MMK's Blog

We are not having a meeting in December as it is getting near Christmas and we are all going to be busy with the preparations. Instead we are having a lunch together later this month. Our next meeting will be on the 2nd Wednesday of January which will be the 9th Jan 2008.

At our meeting this month we did not have a demonstration. Instead we had an extended "Show and Tell". About 6 months ago Elaine did a meeting showing us all sorts of decorative ways to shape raglans and challenged us to produce a garment by the end of the year. As this is our last meeting of the year we brought our garments to show. The finished ones have been photographed but there are several still in the process of being made.

We also had two visitors. The first was a Fashion and Design Graduate who was looking for someone to make 3 garments for a fashion show due to be held in February. Neither she nor her family had any experience of hand or machine knitting so she was searching for someone who could translate her ideas into garments.

The second visitor was the lady who is going to take over the editing of the Guild of Machine Knitters Newsletter. She came to see what a club meeting was like. I was going to say "typical club meeting " but I don't think that there is any such thing. Hopefully, she enjoyed it and will come again.

Sandra produced all these garments with different raglan shapings. She has been using up some yarn she was given to make garments for charity. Each of the garments has the shaping done in a different way. This pretty baby's cardigan has a fully fashioned shaping. These sweaters in 3 sizes were all made using different techniques. Although in the photo the blue and pale green shapings look similar they were done in entirely different ways. The green one shows a cable on each side of the machine while the blue sweater has a lacy shaping.

These 2 cardigans are both baby sizes. The white one is a second size while the yellow one is designed for a premature baby. This cardigan was knitted by Norma and is unusual in that it is knitted and shaped all in one piece including the attractive bottom edge. The shaping is done using short rows and Norma has enphasized it by hand embroidering a herringbone stitch.
This raglan shaping has a 2 x 1 cable worked on every 4th row on the sleeve only to give a delicate trim on a small garment. The mouse was added using an embroidery machine.

This is another of Elaine's garments showing defined raglan shaping. This was knitted in aran weight yarn on a mid-gauge machine with no automatic patterning. However the detail on the collar, cuffs and pocket tops shows just how versitile you can be with just stocking stitch.