This website covers many aspects of textiles, but its main focus is on knitting; both hand and machine. Browsing the site you will find discussions on Creative Machine Knitting along with instructions for using machines, machine accessories, repairs, tips and techniques.
I have taught textile design throughout my career at The University of Brighton and it has been a privilege and joy to work with such wonderful and talented students . Since retiring from professional teaching I now live in Somerset where I continue to pursue and share my many textile- related interests for pure enjoyment, the stories from which can be found on this website.
June 2023
My latest book, ‘Single and Double Bed Machine Knitting: the Designer’s Guide‘ is now on sale.
Last time we went out in our caravan, and it was several years ago, I decided to crochet a blanket for the dog to sleep on. For this reason I chose acrylic double knit yarns in bright colours on a black ground and a simple ‘wagon wheel’ pattern. Well, after a good start it languished in a bag whilst we moved house, and settled in. I discovered it in a box and decided to try to get it finished. Luckily the yarns were all with the squares, and the pattern was still in the bag. Its taken me a while to get back into the swing, and having a dodgy shoulder recently has not been helpful.
Now its time to assemble and fill in the edges. So all the squares needed to be blocked to the same size. Yes, they were made to the same size, but being in a bag and folded up they are a bit messy, and its much easier to join them if they are consistently sized.
As I was doing this, I made a video of the process in the hope someone might find it useful.
I am now assembling the blanket by working a double (UK)/single crochet (US) joining the edge stitches of two squares, and then two chains, and then another joining stitch, then another two chains etc… it is quite a quick and effective join.
Needless to say, after all the hours I have spent on the blanket, the dog will not be sleeping on it…
‘The Machine Knitter’s Guide to Partial Knitting: Seamless Pattern, Shape and Form’, is available to pre-order in the UK from Crowood Books, and online retailers. In the US it can be ordered from Blackwells.
Learn how to control short rows and create fab effects with this fascinating technique.
I’ve always been fascinated by short rows, or partial knitting as this technique is also called, so when the opportunity came to write a whole book about the technique I was super excited. The book opens with some interesting information about short rows to whet the appetite, the first chapter is about the absolute basics, so is ideal for people who have not worked with short rows before. The chapters progress through the different ways of using short rows; shown with examples, diagrams and written instructions. Some also have half scale sample patterns for practising the techniques which include more advanced uses, such as 3d shaping.. There are step-by-step instructions and each chapter builds on the knowledge of the previous chapter. The book ends with a chapter of patterns exemplifying the techniques covered throughout the book.
Today I’m making a birthday cake for my granddaughter, who is only one. So it won’t really be her who appreciates it, it will be the other people at the party.
I haven’t decorated a cake properly for ages, and I mean years and years. I don’t decorate the Christmas cake and haven’t had a reason to make one with icing on it since my kids grew past that age. So it’s been quite fun to rediscover some of my cake-making and icing equipment which I haven’t used since we moved house.
The cake is just a one stage Victoria Sandwich which I’m going to fill with jam and then, because it’s a little girl, it’s going to have pink buttercream icing I’m afraid. I started off with the idea of putting models of the two dogs she lives with on the cake, and then I decided I’d better put them beside the cake because they don’t really fit with pink buttercream icing.
I think I improved after the first one, the one on the left is better, but modelling an all-black dog is quite difficult..
I don’t have any fondant icing so I’ve made the dogs with pale marzipan and it’s actually worked quite well. Then of course I got the bit between my teeth and I thought, ‘ I’m gonna make some flowers now’. I used to make a lot of fondant flowers which I really enjoyed. Sadly, the marzipan roses I have made a little bit clumsier than those made with fondant, but they’re OK and once I got the cake assembled and the buttercream on it I’m sure they will look fine.
I modelled them in the uncolored marzipan and dusted them with petal dust in two shades of pink and gold, which is helping them a bit.
Marzipan roses dusted with Petal dust. I have also made several leaves.
I now look forward to putting the icing on. I think I’ll leave the decorations off until we actually get to the party otherwise there’s likely to be an accident on route, and the marzipan decorations might melt into the buttercream.
A couple of weeks ago I spent a weekend in Bath in the Somerset with some friends.
On our first day we did the touristy things like visiting the Circle and the beautiful Royal Crescent and had tea in one of the numerous teas shops. Quite by chance, the one we picked happened to have been featured in Bridgerton as the Modiste shop.
Food featured heavily in our weekend, cake being a particular favorite, so the next day we visited the historic Pulteney bridge and the tea shop which is situated on top of this bridge.
We are all knitters, so were pleased to discover there was a yarn shop close to where we were staying in the city centre. So, before leaving on our last day we paid a visit to ‘Wool’. There we found a wide selection of yarns to please all price points, that catered for all types of knitting or crochet work. Yarns included individual spun, Rowan Kid Silk and some very good value Tweedy Superwash Merino wool by King Cole. I am a bit of a sock yarn addict and bought a 100g ball of Lang sock yarn, which I have not tried before, and some 100% wool double knit in pretty pastel colours.
