See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.   We had just been given our packs and as you can see we are completely absorbed.

 Although the museum was closed the section that exhibits the stockings was just above us on a balcony and here lay Queen Victoria’s stockings, there were signs of mendings on the toe!  Only a very small hole and beautiful darned, obviously stockings were an expensive commodity in those days.

 A machine that particularly took my fancy, a Griswold 160/80 which was from Dennis Wright’s collection,  it would be used for very fine stockings, oh if I could only own one of those.

 There were 22 sock machines in the room and discussions were had about just how much they had gone up in the last couple of years.  The regular price for what one hopes is a decent machine comes in at £650/£850 and one with a selection of different sized cylinders will often go over the thousand.  I am glad we bought ours when we did!  Most people may think we were surrounded by a pile of junk!

And everyone giggled that I was knitting a sock by hand, and comments were made that I may well finish my sock before anyone had finished theres.   There is a very steep learning curve when using one of these machines.

We had a very enjoyable day, we learned to use a beret to cast on, and how to sew a backstitch bind off.  A demonstration was given on an e-wrap selvedge and how to rib a sock on a machine.  I was taught how to kitchener  with the purl stitches on the outside and the sock still attached to the waste yarn.  Hubby picked up a few tips and Jane was taught how to change a cylinder.  And we picked up a brand new set of needles, which whilst they are not cheap, will last and we feel very lucky to get.