June 2011 show and tell

These scarves and summer tops have all been knitted by Liz. The tops were all worked using the Garter Carriage, so whilst waiting for that to knit a few rows, she was also knitting scarves on her chunky machine. Liz says they were knitted in an attempt to de-stash, but you'd not notice the difference.

Carole knitted this beautiful shawl for her daughter to wear at her wedding. And Diane knitted and felted this bag from a Toft Aplaca kit.

Chris knitted this beautiful doily. She said it is knitted in cotton and looked awful when she first completed it. As soon as she started steaming it, the true beauty showed.

Chris also knitted this lovely shrug. It is knitted in an alpaca yarn.

Sandra knitted this little jumper for her new grandchild. She said the baby has to grow a bit first!

June 2011 meeting

This month Diane is coming along with rather a lot of cones of yarn. She is selling it at very reasonable prices on behalf of the family of someone who has died. Yarn of all types including natural fibres such as alpaca will be on sale. So now is the time to pick up a bargain.

I'm sure there will be plenty of chatting going on as well. And don't forget to bring along your latest creations. We do like to see what you have been knitting.

See you on Tuesday, 7th June, 8 pm is the start time.

Don't Bin it, Fix it!

Don't bin it - Fix it! That was the advice given to us by Fiona Morris at our May meeting. She had brought along a number of garments that she had "altered" rather than put in the bin.

Fiona found that this jumper was a bit too slim fitting so she knitted two panels and inserted them in the side seams. She tapered the top of the panel and took that into the top of the sleeve so that she did not need to completely reknit the sleeve.

Fiona freely offered advice and suggestions when we asked questions.

The intended recipient of this dress lost weight and asked for it to be altered. The scissors came out, the dress was cut and then re-assembled. An overlocker secured the stitches. And you now have a classic "little black dress". Very stylish.

This green summer top was knitted for a trip abroad, but back in the UK Fiona felt very exposed, so she knitted sleeves to go into it. It looked great when she had finished her alterations.

Fiona had brought along a lot of her garments and patterns. Here she is discussing techniques with club members.

It was a good evening and we learnt lots of tips so that we can "rescue" out knitting with confidence.

May Meeting Show and Tell

This is a close-up of the fancy rib edging on the bottom of the pink cardigan that is in the pile of 3 below. All knitted by Sandra for her grandchildren.

This white scarf has been knitted in pom-pom yarn. Looks lovely and just the think for a cold winters day.


Anne knitted the short sleeve cardy below. Just what we need on a cool summer evening.

Another beautiful shawl. From Jean this time.


Phyllis knitted this baby sleeping bag. Lovely for the new arrival

May Meeting - a visit from Fiona Morris

Another month has past and everything is growing well in the garden! I have still found time to do a little knitting and lots of talking about it.

There will be even more talking about knitting on Tuesday evening (3rd May) as it is our club meeting. Fiona Morris is coming to speak to us. She has called the title of her talk "Fix it, Don't Bin It!" I know a lot of us have just thrown things in the corner and eventually into the bin when it hasn't gone right, so I'm looking forward to hearing of things we can do to save our knitting when something goes wrong.

As usual visitors are welcome. 8pm is the start time.

At our April meeting

Ann Brown of Posh Frocks came along and talked to us about garments knitted from a different angle. By that we mean, not knitted from welt to neckline. Ann had brought along a selection of garments that were designed and knitted using holding position for shaping and to give fullness where required. I was so absorbed with her talk that I forgot to take pictures. I did remember at the end when she was talking to some of the members, so those pictures are below.

All in all it was an excellent evening - thanks Ann.

This beautiful shawl has been handknitted by Carol. Another fantastic effort. Knitting shawls has become really popular.

Carol has also knitted this beautiful round shawl and Ann has knitted the one that she is modelling.

This baby blanket/shawl has been hand knitted by Sylvia. Another excellent job.

Sandra hand knitted this lovely cardigan for an new arrival expected in the next few weeks.

