MMK's Blog

Although we haven't been posting messages on our blog, we have been busy knitting for family, friends and charities. One of the best bits of news for the club was that Peggy, one of our members has been able to get back to machine knitting. She had 2 problems. First, her old Toyota knitting machine had stopped working and could not be fixed. Secondly, she had been suffering with a blocked tear duct that meant that she had a very running eye and could not see enough to knit on the machine. By a stroke of luck, the ladies at the Sherbourne knitting club put us in touch with a lady whose Toyota machine had been put away for a very long time in her loft. We managed to get it to Peggy and all that it needed was a good clean and a new needle retaining bar. Peggy's tear duct was finally treated and she is now knitting again. Her first project was for snowman scarf that she planned to sell at her Sew, Knit and Natter group. You can see Peggy modelling it for us. When it was put on sale it was snapped up by one of the other ladies in her group as it would make a perfect present for her young grandson. The pattern for the snowman scarf is in Machine Knitting Monthly December 2004 page 37 and January 2005 Page 30.

A number of our club members attended the Twisted Stitches show at Alexandra Palace in London. We promised each other that we would not spend too much money on yarn, but it was very tempting. Sandra splashed out on some lovely Rowan Yarn. She bought enough to make a waist coat and embellished it with some beautiful hand tooling techniques. Sandra knits with Singer machine which is a bit passed its 'sell by' date. It no longer will pattern so she can't do fairisle, slip or tuck. It does a nice stocking stitch, but if she wants to add something to her garments, she has to do it by hand. Here is the finished waist coat. She has done cables up the centre front and used one of Mary Anne Ogers edgings for the hem. The back is a real triumph with the beautiful lace pattern that was all transferred by hand--no lace carriage was used!

One of other members, Vivienne does most of knitting without using punch cards or the ribber (I'm not sure she has a ribber.) She brought along some slippers that were made on the Silver LK150 machine. It is a mid gauge machine which can do slip and tuck as well as stocking stitch, but it has to be manually. The slippers she made on the machine were much admired and I'm sure will be gratefully received on Christmas Day. The slippers are sewn up as you knit and the lining is knitted in as well. The patterns come from a book by Diana Sullivan called Footnotes. The patterns are written in multi-sizes and with directions for knitting them on standard, mid gauge and chunky machines. The yarn came from Hobbycraft.