December 2016 - Christmas Charity Evening

It was the annual Christmas Charity evening, and our generous club members brought along purchased and hand-made donations to go to the Royal Marsden's charity sale. The hand-made donations included the cutest little baby jumpers and cardigans, as well as a beautiful peacock-feather adult shawl, and covered 2 whole tables.

We all sat down with work it progress knitting and crochet project, and provided assistance to those who were having head-scratching issues with patterns and yarns. Whilst we knit, Liz ran through some of the yarn and craft events to look forward to in the new year. This included:

Unravel at The Maltings in Farnham. Running from  Friday 17th to Sunday 19th February. Talks will include Susan Crawford presenting her Vintage Shetland Project, and Amy Twigger Holroyd discussing her PhD research into re-knitting (which I have previously seen at the Knitting History Forum last year, and it is a fascinatingly different approach to looking at a knitting garment).

Make It 2017 at FIVE in Farnborough. Running from Friday 24th to Saturday 25th February. There will be lots of stalls and demonstrations.

Machine Knitting Live Show at Bournemouth. Telephone Machine Knitting Monthly on 01628 783080 for details.

There was a discussion about the possibility of hosting a machine knitting meet-up for the county, that could be a single day, or several days, somewhere central in Hampshire. If you have any suggestions for a venue that has a large room with electricity and tables for people to bring their electronic knitting machines, and has catering and accommodation, please contact one of the committee.

There was an abundance of completed items for the show and tell.

Nina had made a cornflower blue roll-neck jumper using a mix of boucle and acrylic, a pink cardigan, and a white jumper with beading detail.

Carol had made donations for the charity table.

Sandra had knit a bag full of baby hats for use in ventilators (they have a small flap for the monitoring sensor wires to go through), a pink hand-knit cardigan, and a machine-knit multi-colour v-neck cardigan.

Christine had hand-knit a designed-on-the-needles all-in-one maroon garter stitch cardigan in a linen/cotton blend.

Julie was crocheting a blanket that she will be donating to the 60 Million Trebles charity challenge.

Trudy had hand-made a multi-colour infinity cowl.

We then enjoyed mince pies, Christmas biscuits and a cup of tea.