.  There were some lovely yellow bed socks from Barbara, a sweet little tank top for a panda toy from Tricia, an interesting knitted cactus from Gill, April had a pretty child’s blue dress with a cable motif plus a nice cone- ends child’s cardigan with bands of different colours and two lovely sleeveless dresses from Angie. What a talented bunch of knitters we have in our club. (Sorry no photos as they were packed away before I had time to take any.)

After this, we had a Hints and Tips discussion where members had brought along their favourite hints or tips and we all found out about something we hadn’t known before. A list will be available shortly on this website. The discussion that followed made for a very interesting evening.  

There were two demonstrations – April brought along her homemade blocking board and a steam iron to show us how she steamed the edge of a tuck stitch baby blanket, Margaret set up a machine to demonstrate a method of unravelling several rows easily using the Garter bar retaining piece to hold the needle still in Hold position.  Nobody had seen this before and we were very interested in how quickly and easily you could undo rows without dropping stitches.

[Show slideshow]

We had a wonderful talk from Jools Elphick who brought along a large range of her knitted hats.  She entertained us with a history of her work intertwined with anecdotes about her life.  Having started making garments she moved by degrees into hats and her designs are widely sought after by high-end retailers both in the US and the USA. She is now looking to explore some new areas of knitting.

Talking about all the hats she has made

Image 1 of 4

Bookham Knitting Club talk may 2018

Some of the hats were modelled by one of our members and the came to life once on the head, the intricate structure that made them look so great was explained. And we had the opportunity to examine them in detail after the talk.

[Show slideshow]

We would like to thank Jools for making such an enjoyable evening and also Sarah who modelled the hats.

After the usual formalities of the AGM where the current committee was re-elected and Clare was co-opted onto the committee there was a show and tell where we showed off the small items we had made using various cone ends. 

[Show slideshow]

Gill's rubics cube ball

Lyn's polo neck insert

Anu's Attractive hat

Attractive hat in the making

Baby sized hat

Fluffy Hat

Slip Stitch Scarf

The evenings subject was making a scarf with non-roll edges, Margaret and Frances demonstrated the technique for those who had forgotten, and this was a starting point for us all to do 20 rows on this scarf.  It is hoped that everyone will make a scarf using their cone ends for the Knit for Peace charity. We will be collecting the scarves later in the year.

[Show slideshow]

Margaret's scarf with non roll edges

Full Size Scarf with non roll edges

There were two themes to the club meeting this month:

1. A continuation of last months meeting on cone ends.
2. A look at other crafts our members indulge in.

First, we had a round-up of the other craft work some of the members brought it, it varied from beading, hand knitting and crochet to bag making with painting and sketching, quilting and card making with variations on these as well. Members showed us which crafts in the display were theirs and talks briefly about them.

Many members hand knit which complements their machine knitting. Others have taken up a variety of other crafts.

(ed: the slide shows takes ages to load, please be patient.  Also click the image to move to the next one)

[Show slideshow]

After this, we returned to the cone ends topic and looked around at all the items brought in, most people had created items from their stash and also a range of patterns were available for using up the left-overs that inevitably occur when using coned yarn.  There were pretty gloves and scarves, as well as tiny items, stuffed animals and toys. Some were machine knitted, others hand knitted or crocheted.  

[Show slideshow]

Finally, Margaret repeated last month’s demonstration but this time with smooth yarn which showed clearly the difference between using yarn simply run together onto the machine, yarn wound using a standard winder and 2 methods of twisting – using a  hand or machine operated yarn twister and using a cone stack which is not as effective as the yarn twister and much more of a fiddle to use.  The cone stack can be mimicked by placing cones on an old-fashioned tiered saucepan stand, there are manual and electric yarn twisters available.

(ed: Apologies to those whose work does not appear – not all the photos were clear enough to display)

Ideas for using Cone Ends

Gill started the evening with notices – Kingston Hospital (Surrey) has asked us to knit some breasts to aid midwives who are demonstrating breastfeeding. Those who watch the Call the Midwife series on the BBC may have noticed them in their clinic using similar aids.  The pattern is for hand knit only,  email Gill or Lyn for a copy of the pattern.  Margaret, who has already made several ready to send off, said that they were quite tricky to knit unless you used small circular needles as the increasing and decreasing was hard on the hands. Please note these are not the same as the prosthetics created for breast cancer patients, there are a number of patterns for both hand and machine available elsewhere for those.

There was also a list of events:

• the Bournemouth Machine knitting show on Saturday 3rd March
• The Olympia Knit and Stitch show 1-3 March
• Unravel 16-18 February at Farnham Maltings

We continued the meeting with a show and tell.  Several members showed off their creations, see photos below and then we got into groups to look at the samples,  patterns and ideas everyone had for using up the cone ends at the end of this we came together to share ideas.

