A tribute, and a new beginning

Heather passed away late last year (Isrbrown on Ravelry) after a hard-fought battle with brain cancer. She pioneered podcasting for machine knitters. I don't think there are any regular MK-specific podcasts - correct me if I'm wrong, I'd be delighted to find some! She also started MKWorld Live, which was a live video chatting session. I only attended a couple of times, as the time difference meant it was Saturday night (aka drinking time!) in my household and I kind of felt like I was standing my boyfriend up (but in reality he probably never even noticed! Ha!). She had also planned to progress to on-line seminars but alas was taken from us before this could be fully realised.


Well, for anyone who hasn't already joined or heard of Google+, you can create communities on there, and you can also create "hangouts" of up to 10 people where you can use video to chat to like-minded folks. For free. Google+ seems to be a bit like Facebook but with less adverts and no games crap. With that in mind, some of the machine-knitting Ravellers have created a community on there and we're planning to test out this hangout feature on Saturday night. Pop by and say hello if you want to join our show-and-tell! Webcam and microphone would be ideal, although there is also a text chat function.

Yes, I was reticent to join Google+ as I already have a facebook account and it's just yet another thing to forget the password for. I haven't really played with it much yet, and I'm not sure I'll defect, but who knows? If it means we can do some face-to-face chats/demos etc for machine knitters, who by dint of our hobby being "underground" are often geographically spread-out and with no live machine knitters locally to turn to, that can only be a good thing, surely?

RIP Heather, and I hope we can carry the torch you set alight as you would have wanted. As for our peculiar little hobby (wrestling jumpers out of cantankerous metal and plastic machines)? Very much alive and well - I've added ten or more patterns to the Treasure Chest site just today, and the Ravelry group goes from strength to strength with 4068 members as I write this.

Knit on!