Marcia liked the mobius scarf that Chris showed us last month. She found the pattern for this one on the internet.

Shame the weather has turned warmer so it looks like this won't be worn for a few months.

Well done everyone - another great effort. Maybe next month we will have some machine knitted items.

Spring is here! and so is our April meeting

Yes, spring is here; the daffodils are in full bloom and it is time again for our April meeting. We have a speaker this month. I'm sure her name will be familiar to most machine knitters, but hand knitters may not have heard of her. Her name is Ann Brown. You can find out more about her on her website www.poshfrocks.com . Ann is going to be talking about asymetric garments and how they can be knitted so the subject is suitable for hand and machine knitters. Ann designs garments and accessories and some of her patterns are suitable for hand knitters as well as machine knitters. Visitors are always welcome at our meetings. The April meeting is on Tuesday 5th and it will start at 8 pm as usual.

late entries

Oops I've been very bad. I haven't posted anything for a long time now. My excuse is that I haven't been well and that I've been busy doing things for the Guild of Machine Knitters. It's exhibition season for me and I should have been at something like 6 exhibitions since mid January. I made 5 of them which wasn't bad.

We've had a couple of meetings since I last posted. So here is a brief update on January and February and a longer update on March.

January - No meeting as it's so close to Christmas and the New Year.

February - I forgot the camera! Jenny Barker came and talked to us about decorating your knitwear in ways to make it personal and interesting. It was a really good evening and I am sure we all came away with ideas.

March - We entertained ourselves again. I brought along a couple of unusual machines. One was a Knitmaster MK-70 which when packed away looks as if it could be a sewing machine. It all folds up. It operates pretty much like any other machine, but the tensioning system on the yarn mast is different and there are a few other quirky differences.

Some of the club members had fun trying to thread up the MK-70. It is a punchcard machine with an 18 stitch repeat, so getting extra cards isn't easy. The machine has a complete set of tools and the instruction book and I won't be using it that often, but it is a talking point.

They also had a go on a shortened machine. A Knitmaster Zippy 90 recently came into my possession and I had heard about how you could shorten or lengthen it to suit. I thought it might be a good machine to take to exhibitions, especially if it is shortened. It would be ideal to knit scarves using some of the lovely handknitting yarns that you can buy now. So the Zippy 90 is now a Zippy 54 as the number refers to the number of needles in the bed. I'm now looking out for another Zippy 90 to put the spare section in. It will mean that I can knit wider fabrics with

the extra needles making it ideal for knitting blankets.

Chris also ran through some handknitting things as well and showed us how to cast on a mobius scarf. That had everyone fascinated and intrigued and I think a few people will be having a go. Here's the finished one that she brought along to show us. You can see how it is twisted. That happens automatically and the outer edges are cast off edges.

Naturally there was a bit of show and tell. Nina knitted this lovely blue jumper using her garter

carriage and Sandra knitted this pink jumper for herself. It has some lovely raglan detail.

Sandra knitted the scarf above in pom-pom yarn and Chris has knitted another of her beautiful shawls (photo above right).

This is Jeans first go at lace knitting for many years. It's worked from the instructions that Chris gave us before Christmas. She's hooked now.

Liz has been knitting scarves. The cream and the blue ones were knitted at Unravel on the Zippy 90 (shortened version of course!) and the aqua green one was knitted at the Creative Stitches show at Brighton. The are beads on the tassles, but these had to be hand-sewn on after as they were too small to knit in. The scarves will now be displayed at various shows around the country. Members of the public were able to knit a few rows of these scarves as they tried a knitting machine.

Our February Meeting

Happy New Year - a bit late but we don't meet in January.

We have a speaker this month. Jenny Barker is coming to talk to us about surface decoration. The things she is going to show and tell us about are suitable for hand and machine knitters. Jenny is an experience speaker and has some lovely ideas to share with us.

The meeting will be at 8pm as usual. (I must remember the camera!) I hope to see lots of you there. If you've never come to one of our meetings, then please do. You will be made very welcome.