Show and tell

[Show slideshow]

Anthea showed her Jacket made from an Iris Bishop pattern. It used a variety of yarn for knitting and knit-weave.

This was a cat yurt made for a family cat. April made up her own pattern, it was crocheted.

A circular yoke was the feature of this attractive jumper.

A circular baby blanket was really pretty in delicate shades

This brilliant cuddly teddy bear was wearing a felted fairisle coat which was a left over from a garment. What a good idea.

Cone Ends Examples

[Show slideshow]

The other theme this evening was to use several yarns together to create a new yarn, often suitable for use on a chunky machine.  Various techniques were demonstrated:

• Running yarns directly through a multi-way yarn mast
• Winding several yarns together on a standard cone winder
• Use of a yarn stack where the bottom yarns are run up the centre of the ones above. 
• Using yarn twisted to create a brand new yarn from several thinner ones.

The club has its own electric yarn twister and one of the members brought a manual one and a yarn stack. 

Margaret demonstrated how these were different when knitted up – the first two showed “rivers of colour”, an uneven distribution of the yarn colours.  The twisted yarn was clearly better but the yarn stack although a little awkward to use with smaller cones, also distributed the colours well.

One member mentioned she had simulated a yarn stack using a tiered vegetable rack and magazines from the 1980’s showed people who used old style saucepan stands for the same purpose.

Finally, Frances demonstrated how to plate both plain and patterned using tuck stitch, she also showed us samples of ribber plating.  You can use either a thick and a thin yarn or two yarns of similar weight.  Together the yarns should add up to no more than the maximum your machine will handle – e.g. 4-ply / light double knitting.

The next meeting will be about other crafts that the members are interested in and also the theme from this meeting will continue,  looking at some of the patterns people brought in as there was not enough time for everything.

This month we had all the members who had done the City and Guilds Machine Knitting courses in the past talk about their experiences.  In addition, several members who had attended other courses showed us their work.

Interestingly many of the speakers had started these course when they had young children.  Clearly, they had worked hard in the early mornings and late into the night when their little ones were sleeping. For this alone they deserve our admiration.

April started and told us about the process of designing and how they were taught to draw.  She showed us images of where the ideas started and how they progressed through sampling colours and patterns to the garment construction.

Angie followed this – they had attended the same course – showing how her ideas were created from a fish. Similarly creating the patterns and choosing the colours, eventually putting it together to create a lovely bedspread/throw.

Margaret was next and she had gone on to City and Guild’s machine knitting from a broader art and design course, developing her ideas and designs.

Then Ann brought along the work created by our late member Marion, who had also been on the course with Angie and April.  Ann also showed us some of the items she had made after having been on courses in the past.

Anu told us of her experience having done this course straight from college. She had spent time developing a business on the back of this.

Finally, Anthea showed us all the samples and colours she had used to create one of her Evolution Jackets from the famous Iris Bishop pattern.  We look forward to seeing the finished garment.

The Christmas Party was excellent – everyone enjoyed themselves.

Many thanks to all the members who provided food and to the committee for organising it all.

There was a very good turnout this month for the talk on Felting for Christmas. We welcomed our speaker Raya Brown of Magic Wool Studio who came all the way from Kidderminster to show us how to make a lovely felted and appliquéd table centre for Christmas.

This was quite a long process involving laying various threads as an initial structure then adding wool “tops” to a depth of 4-5 mm.  As the felting process shrinks the item by at least 30% it has, of course, to be made bigger than the finished item.

The felting process involved lots of soapy water and various surprising tools including an electric orbital sander with bubble wrap replacing the sandpaper.  Underneath a waterproof layer of hard plastic, textured drawer lining was used (available from Lakeland Plastics and Amazon). All this helped with the agitation needed to give a good felting.

Various members of the club helped out and tried their hand at the process.

It took time to dry, blotting it with towels and then a variety of pre-felted pieces were added, including holly leaves and a red poinsettia to make a holder for a Christmas candle in a small glass container.

The finished item. looked absolutely wonderful.

[Show slideshow]

1 2 ►

Raya also brought along various samples of her work and some items for sale.

[Show slideshow]

We would like to thank Raya for a wonderful inspiring evening. 

At the end of the evening, we also had a collection of the hats members made for charity with the gingery coloured yarn won at the Guild annual meeting. And also, for the show and tell, Barbara brought along an adorable pink baby cardigan with little prams on the pocket.

[Show slideshow]