Dear Readers
Welcome to the 35th birthday issue of MKM and you’ll find articles and designs from many popular names in machine knitting, all doing our best to fly the flag for our craft. We’ve some lovely designs from Anne Baker, Sue Booth, Heidi Cleary, Susan Guagliumi, Bill King and Nina Miklin, along with the start of a great project for our toy box. Iris Rowe has designed and knitted a Noah’s Ark, with Mr and Mrs Noah to keep the menagerie of animals in order. It’s been a huge undertaking and all the little ones will love it.
I’ve recently had a great conversation with one of our subscribers. She runs a care home in West Yorkshire and as a Christmas ‘thank you’, she knitted cardigans for all her staff. She started by hand knitting the ribs, then whizzed through the stocking stitch on her LK-150, using a pattern from the magazine. Everything was fine, except for one member of staff whose size needed more stitches across the Back than the number of needles available. First we’d a short discussion about knitting the ribs first, or at the end and she always knits them first. She then puts the stitches onto the machine, but this time she decided to insert a panel to make the Back wider, so she hand knitted more stitches for the larger size. Using the normal DK tension, 15 extra stitches gave her three much-needed inches. To knit the Left Back and then the Right Back, she picked up stitches starting at each end and added an extra stitch at the centre for making up. When it came to knitting the panel, she replaced the stitches to use the purl side as the right side. Having added an extra stitch at each edge for making up, she mattress stitched the panel in place. She used a lovely heathery shade and it looked like a gorgeous design feature, because you simply couldn’t tell it had been inserted. It’s a lovely idea to pass on, instead of knitting a more usual back in two halves, with a centre seam or adding a chunk of extra stitches at the sides.
My giggle of the month came from another subscriber living in Cheshire, who asked how I was coping with Tier 4 lockdown in the south. My usual reply is that the drawbridge was raised and the portcullis lowered a year ago but, following on from his suggestion, I’ll make sure I don’t overfeed the crocodiles swimming around the moat! Machine Knitting Monthly has the most amazing readers and each one of you has played a vital role in keeping the magazine alive. My very sincere thanks to you all, for your enduring help and support over the years; I simply couldn’t do it without you. Knit happy!
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May 2021
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