The manuscript for my latest book on machine knitting has gone to the publishers, (printers)

The Machine Knitter’s Guide to Partial Knitting; Seamless Pattern, Shape and Form

I wrote this post last July, and thought I would share it with you in retrospect, as the book has now gone to  print.

July 2025

Finally, after a long and fraught 18 months it is done!

I signed the book contract only a few weeks before we moved house. After several false starts with the sale of the house we thought we would be staying for a while and would lose the property we wanted to purchase. However, the way it happened in the end meant that we had to rush into moving in a 3 week window.

Which meant of course that we had to pack what we hadn’t already packed in a hurry, and organize everything else and then move and organize this end when we arrived. Settling in took far longer than anticipated due to unanticipated building work through last summer. It wasn’t until late autumn that I was able to safely unpack a machine and start to knit and write in earnest. Then the arrival of our first grandchild interrupted my flow for a while, the sun shone and the garden needed work done. All in all, let’s say life got in the way!

The last month has been full-on working on the book, so it was wonderful to finally send it off. Of course they will be editorial suggestions and corrections to do, and then a final check once it is laid out for printing, so it’s not finished yet.

May 2026

If you have persevered and read to this point, you might like to know what the book is about. This book, my third about machine knitting focuses on short rows, or partial knitting. It is suitable for any machine with holding position, single bed, double bed, plastic or metal bed, and any gauge. I particularly wanted to include the popular plastic bed, mid-gauge machines like the LK150. Rather than struggle to emulate the punchcard machines with repeating patterns, short row pattern and shaping can be as easily done on either type of machine.

From fair-isle to football boots

This was a talk that I gave at the Textile Institute. In it I discussed seamless knitting technologies, their historical roots in hand knitting methods, and the potential the ‘new’ technolgies are bringing to commerical knitwear and knitted outputs. The audience had the opportunity to handle samples produced on flat-bed Shima Seiki Wholegarment and Santoni circular seamless machinery.

This was in 2014, and since then mass produced knitted footwear of varying degrees of sophistication has become common on the high street (and it is so comfortable).

I recently purchased a pair of hi-top elastic knit trainers, with flechage (short row) shaping on the ankle and other technical knit structures on the upper and toe, for a very moderate sum. In 2014 they were still expensive and quite exclusive – so we can see the impact on footwear without looking further than the high street (or online shopping of course).

I recently heard of a business in the US that knits custom made climbing boot uppers, fascinating!

Follow this link to my media page to read more about the talk.