Knit- Day 1

Today was the first week of knit with Bid. I was really looking forward to this week, I really like the texture and finish of knitwear and how it is beautiful yet has a sort of casual quality to it. We started with learning how to set up the machines, I hadn’t used a knitting machine before and it was a bit confusing at first making sure everything was in the right place. After this we learnt how to do different stitches. At first I found casting on confusing as the first few times we got the thread in the wrong place and it got all caught up but once we worked out the correct way the thread needs to be particularly around the carriage it became easier.

Plain stitch- where you just run the carriage back and forth creating an even plain knit.

Honeycomb stitch- probably my favourite stitch, do a plain stitch then about an inch from the needles use the transfer tool to pick up a few lines of stitches and put them over the needles before carrying on a plain stitch. This creates on one side a gathered effect and the other it dips in like a honeycomb.

Lace hole stitch- I found this the hardest stitch to do as kept accidently dropping stitches and creating extra unwanted holes. To do this you create a plain stitch and then where you chose you use the transfer tool to pick up a stitch and place it on the left or right needle before doing a few rows of plain stitch. This creates little holes which when you do multiple of these can create patterns. This is definitely my weakest stitch which I need to practice more in getting even holes of equal sizes. I also feel this is a more tradition stitch compared to the others which I don’t like quite so much.

Drop stitch- this is similar to the lace hole stitch but with a ladder effect above it made by completing a lace hole stitch then doing a few lines of plain stitch before dropping the stitch directly above the hole and pulling down which ladders the knit till the hole. I liked the look of this stitch; it is quite modern and would look good layered over other fabrics which could contrast through the hole.

Overall I really enjoyed today, it was a really good introduction to knit and I find some of the stitches quite inspiring for my project especially for example using the honeycomb stitch around a cuff to create a ruffled finish to a jumper. Although by the end I was getting much more used to the machine I still need a lot more practice to get used to it and to learn mainly about how to fix mistakes when knitting such as if a stitch is accidently dropped which create flaws in the sample.