Month: September 2023

A weekend well spent

| Sonia Knits

The weekend before last, I went away once again with some of my crafty friends, formerly known as my quilting friends. Some of these old friends have turned their hands to knitting since we gathered last (about 6 months ago), and some have become obsessed with sock knitting. Of course, as you can imagine, I was pretty excited by this predicament! Whilst there still was quite a lot of patchworking going on, there was also equal amounts of knitting, and I got to talk a lot about how I knit my socks! So much fun.

Wouldn’t you know it, I only took one project to knit and it was not a pair of socks…

This is the back all wrapped up before heading home (bobbins ready for travel!)

I managed to knit 2 full repeats of the design, by my calculations (of looking at other people’s finished sweaters), I’m going to need 6 repeats of the pattern. I’m a third of the way there. Now I just need to work out how to carve out 3 day weekends which don’t involve me doing too much to get this front finished, that’s do-able right.

Machine Knitting

| Sonia Knits

Last weekend I took a class in Machine Knitting! I’ve been a hand knitter since childhood, but I’ve never had a chance to try out knitting on a machine. Growing up, mum had a knitting machine, it was a ‘punch card’ one, I can tell she was pretty proud of it. None of the kids could get near it, for good reason!

I’ve seen this class come up now and again at the Thread Den, and last Saturday was finally my opportunity to jump straight in.

Lorena (from Loré Loré) was a wonderful teacher. The class was for absolute beginners to Machine Knitting, with the promise of being able to make a beanie by the conclusion of the all-day class. It did not disappoint… and it was kind of fun. I mean it was quite a lot of fun… if it was easier to obtain a vintage medium-gauge machine in good working order, I would be machine knitting right now. Oh dear!

As it turns out, my mum did away with her machine years ago. Who’d have thought I’d pick it up? And I still haven’t, it was a fun little foray into the dark side of knitting. I don’t think I’ll ever get into weaving (you need a lot more room for a loom), but a knitting machine, is just not that big…

Mum’s birthday is coming up this week and I had a wee little pre-celebration with her yesterday. These cakes were also shared with 2 of my siblings who did drive-bys. The little party celebration ended up being a nice little catch-up without fuss. I’ll be away next weekend when Mum gets to have a shared party with one of my sweet nieces, you can never have enough cake.