Welcome to the first of many review posts! Today we’re looking at the February 2021 edition of UK-based Machine Knitting Monthly. This post will also be a bit of an overview of what the magazine has to offer.
I’ve been a subscriber to this magazine for over a year, and it’s one of the only machine knitting magazines left. It costs around 10 USD including shipping, and it generally arrives towards the middle of the listed month for me. (For a US-based mag, check out Country Knitting of Maine’s News & Views magazine.)
What’s in this issue?
First up, let’s look at Machine Knitting Monthly’s regular setup. You can expect an average of eight patterns per issue, and newer issues include instructions and/or conversion factors for both standard and mid-gauge machines. All patterns feature a schematic, so if you do the knitting math, you can knit them out of whatever yarn you like on your choice of machine.
You’ll find features on fashion in the “Style File” if you’re looking for inspiration, quick craft book reviews, and the magazine’s own letter section, “Dear Anne,” where you can see what other readers are working on and where they’re having issues. I love to see what others are working on, and I feel solidarity and a bit of encouragement when I read of others’ struggles and the solutions offered. For a sense of community, this magazine section is my go-to, especially during the pandemic.
The magazine has been on a self-striping yarn kick for about four issues now, and while I’m ready for them to move on to something new, they’ve managed to pick some pretty decent patterns that show off self-striping yarn well, as seen in the cover’s main feature, the sweater Cold Comfort.
Machine knitting instructor, designer, and author Susan Guagliumi has been a regular in recent months. Her book, Hand-Manipulated Stitches for Machine Knitters is a MUST HAVE for all machine knitters in my opinion. This month’s contribution is a Fair Isle colorwork cardigan. The pattern supplies a punch card template, but don’t worry if your machine doesn’t have punch card capabilities. You can hand-select the needles for this pattern and achieve the same result.
February 2021’s Designer Spotlight shines on Alison Dupernex and features a look at her use of color choice and textile design. I particularly enjoyed the visual textures created by her included pattern, Tiger Stripe.
Machine Knitting Monthly’s own designer, Bill King, regularly features techniques in his column. This month’s, entitled “Lean on me,” features leaning cables and eyelets made by using groups of needles and short-rowing techniques. (You can see an eyelet version of this element used in Linda Jensen’s Serpentine Shawl pattern on etsy.) This issue also includes a reprint of Bill King’s Fandango design.
Most patterns and techniques are designed for Silverreed/Brother/Knitking-style machines, but Machine Knitting Monthly now features a regular section called “Passap People” with techniques especially for Passap machine users.
The magazine also reprints a column with the conversational wisdom of the late Joan Lafferty.
You’ll see standard advertisements, but these are better because many of them are machine knitting and cone yarn related. You’ll often find discount codes for subscribers, so that’s a nice plus!
Thoughts
It’s been a few years since I started machine knitting, but I’m still eating up any form of machine knitting media I can find. Since this is one of the few print media machine-related things still around, I subscribed as soon as I found out about Machine Knitting Magazine and it fit into my budget. Sometimes I think I’m still in the honeymoon phase of machine knitting where everything seems gloriously and intimidatingly possible. If it exists for machine knitting, I want it, and I will do what I can to throw money at it and support it. As they say on their cover, Machine Knitting Magazine has been around for 34 years, and I’d like them to be around for many, many more.
That being said, the magazine’s patterns can really suffer from that vintage feeling that a lot of machine knitting has floating around it. The patterns may use newer, flashier things like self-striping yarn, but a lot of them feel like those same classic patterns from the vintage books. (I don’t mean to pooh-pooh vintage patterns. Classic shapes are classic for a reason, so hoard those vintage pattern books when you find them. I definitely do.)
I’m a thirty-something American, so I’m pretty sure I’m not Machine Knitting Magazine’s target audience. I’ve heard people lament it’s a dying art in the USA. Many of the machine knitters I attended seminar were past their fifties and sixties, but many were younger. Gen X and Millennial machine knitters do exist! But where do they get their patterns?
I’m an avid ravelry.com user, so when I compare the pattern feed of ravelry to what’s showing up in Machine Knitting Monthly, the magazine comes up short on color choice, stitch usage, textures, and garment variety. It’s difficult to find a lot of their patterns even listed in ravelry’s database (although you and I can submit them and change that fact since the database is user generated).
Comparing a monthly magazine to an internet pattern database and social platform is not a fair comparison whatsoever, but it highlights what I personally would like to see in the magazine — more variety.
But therein lies the rub– ravelry has an abundance of designers and content creators, while many of those who would do so for machine knitting have retired or passed away. Many are of an age that generally just isn’t tech-savvy.
So where does that leave us? It’s up to the machine knitters of today to create that variety and get it out there so others can see it and we can grow our craft. ravelry.com has a machine knitting section, so there’s a place right there in the biggest yarn community on the internet for us.
Pulling back from that ranty tangent and getting back to the magazine review, I truly like but also dislike that Machine Knitting Monthly will rerun patterns and columns. On one hand, a rerun means that something that might have been published before I could even read will reach my eyes, but on the other, a reprint makes me wonder again about lack of content.
The technique sections are inspiring, and I enjoy the friendly tone of the late Joan Lafferty’s column reprints. I enjoy that window into the machine knitting world of the past.
Machine Knitting Monthly has great picture tutorials– this month’s focuses on invisible seam grafting/Kitchener stitch, something I just could not grasp until I saw the way many machine knitters graft — off of waste yarn, so it might be handy to those of you who still need assistance with seaming.
So, with all of that said, let’s deliver some sort of rating.
Simply for existing, Machine Knitting Monthly itself gets a 5/5.
Because of the continued insistence on self-striping yarn and lack of variety in patterns but extremely helpful tutorials with great technique highlights, February 2021’s Issue 277 gets a solid 3.5/5 from me.
I hope you enjoyed today’s review. Do you subscribe to Machine Knitting Monthly, too? What did you think of this month’s issue? What did I miss in this review that you’d like to see? Let me know below in the comments!
I am not affiliated with any of the individuals listed or linked here unless otherwise noted. All opinions are honest and my own.
ELY Knits 