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Machine knitting - watch out for the steel eye spun brigade!

If you - as we have - spent the past year generating handspun yarn, turning stash into squishy skeins and experimenting with dyepots, you may well have quite a lot of transformed yarn to use up. 


For those (like me) who are slow knitters, turning this into finished items is not the quickest thing. I have handnit three sweaters during lockdown but one of these was knit much faster than either of the others.  It was (gulp) machine knitted. On a vintage (1980s) flatbed knitting machine. Before lockdown I had dabbled in ownership and use of various antique and modern circular knitting machines, but now I have moved out one of my looms and in its place I have a small stack of knitting machines. Several of which still require some hard work before they can knit again. Why so many? Because I am trying them out to see what will work with handspun. Also because I have been persuading some of my spin spun sisters that they too need a knitting machine in their lives. Enter Clare, Jo, Liz and Abby - only one of whom has prevously owned/used a knitting machine. (This stock of machines has been something of a library for others to also play with). 

Being a hardcore lover of books and printed matter, I of course also now have an extensive library of real books and patterns to learn from. Many of these were courtesy of the generosity of Needlesofsteel (who happens to be live in Rugby) and also the redoutable Wrigglefingers (Jill) who decided to declutter some fascinating handbooks and patterns in my direction (during one of the rare occasions she has been able to leave Wales in the past 12 months). I also made other more virtual friends, who I did not get to meet, but who de-clutterd machine knitting archives in my direction.

The appeal of  machine knitting may not be obvious if you are thinking of the 80s and 90s style creations that these machines originally churned out. You may doubt that they can handle the girth and texture of handspun. (Well the jumper I machine knitted was single ply bulky Lopi so that fear is unfounded!) You may think that the look of the machines is not aesthetically pleasing. Should that be the case I direct you to the Turmix VS577 which I am currently restoring and is pictured above. A lovely retro machine from the late 1950s, so as old as I am. I think its safe to say that I am smitten. And Clare has come up with a great name for our machine knitting crew - steel eye spun.

We will be ready post lockdown to not only show off our machines but (hopefully) a wardrobe of handspun wearables such  as has never been seen before! Watch out. 


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