I live in France and would love to make contact with other double bed knitting machine owners.
Kind regards, Penelope Skea
Thank you for all your efforts in keeping the magazine going. Every month gives me fresh inspiration – after a break for a year or two whilst having two cataracts removed, a knee joint replacement, a carpal tunnel operation and more recently major abdominal surgery, I am now back in full swing and coping with keeping ten grand children in knits! Keep up the good work!
Yours sincerely, Jean Herbert
I suppose it was not altogether mine but I did draw it for the Mylar sheet. I do hope Mary is well, she did so much for machine knitting. I enclose a couple of photos and a copy of the Mylar sheet. As you can see from the photos I just could not part with the dressing gown and it’s now being modelled by my grandson Sean. The garment was made with Argyll Ferndale 4-ply and knitted using my Knit Radar. It’s just a long length V-neck cardi with stocking stitch gold edged bands. My son is now 39 this year. Gosh was it really that long ago, seems like yesterday. Thank you so much for keeping the magazine going I look forward to it each month and will put the binders on my present list. Best wishes for your future health and happiness.
Yours sincerely, Carol Cochran
It is really good to see something different. I did make some changes to the pattern casting on and off with waste yarn which made picking up the stitches for the shoulders easier and also I marked the 70, 200 and 330 rows for ease in identifying the armholes and side seams. Also, as I could not see why the extra 10 stitches were needed on the front I actually cast on 95 stitches which, when the 20 stitches folded back were taken into account, matched the back shoulder 75 stitches exactly. The finished garment was a much needed success after a few disappointments. Still, I must keep on trying.
I am an avid MKM reader and look forward to my regular Saturday monthly delivery. Keep up the good work. One suggestion for inclusion in the magazine in future could be a hints and tips section as, on returning to machine knitting last year, I found this was the most useful section in my stash of old magazines. Best wishes for your anniversary and the continuing success of MKM from Carrie (Carol Frewin by e-mail)
donkey.jpgThe knitted donkeys, which are individually made by supporters of the sanctuary, are sold in the visitors centre in Sidmouth and online at www.donkeyworld.org.uk. They’ve been selling them for about a year, but this is the first time they’ve promoted them outside of their newsletter. More knitters are needed just to keep up with the demand. For anyone wanting to test out their knitting skills, the sanctuary provides a knitting pattern, which originally came from a 1954 edition of Women’s Weekly magazine, and additional instructions. For further information about the Donkey Sanctuary, visit www.thedonkeysanctuary.org. To receive a free copy of the knitting pattern, contact Ruth in the community fundraising department on 01395-578222. You could also ask if a machine knitted donkey would be acceptable and we published a pattern on page 48 of the August 2008 magazine (Issue 127).
Many thanks
Peggy
You are very welcome to them. If you email me with your address I will send them to you.
Regards,
Sue
I’m currently hand knitting socks, as it gets a little chilly here especially around the feet. I’ll have to look out for patterns and instructions to knit them on my Brother 881 with ribber. Maybe now I can use all of those accessories that I bought all that time ago. I’ve had to replace the sponge bar, which I was able to get here and I’ve also given the machine a good oiling and reset needles.
So now I’m ready to go, especially as five large sacks of yarn came with us! Happy knitting to you all and I’m attaching a picture of ‘knitting and gardening central’ taken last year.
Best wishes
Lynda Adcock
Brittany, France
I contacted her because she lived in Kirkheaton, Huddersfield which is very close to me at Thornhill, Dewsbury. We emailed each other constantly for about a week but then my computer ‘threw a wobbly’ and lost all my emails and addresses. June had knitted matching outfits for her two daughters when they were young (same as me) and she now wanted to knit for her grandchildren. I’d be so pleased if you could ask her to e-mail me again.
Thanks and all the best
Susan Johnson“””
which has recently come up with what it calls a (moebius) snood, a lacy scarf with a single twist before stitching the cast-on to the cast-off edge, making a circle with a twist. When you put it over your head, it hangs in a neat fold in front.
that this is not a real snood. Snoods, as we made and wore them in the 1940s, were constructed from a single knitted or crocheted square. The row ends were gathered up at each side and fine elastic was threaded right round, through the cast-on and cast-off edges, so they looked like decorative hair-nets. The big joke was that if you made a larger double square, stitched the sides and put handles on the cast-on and cast-off edges, you’d made yourself a shopping bag for the groceries. That’s not as daft as it sounds and useful too because it was difficult to find shopping bags to buy during the war, when all materials went into ‘the war effort’. I’ll try to do a sketch on the laptop (the iMac doesn’t ‘do’ drawing!) and send it by snail mail!
Best wishes
Edna Cahill, Sandown, Isle of Wight
Cast on 120 sts on each bed in full needle rib and work a border of 5 straight pin tucks (40 rows), using stitch size 4/3 and blue strippers. Change to Card 108, Deco on 2, locks on N/BX, stitch size 4½/4½ and knit 800 rows. A little weight can be used, but if you are using a motor, it is better to tension the work by hand. At the end of the 800 rows, knit the end to match the pin tucks at the start and cast off. Finishing this stole consists of darning in two ends! The stole weighs 130g, is warm and is still going strong over 20 years later after countless washes.
Doris has made similar ones in various fine yarns; they make great gifts, bazaar items and so on. They provide extra warmth for the shoulders when you’re reading in bed in the wee small hours, or laid across the top of the duvet to snuggle into on very cold nights. Add a fine Lurex thread in silver to a royal blue or black yarn and it will do for evening wear! For knitting on any machine, just find a suitable lacy tuck stitch pattern.
There’s an even easier Maggie Andrews shrug pattern on page 33 of February 2006 (Issue 97). Maggie uses 4-ply Acrylic and pushes 198 Ns at centre of machine to WP. Counting from the left, arrange Ns 3 in WP and 10 in NWP across the bed. Start off with waste yarn, then set RC at 000. Using MY, K 696 rows. Maggie adds cuffs and ties and this can be knitted in a strong bold colour for day or evening wear.
Anne
My name is Maggi Bloice and I live in Brittany, as a knitting machine collector I have several of the Singer/Superbas and they are incredible machines, I find that France (or Brittany) in my case is a bit of a desert for machine knitters, I did advertise a few years ago for interested parties to contact me and I had a few responses but most were too far away.
kind regards,
Maggi