17 April 2007

WOOLLIE

Newburgh, the little town up the River Tay and home to our favourite knitting store Twist Fibre Craft has been developing an arts centre in the town which includes a number of artists studios. They also secured funding through Scottish Art Council's Partner Programme which aims to enable communities with little experience of the arts new opportunities to engage with professional artists, to employ an Artist in Residence this year. They have employed Jeanette Sendler, a textile artist for a year to work with the community developing projects that show Newburgh and it's closeness to the land over the centuries. It sounds like it could be interesting and it's called "Plum Job" - a great name.

Last night there was a textile workshop/taster session on Freestyle Machine Knitting. About 20 people were there and we all gor a chance to try our hand at machine knitting. I must admit that I enjoyed the experience and can see the benefits of machine knitting a large piece and structurally the pieces that the artist had made were amazing (see the red piece below) but it wasn't really for me. I knit to relax and the noise of the machines was not exactly relaxing.





Another WOOLLIE matter

My friend Laurence is one of the quickest knitter's I know. She started this blanket 2 weeks ago - 218 stitches per row, the first time she had tried knitting intarsia - and it's almost finished - only 22 rows to go!! It is beautiful - one lucky baby is going to be the proud owner of this blanket. It's from Lucinda Guy's book "And So To Bed".

3 comments:

taisa said...

Wow, I never really knew that machine knitting was something that people did! I imagined rows of machines in factories knitting up matching sweaters... That blanket your friend made is incredible. I think something like that would take me years and not turn out nearly so lovely!

Manoute said...

Hi Di, Thanks for putting my blanket on your blog, the picture is really good. By the way, it is finished !!!!!

Kate said...

Really interesting machine knitting. Your friend's blanket is really lovely.