Wednesday, March 30, 2016

It's almost April - Spring must be here soon!

It's almost April - and time for another meeting!  Have you noticed how the days are already getting longer?  Let's hope we don't get too many April showers - things are still very soggy in my garden.

But enough of that - We have a speaker for our April meeting.  Fiona Morris is visiting to talk about New Fibres and Eco-Friendly yarns.  I am sure she has lots to show and tell us.    We will find time for some show and tell as we all like to see what others have knitted in the past few weeks.

Look forward to seeing you there - Tuesday 5th April, 8pm start as usual.

Monday, March 07, 2016

March 2016 - multi-pronged transfer demo

The meeting on the 1st March included a demonstration of multi-prong transfer tools, Guild renewal and a lively Show-and-Tell.

The Machine Knitting Guild provides additional benefits to knitting clubs who have 10 or more Guild members that join/renew at the same time. Guild members received their renewal slips in the most recent Guild magazine, and brought them along to the meeting. The benefits include a discount on the membership fee, and public liability insurance.

Liz ran through some of the up-coming knitting events in the area.

  • Machine Knitting Live is at Bournemouth on Saturday 5th March.
  • The Spring Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia is the 3-6 March.
  • The Creative Crafts Show is a 4 day event being held from 23rd April to the 26th April 2015 at the Royal Bath & West Showground in South Somerset (Shepton Mallet).
  • Stitch and Craft is at the Three Counties Showground (Malvern) 10-11 April.
  • Fibre East is at Ampthill (near Bedford) 30-31 July.

There were a lot of people at the Make It show in Farnborough last weekend, but there weren't many knitting stands. There were a lot of card making stands, which were very popular. The bead and yarn stands were less busy.

A member brought in an article from Designer Knitting magazine entitled "A light touch" about Knitted Knockers. Knitted Knockers are special handmade breast prosthesis for women who have undergone mastectomies or other procedures to the breast. There is a group who are trying to provide them to anyone who needs them. Please see their website for more details, including free patterns and yarn details  - www.knittedknockers.org

For those who enjoy knitting for charity, there is a 'knitting for charity' group on Ravelry that lists all the different charity knitting projects.

Several twiddlemuffs were made on the Guild stand at Unravel. It is a productive way of using up odds and ends of yarn. Here is a link to a page with a pattern.

Check with your local hospital to find out their current knitting requests.

Frimley Park Hospital need 24" square blankets at the moment. See the Bliss website for prem baby patterns - http://www.bliss.org.uk/knit-for-premature-babies. Please only use white cotton or acrylic.

Show and tell

Vee had knit a pair of brown multi-colour sock flat on 2 needles, and a green cardigan from yarn from sales table made on machine.




Carol - hand-knit white jackets for frimley hospital, and a blanket. Blue and white stripped jacket for great niece. 12-18 months.




Pink socks from sock knitting machine.

Liz then presented a demonstration of using the adjustable 7 prong transfer tool on the knitting machine, and other alternative transfer tools.