I've often heard machine knitting referred to as "cheating". In this talk I'd like to present the case for considering it as a separate craft with its own skills and traditions. We'll have a tour of historical knitting machines and look at the 20th century boom in domestic machine knitting. I'll illustrate the talk with examples by local knitters from the 1980s and dip into the maker/hacker movement of the early 2000s. I'll end with a round up of the present culture of machine knitting at home and as a studio practice and perhaps even a short fashion show.