Someone else chose a DK pattern for a simple sweater shape which she intends to knit up in a wool and Alpaca blend yarn. The yarn is being reclaimed from a partially-knitted garment that her mother never completed, I think this is a lovely way to maintain a thread with the memory of her Mother, but to end up with a garment that she will want to wear.
The staff in the shop were particularly helpful over this explaining to my friend how to substitute a yarn in the pattern and helping her decide if she would have enough of the existing yarn. Although I could have helped her with this it would have felt a little like a busman’s holiday to do so ‘on the fly’. However I did of course tell her she could ask me later if she ran into problems.
I will certainly go back to ‘Wool’ next time I’m in Bath.
It’s been a busy day today setting up the Taunton Machine Knitting Club stand at Craft 4 Crafter’s exhibition in Exeter. The Club is pleased to have recently become a branch of The Knitting and Crochet Guild, making us part of the wider UK knitting community.
The display features work by most club members including lace, intarsia, knitweave and double jacquard. Throughout the three day exhibition members will be demonstrating different techniques such as cables, bobbles, shaping and short row knitting.
The display is finally ready, and I am not climbing a stepladder again today!
I will be giving a talk on Friday about my books, ‘The Knitting Book’, ‘Translating Between Hand and Machine Knitting’ and ‘Single and Double Bed Machine Knitting; the Designer’s Guide’.
The table will have to be large enough to fit four copies once my latest book, ‘The Machine Knitter’s Guide to Partial Knitting’ is published later this year.
Update
The show went really well. There was lots of interest in the club, machine knitting in general and the Knitting and Crochet Guild.
The machines were a great drawYarn winding for those who bought yarn in hanks
This is something I used to struggle with when first starting to machine knit, and to be honest, it still sometimes needs a bit of thinking before I get it right.
So I put some information together which I hope will be useful to others who find the holes and blanks a bit confusing. It also has some helpful ways to read what is actually being read by the card-reader, rather than what is visible above it.
Lets start with the fundamentals:
Knitmaster/Silver Reed (KM/SR) machines only knit pattern from the punchcard when the side levers are at the triangle and the pattern cam dial is set to the relevant stitch type; F, S, T etc.
Brother machines only knit pattern from the punchcard when the KC dial is set to KC, KCI or KCII, as appropriate to the machine, and when the relevant pattern cam buttons are pressed, MC, tuck, part etc…
However, on both makes the needle positions are the same
Pattern cam setting
Punched holes
Needle position
Blanks
Needle position
2-col-in-a-row
knit with 2nd colour
UWP
knit with MC
WP
tuck
knit
UWP
tuck
WP
slip/part
knit
UWP
slip
WP
On both Brother and KM/SR machines, the punchard line being selected is hidden inside the machine. Seven lines below on a Brother, and five below on a KM/SR.
Brother machines, both punchcard and electronic, pre-select needles before knitting the row. Therefore, the pattern can be interrogated by looking at the needle selection in conjunction with the needle positions listed above.
KM/SRpunchcard machines have a card reader with feelers. These are selected according to the punchcard pattern but the actual feeler action is hidden behind the carriage. The pattern line can be manually interrogated by locking the punchcard.
Its been quite a few years since I visited the page on this website which is about , ‘things I have been interviewed for’. It made me realise how time flies, and that I have not grown any younger! Things have moved on since then, but I see that the same issues are still out there. To name one, its clothing sizing. I see that AI might be the solution, excuse my guffaws.
A company called, ‘Fit Collective’ mentioned in this article on the BBC website sound like they might be working towards some solutions, but the trouble is, we are all different. Not just in our physical dimensions, but in the way we want our clothing to fit. That is a style issue, not a cutting and sewing issue.
I see so many women wearing the incorrect size for their waist circumference, squashing themselves into ‘muffin tops’ because they want to wear the size they aspire to, but the manufacturer/designer/buyer whatever, deems that their waist should be a particular circumference in comparison to that of their hips, (or even bust!). I feel for them, because I can’t fit into a size 14 with a non-elastic waist, but am a size 14 in most other places, not that that is a true designation anyway.
A pair of main-store M&S trousers I tried a few months ago had a totally different waist to hip ratio to a similar pair in Per Una, so what does that make me? If I went a size up in either, the bum area hung loose, the hips looked weird and a bit ‘jodhpury’, and the Per Una ones were still too tight on the waist. So I left them on the rail and went home and got my sewing machine out.
Ah, ‘mummy jeans’, might be the answer, but once again the waist to hip ratio is nearly always wrong for me. I have always had a big waist compared to hips and bust, and that is not uncommon. Others might have a smaller than average waist to hip ratio ,but not many women are the ‘perfect’ shape.
