@Dermot suggested at the members meeting that the knitting machine could be a nice thing to showcase at the South London Maker Festival.
I wanted to open this thread up for ideas of an interactive showcase that would give visitors hands on experience.
I only have 1 idea so far to make a communal knitted piece we could exhibit at the space after the fair (or anyone dying for a nap could use ).
Concept: we bring a bunch of different color yarns, and get each visitor to knit a multi coloured stripe rectangular strip and we sew them all together into a big rectangular artwork or blanket (function is in the eye of the beholder) !
1- Each visitor moves from the knitting station where they:
pick a color
we show them how to thread it onto the machine
they knit a couple rows
and the next person tries their hand the same way until we complete a strip (which we bind and start a new one)
2- [if we can have a second person] To an assembly station where we teach them how to hand sew the strips together so they experience both parts of the knitting process
I just hope the sponge bar on the machine is still alive (or we can source a new one quickly enough), and at least say 100 needles or all these ideas our out the window
Dthat would be fantastic @Maz , I suck at that so we’re a good team shall I keep you posted this weekend when I’ve dusted off the machine and we plan from there?
I was thinking of knitting 2 test strips, I could leave them in the space for you to test the best way to sew them together and confirm it looks good? Happy to meet you there too! Let me know what your availability looks like
We’ll need to buy a few bits: some plastic needles and maybe a threader, otherwise we should be able to use what’s in the space plus I’ll throw in some of my yarn and bring my machine claw weight hanger it will make it less error prone
PS: I was excited to see we have the ribber too, but it’s missing some important parts to hook onto the machine and its weights so will have to look into that later if we wanna bring him to life - not usable as it is now
Thanks @Maz for your help planning and special guest @Julia for participating in our creative process!
We’ve had a closer look at our stash of yarn and what it can realistically achieve and we tweaked the plan: we’ll have visitors knitting, assembling and potentially -time permitting- embroidering some express mittens.
There won’t be a pair for every visitor to take home, so we might have active participants put their name into a jar for a chance to win a pair hourly or so. That way we can have as many raffle winners as our productivity allows
).
