2018

Shot at dawn

Dear Anne

I’ll be shot for sending you this, but I’d like to remind the youngsters that right from the start, MKM has always been there for all of us knitters. I so miss the hints Joan Lafferty tucked away in her articles so you might like to find a bit of room in the magazine for a few of these ‘oldies’. It’ll remind all of us that there’s nothing new under the sun. I know we’ve to move with the times and we need the youngsters in the spotlight. But many of us have had MKM since the very first issue and I’d like to think we’ve helped to keep it all going, so the young ones have MKM now. Thank you Anne and please keep our magazine going. Yours sincerely, Ivis

Handy hints

• Should you punch the wrong square, fill the hole in with one of the little discs and secure it back and front with a tiny piece of Sellotape. Make sure though that you don’t cover one of the holes you need either side of it.
• When putting a single motif on a card leave at least two blank rows before punching the final joining rows, or don’t even bother with the joining rows. The plain rows let you know when you’ve finished the motif, but it can often be shorter than the 36 rows you need for joining the card.
• When joining up a card you’ve punched for the first time, note where the clips are inserted and put a mark on the edge of the card. Then you’ll know where to put them next time.
• We all know that cards are marked in squares rather than oblongs, so when designing we can use normal graph paper, rather than the stitch-related kind. But if you’re trying to copy a design from a Japanese card to the Passap, be careful! Passap cards rotate once every two rows, but Japanese cards rotate every row. In Bird’s-eye Fair Isle the pattern is squashed a bit, but even so you still need to remove some rows from a Japanese pattern for the design come out the right length.
• If you’ve a Japanese punch as well as one for the Passap, use it to punch the outer holes of pattern on a Passap card. It’s easier on your hand than a heavy Passap punch. Japanese punches aren’t long enough to reach the centre of a Passap card, so you still need to use a Passap punch for the centre.
• If holes are not punched cleanly or are hard to cut, the punch may be getting blunt, so roughen it with some medium sandpaper. It won’t need much, so try it out on an off-cut of card until it becomes sharp again.
• Finally, don’t forget to empty the little box of bits! When it gets full, it can be hard to get off and then it pings open all of a sudden. Empty the box into a small paper bag, otherwise the bits will go everywhere. If they get on the carpet the Hoover doesn’t want to know and you’ll be picking the odd few up for weeks to come!