Have a read of the article linked to below and see if we have progressed much since 2017. I also ask you to consider the vast amounts of irreplaceable resources being gobbled up by AI. Is the application of AI really going to make us happier with our clothing fit? Isn’t more about how we see ourselves, and how we feel comfortable, something that is not quantifiable en masse, and is so, so subjective.
Its raining the proverbial cats and dogs here in Somerset, so it’s an afternoon indoors. I am threading up the warp for a baby blanket on my countermarche loom. Its only taken me 3 months to get this far!
Warping back to front the Peggy Osterkamp way
With the last slice of Christmas cake and a cup of tea at my side it’s a pretty nice afternoon inside.
Cake on a levitating plate
Of course that was then, and this is now. Somehow I have miscounted heddles and got in a right muddle. Its not such a lovely afternoon after all…
Update
I am now 50cm into the blanket! How has it taken me this long you might ask. Well it took me ages to fine tune it, because I had some odd threads in my warp that I couldn’t get to tension right.
I have deliberately missed out the edges as they are a little bit messy, but you get the drift.
That’s sorted now I think at least for a while. The back of my loom looks like a right mess.
But seems to be holding now. I took the temple off to take the photograph, but it’s use is helping me keep my width, because one edge is still a bit wonky. My solution to that will probably be to bind it with ribbon as I did for my children’S blankets.
😂 what can I say? I’m particularly proud of the felt pen and the medicine bottles holding all the threads down.
I’m using a double thread as the weft, not quite sure why after all this time since I started, but that was what I sampled with and it worked out OK. Part of the problem was I’ve got an 8 epi reed and I thought this double knitting weight yarn would work at 8 epi. However, I’ve had to space it out further to 6 epi, because it was too bulky, but then it looked a bit thin and weedy so I decided to use a double thread in the weft.
This double thread caused me problems because it was really fiddly to use two shuttles and I found putting two ends onto the bobbin of a boat shuttle meant I only got a tiny amount woven before the bobbin ran out. I have used stick shuttles for the contrast colours, but I really wanted to weave the main pink weft with a boat shuttle because it’s more efficient as I have a shuttle race on the reed.
I was gifted a Toika double shuttle for Christmas, and have not yet had the chance to practice with it but this seemed the obvious tool to use. As with everything it takes a bit of practice and I ended up with different lengths on the bobbins and the bobbins unwinding at different speeds. A tip I remembered was to twist the threads at the end so I began twisting the shuttle, and that helps. Also I learned to stop both bobbins with my fingers in an overhang catch after sending it across.
However, I was still finding that the bobbins ran out quickly and inconsistently. I was using homemade paper ones, but didn’t find I could get any more onto a cardboard quill , (and most of those I are too big for the double shuttle anyway and I don’t want to cut them down as they fit other shuttles.
Back to the drawing board. I unearthed my Louet Flying Dutchman shuttle and found some old wooden bobbins that I bought at a boot sale which have always been too long for any of my bobbins- but which I now find fit the Dutchman really well. This time I double wound the threads very carefully onto the wooden bobbins, running them through tensions to equalise them. This has become my happy place and I will probably weave the rest of the pink using the Flying Dutchman and twisting at each end.
I will add another picture after my next 50 centimeters.
Toika double shuttle at the back and the Louet Flying Dutchman at the front
On Monday I had the pleasure of talking to Techknitters Machine Knitting Club in Chicago about my book ‘Single and Double Bed Machine Knitting; the Designer’s Guide’. Although this was published in 2024 the UK, it was not published in the USA until 2025 and I was due to talk to the group in December of that year. Moving house and having a lot of building work in progress meant that I couldn’t manage an online talk at that time, so we rescheduled. The new date came around quickly, doesn’t time fly?
Although several members indicated that they already have the book, I decided to discuss the overall content of book for those who do not yet have a copy. During this I explained my thinking behind the plan of the book and the main intention behind my writing. Following on to this, I concentrated on snippets from each chapter.
One of the reviews of the book mentioned that it is unusual to find design development and process included in a knitting book, so I took this comment as the focus of the rest of my talk working with material from the chapters, ‘Designing with Colour’ and ‘Finding Inspiration and Designing Pattern’.
This section of the talk started by looking at extracting colour inspiration from one of the images used in the book, and then reviewing a sample from the book that had been designed using these colours to work stripes. The practical part of the talk was about selecting yarns, designing another stripe, and revising and developing the design. Each step was shown and design rationales discussed. The sample was knitted and a finished and steamed version was reviewed to which the group gave feedback on how it might be improved/adapted. All in all it was an enjoyable experience.
I will be talking to the group again in August about my latest book, ‘The Machine Knitter’s Guide to Partial Knitting; Seamless Patter, Shape and Form’ which is due to be published in Spring 2026 by Crowood Press.
Vikki Haffenden 