knit one, purl one... (Knitting)

Member Name: leanne8686

Product:	Knitting
Date:	08/10/08 (343 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: challenging, fun, addictive

Disadvantages: machine knitting can get V.expensive!

Yes knitting is cool again!

Anybody who knows me would tell you I really am not the slightest bit boring or 'traditional'........

I decided I'd write about this as it's been a big part of my life for the past 3 years. There are very stereotypical views of someone who knits and I hope break all of the moulds of this stereotype, it's really not all about grannies sat around nattering with their knitting needles in hand.

Please, please read on!
These are my experiences of knitting.........


~~~How I got into knitting~~~
When I started my Degree in Textile Design, I hadn't knitted a stitch in my life.
The 3 main subject areas of my degree were: Woven textiles, Printed textiles and Knitted textiles, during the first year everybody did equal amounts of design work in each area, in the second year you chose your favourite 2 (for me Printed and Knitted) and in the final year of the course you could choose 1 to specialise in, I chose Knitted textiles.

Interesting fact, in the third year of my course there were 80 students; of these 40 wanted to specialise in Knit rather than the other 2 choices so this proves just how popular it's becoming, all of the people in my final year knit were girls aged between 20-24. We were all interested in Fashion and 'modern' things but just really enjoyed knitting too!



There are 2 types of knitting; Machine and Hand.

~~~Machine Knitting~~~
Within the machine category of knitting, there are many different variations of a knitting machine costing from £100 to around £20000. The most expensive types of machine are those used in industry for high-end designers.

The machines we knitted on at University were manual machines, as in you had to still take the knitting carriage across the machine with your hands to knit a row. These were each worth around £2000 brand new and the University had around 30 of these in the knit studio.
There was also one much more high tech machine called a 'Shima Seiki' which knits direct from CAD (computer aided designs) entered into the machine via disc. We only used this occasionally as it didn't really warrant much work from you so you'd never get great grades if you relied on this machine, the computer does all the work for you!

The machines we used were very simple compared to some available, they are easy to use if you just wanted to knit plain knit but obviously being a design course, we had to come up with much better structures than plain knit!

~~First things first, setting up the knitting machine:
I suppose in a way its very similar to setting up a sewing machine, taking the yarn up there, across here, through this hole, round that hook.....takes a while to get the hang of but after a while its second nature to you.
You could only set up 2 different yarns to use at a time on our machines at uni as they were pretty basic.
One yarn at a time can be put through the yarn carriage (that carries the yarn across the needle bed) unless you knit with the computer feature turned on (which I'll explain later) then you can use 2 yarns at a time.

Believe me nothing is simple when it comes to knitting!!


~~So onto knit structures on a basic machine.....
In the first 2 years of Uni our tutor taught us basic structures and these were adequate to use in projects then, by the final year we were more or less on our own and had to create our variations of 'normal' structures which isn't as easy as it may sound.

For those who haven't ever knitted with a machine or are just curious as to what you can create, I'll give you a rundown of these 'starter' structures we were taught:

* 1x1 Rib
This is knitted by taking alternate needles out of action, even this isn't simple to do without creating big ladders through your piece of knitting (it involves a strange little tool you hold, transferring stitches to the next needle on the needle bed...)

* Ripple
A simple but effective structure, again taking needles out of action, knitting on a tighter tension so when you remove your piece of knitting from the machine it spring together to give a raised texture in rows, the tighter you knit the more obvious the result.

* Ladder
The simplest by far you'd think, laddering your fabric? that happens by accident all the time but getting it to happen where and when you want it to is another matter.

* Lace
You can create lace holes by transferring stitches to adjacent needles, this can take a while to knit a small piece and a lot of working out to create a decent pattern.
The machines we used also had a 'lace carriage' you could attach to the machine and this knitted any pattern you programmed into the computer (I'll come onto that next) but in holes instead of solid stitches.

* Cable
Everyone will be familiar with this one, who hasn't seen a jumper with a big twisted cable design. It adds a lot of texture to a piece.
VERY tricky to master, I mastered this one and had people very jealous of my complex cables...lol how sad does that sound?
It involves taking 1 needle either side of where you want your cable to be out of action to define it, then with the needles within your cable area you do a lot of swapping stitches from one needle to another and twisting stitches using the hand-held transfer tool.
Your simplest cable contains 4 needles but as I mentioned before I soon got into 'complex cable' which included upto 16 needles. Seriously you wish you had more than 2 hands at this point....

