. brightmeadowknits: July 2016

Sunday, July 31, 2016

maker Fair

Ed and I went to Maker Faire at Henry Ford Museum today.  I was hoping to find other machine knitters and did not.  However I did find TNNA giving away drop spindles.  Laura, who was sight-impaired, helped me with my drop-spindle spinning.  I think she helped quite a bit.  I probably will never be proficient at drop-spindle spinning, however.

When we got home I tried to do a tuck-stitch version of the one-hour prayer shawl with ladder yarn.  It is not working so I am giving up for today.
At the Monroe seminar, Diana Berns demonstrated the 1-hour prayer shawl technique.  Basically, this:

Set two needles at left of bed to working position and one needle a distance away (for fringe).  E-wrap cast on and hang weights.  Knit, increasing one stitch on right every two rows. When you reach the width the shawl should be, set the carriage for hold and hold one stitch on the right every two rows.  When you are back down to one stitch, start putting one needle back into work every two rows.  When you reach the end, start decreasing one stitch on right every two rows.  When back down to one, cast off one stitch.  Block before or after "unworking" the fringe.

I did this with a cone of my all-natural yarn.  Decide the angle was too narrow on a stockinette stitch.  Thinking about embellishments, perhaps an Iriquois-insprired woodland theme? Or perhaps a Spanish Mantilla?   

Monroe Machine Knitting Seminar

As always, a fantastic time at Monroe Machine Knitters' Seminar in July.   Cathy reports that due to the temporary relocation to another building at Monroe Community College, she was able to accept more registrations this year, and there were 100 machine knitters there this year.  Several were new.

Demonstrators were:
I learned something from each demonstrator.  I did not walk away empty-handed, either.  I won a door prize both days and purchased either a pattern, yarn, or a tool from each demonstrator.

An announcement was made at lunch concerning TKGA's management company deciding to stop the relationship, and the subsequent conversion of TKGA to an all-volunteer organization.  Due to lack of machine-knitting volunteers, machine knitting certification program will be dropped as of the current time.  We were encouraged to join the conversation on Ravelry to offer our support to perhaps influence a differernt decision.