Behind the scenes at our new machine knitting studio in Yorkshire!

Earlier this month we launched our new machine knitting studio in the heart of Todmorden in West Yorkshire with a couple of Open Days. Thank you so much to so many of you who sent lovely, warm messages; the support and encouragement made such a difference.  For those who couldn't join us in real life I thought I'd share a few details with you ...

The machine knitting Open Days were scheduled for Friday & Saturday with Friday planned as the softer, quieter day with less going on so we could ease ourselves into it!  I was totally prepared for no visitors - and had been planning just to do some final adjustments to the space and a bit of tinkering on the knitting machines.  But we were delighted to welcome over 20 machine knitters on Friday with an opportunity to have some great chats and meaningful connections.  Some of the visitors were co-tenants in our building who were interested (and excited!) to see what we do.  We are already talking about collaborating with The Makery downstairs which is a community hub for sewers and makers to use the equipment on site - they have a knitting machine stashed down there which is feeling very unloved because nobody knows how to use it!  I will be rectifying that ???? and hopefully we can run some joint making sessions where people can use my machines for knitting ...

Saturday was the Main Event and it was very busy, from opening through to early afternoon.  We lost count of visitors but I would guesstimate we had well over 50 people through the door.  We had the added attraction of Bill King and his magic suitcase of swatches!

And Graham Jones - our "local" machine knitting engineer - was with us all day too helping to fix machines and chat about repairs and service.  Those of you who came (or plan to come) to our annual retreats, will be pleased to know that I have Graham working on prepping all the machines for next year so that they are all in tip-top condition.

Again some great conversations were had and we had a real mix of visitors - from locals who are just on the start of their machine knitting journeys to beloved MKC members and those who had travelled from further afield.  That award goes to Terry who was visiting from Texas!!

One of the highlights for me was finally getting to meet Halyna Shemchuk, a super talented machine knitter from Ukraine who has now settled in the UK with her children.  Some of you may remember Halyna from an article I shared at the beginning of the war with Russia, when our knitting community was trying to support Ukrainian designers on Ravelry.  

All in all, it was a wonderful couple of days.  It really did feel as though there is a vibrant machine knitting community right here on our doorstep and I'm keen to help support it as much as we can.  We have lots of plans for next year and this weekend was a great opportunity to discuss this with visitors and get suggestions too.  And I'd love to hear from anybody else who is looking for in person support here in West Yorkshire.  Please feel free to add any suggestions below!

We are already running our popular machine knitting workshops here in the new Studio. The final dates for November this year are already fully booked but we will be adding new dates for 2025 so if you want to make sure you are notified when those are released, sign up to our Mailing List.

I’m also working on plans for new ideas too! My thoughts so far include a machine lending library, drop-in days/sessions, a machine knitting club, regular repair sessions & classes and knit-ins, maybe even an annual show/fair - any reason to pop the kettle on and learn together!

Thanks to all of you who came along and supported us and to those who couldn't make it but were there in spirit!  We hope this is the first of many get togethers in our new space in Todmorden ...