Right, those are the structures I most commonly used but I usually created my own variation to come up with some more exciting, original designs.

~~The computer
Inbuilt in the knitting machine we used were little simple computers, on this you could programme your own patterns in, for example for one project I used simple love hearts and butterflies (I'm a girly girl)
Its best to plan your design on graph paper first then programme it in, for these patterns you could use 2 colours at once to make the pattern stand out. It takes a long while to perfect the shape, positioning and stitch size within your designs!

Once it is programmed in though its saved and you can come back to it at any time by entering the design number it gives you when you create it initially.

Once you're ready to knit with the computer pattern, all you have to do is take the carriage left,right,left,right...so simple at that point.


~~~Yarns~~~
The type of yarn you use makes a lot of difference to the final fabric obviously; you can knit with anything from fishing wire and cottons to thick, fluffy wool. You just have to alter the tension and stitch size on your machine to accommodate different yarns.

There are treated and untreated wools, treated wool does not shrink or bobble.
If you knit using untreated wool, you can then felt this or in technical terms 'mill' it. This involves washing it in hot water and a soapy formula until it felts together so no stitches are visible, it's just solid (like a piece of felt surprisingly....) This takes a lot of experimentation to get right, as the material shrinks and sometimes you're needing a certain sized sample and can't judge exactly how much it will shrink.

When knitting manually with the machines we used (and not using the inbuilt computer) you can only use one colour yarn at a time, though you can have two set up ready to use.
To change colour you need to rethread the whole machine, not an easy process but you don't want to be limited to 2 colours in a fabric all the time.

Knitting yarns are quite costly too, in our final project we had to source and buy our own yarns; this involved a trip over to a yarn mill in Rochdale (in the snow!) and I spending a lot of money.
I needed enough yarns for a 12 week knitting project and wasn't 100% sure on my colour scheme at this point so ended up buying far more than I needed but at least I didn't run out!
I bought 10 full cones of yarns and a few half cones, this came to £100 which I think is a lot for some wool and cotton. The girls with me seemed to spend less but then I've always had expensive tastes.....

The yarns were only so expensive as we needed the best and they needed to be on cones to work with the knitting machines.

For the other projects throughout the degree course the University supplied the yarns, they had a huge collection of discontinued colours companies sent them and samples too; lots of choice.



~~~Hand knitting~~~
Yep, the traditional type with 2 needles.

Ashamed to admit this but it takes me ages to cast on and then I can only knit scarves..... (hangs head in shame)

I don't know a lot about hand-knitting, it's not my forte so I'm not going to go on about it a lot.
Now I've finished uni and haven't got access to a knitting machine (until I find £2000 on the street!) I'm going to work at improving my hand knitting and maybe when I've done that I'll tell you all what I've learnt!

Yarns for handknitting are a lot cheaper than for machine as you just need a ball of yarn, something you can buy pretty much anywhere now, I've noticed them in Wilkinsons and Sainsburys for around a £1 a ball.
Needles are cheap enough too, you choose the size you want (which will result in different sized stitches) Buy a decent pair, not the cheapest you can find and they will literally last you forever! You'll only have to pay around £4/£5 for a decent pair of needles, so knitting isn't an expensive hobby either!

Hand knitting is becoming increasingly popular with all ages. Most recently Sarah Jessica Parker was papped knitting on the set of the Sex and the city movie and you don't get much cooler than SJP do you girls??
Madonna's a fan along with Cameron Diaz, Kate Moss, Julia Roberts, even Russell Crowe!...need I go on? Just google 'celebrity knitters' and gawp at the long list of names you'll find. It is predominantly a womans hobby, so I'm not expecting all you guys to grab your needles, but if Russell Crowe can....


Knitting is becoming mainstream too, helped by the release of books such as 'Stitch 'n' Bitch' a handbook for cool knitters everywhere. I may have to purchase this to help me get into hand-knitting!
There are also stitch 'n' bitch meetings, where you can meet up to do just that; Stitch as you bitch!! See their website too www.stitchnbitch.com for meeting near you and just a generally fun website.


I have a couple of pairs of needles, loads of yarn, so I have no excuse not to get hand-knitting......


So for a cheap, challenging, addictive, cool hobby, get knitting!!




If you haven't already looked (the link is also on my profile) check out some of my knitted design work from that final Uni project.
http://strother.leanne.googlepages.com

Summary: Break the stereotype,I do!