December and Time for Mince Pies

Our December meeting is when we bring things along that we have made or new things that we wish to donate, to our chosen Charity. They filled 3 tables again and were a good effort. I took them up to the Royal Marsden Hospital a few days after our meeting and had a thank you note before Christmas.

We had mince pies with our tea and coffee. It's never too early for a mice pie! And just so that we didn't get bored, Chris showed us how she blocks her shawls to get the lovely finish she always achieves and we also had a go at "no foundation chain" crochet.

The evening went very quickly and was most enjoyable. I think we all learnt something.

December Show and Tell

This shawl has been knitted by Chris. Not one of my better efforts at photography and it doesn't do justice to her beautiful knitting.














This beautiful shawl has been hand knitted by Carol. What a fantastic effort and something to be proud of.

Here are a few more hats and blankets ready to go off to SANDS.

Here is another jumper knitted by Sandra for her grandson. It looks really cosy and just right for all the cold weather we have been experiencing.

December Charity Evening

The December meeting will be on Tuesday 7th December. It doesn't seem that long since I was writing almost the same thing. This year has flown by, perhaps because we have been so busy.

Anyway, December is our Charity Evening when we bring along things we have made, or new items that we don't wish to keep and are willing to donate to our Charity, The Friends of the Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, Surrey. They are always grateful for anything we send to them. I will be taking them to the Hospital on Saturday, 11th December, just in time for them to sell and for people to buy for last minute Christmas presents.

I've been making some scarves to send, which I hope will sell well especially as the weather has suddenly turned so cold and wintery.

We are also hoping there will be time to do a bit of crochet, so bring a crochet hook and a bit of double knit yarn and you can have a go. We have had a request to show blocking so will try to cover that as well if there is time.

I'm hoping that the weather will be ok for our meeting, but so if you are at all doubtful check back here. (I will post a further message if the meeting is cancelled.) I'm hoping that the weather will hold enough for us all to get together for coffee and mince pies - no mulled wine as we will be driving!

I look forward to seeing you all for our pre-Christmas get together. 8pm as usual.

November meeting and show and tell

Another busy evening so before we started our knitting we had show and tell and a bit of an update about what we'd all been up to.

I told everyone how I had got on at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. The atmosphere at this show was really exciting. The weather was good which helped and over the course of 4 days there were around 50,000 visitors to the show.

We then moved on to Show and Tell. There were 3 more beautiful blankets to go to SANDS.



Marcia has knitted herself a lovely chunky jacket to wear this winter. It will keep her lovely and warm.











Chris has knitted another beautiful scarf.....














And a bag.

When we had all finished looking at the lovely knitted items Chris introduced us to knitting using a chart instead of the usual K2,p1 sl1 psso that we usually use. The charts are especially useful when knitting shawls as you can "see" the pattern on the chart.

Chris had printed some copies of one of her charts and we were all able to have a go. She was there to help us when we got stuck.

Needless to say we also did a bit of chatting whilst we were knitting!

It was another evening that went all too quickly.

Thanks Chris showing us how to knit form a chart. I really do intend to have a go and not just knit a little sample!

Learn to Lace Knit this month

It’s our November meeting on Tuesday (2nd November). I do hope you can come. We have got a hands-on evening planned. Chris will be showing us some more of her beautiful lace knitting and explaining how it is knitted from charts. (We will also be translating them into machine knitting terms as well.) Then it’s our turn to have a go.

Please bring some yarn with you and a pair of needles. For best results bring 4 ply or less and 3.5 mm (No 9) or 4 mm (No 8) needles. If you would prefer to work in thicker yarns and larger needles bring DK and 5.5 mm or 6 mm needles. I know instinct tells you that the needles are too big for the yarn, but when knitted lace it is knitted loosely. Choice is yours whether you bring straight or circular needles. Don’t worry if you forget, we will have some spares with us.

There will also be time for a bit of show and tell and I will have some bits and pieces for sale to raise money for the Marsden. So it will be another packed evening.

Visitors are welcome and as usual we will start the meeting at 8 pm.