This workshop was organised to introduced members of Brighton Textile Art Group to machine knitting. I took a Knitmaster 700 standard gauge punch card machine and a Brother 260 chunky. The chunky was particularly popular once it was found that it could knit handspun yarns.

Because most members are knitters, and those who don’t knit understand a lot about textiles, it was a fast paced and proactive workshop. In just under the hours we explored shaping, fair isle, single motif fair isle, knitwear (again great for hand spun), holding and short rows and simple, manual lace transfer.

They was even a little circular machine which was used to demonstrate the difference between the two main types of weft knitting machines.

People who had thought they would hate using machines found their versatility of the machines surprising, and were soon won over. One member of the group had six machines but doesn’t really use them, so was keen to go home and get them out.
It was a pity that the workshop clashed with an East Sussex Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers meeting, so it would be great to hold another session in 2020.