WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO LEARN HOW TO MACHINE KNIT?

A few years ago it occurred to me to knit a beanie for my brother’s newborn. This sounds entirely reasonable – except that at that point I hadn’t knitted, or thought about knitting in a good few decades.

That didn’t deter me at all. My mom sewed most of our clothes when we were kids, so I know and love my LYS from very many childhood trips with her and my siblings to buy fabric and patterns, and so I promptly acquired needles and some beautiful local bamboo yarn.

Muscle memory came to my aid at least as far as plain and purl are concerned, and for the rest there was YouTube. Quite soon I was knitting fairly intricate patterns, looking in each one for something new to learn.

That was the one criteria for deciding what to knit; the other was simply about what I wanted to wear.

But, as all hand knitters with fulltime jobs know, there are not enough hours in the day to knit yourself a wardrobe, and so I started wondering a) exactly how much faster it would be to machine knit, b) whether one could knit cool, modern, desirable things by machine (more about this later) and c) whether I would get any of the same enjoyment from knitting by machine as I did from knitting by hand.

And the only way to find out, was to learn how to machine knit!

HOW DID YOU FIND THE KNITTING SCHOOL? WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE LIKE HERE? WAS IT HOW YOU EXPECTED IT TO BE?

At the risk of sounding gushy: the 11 days I spent in Seattle attending the Knitting School were unforgettably happy.

I found the Knitting School by trawling the internet for courses and classes. There was nothing available in South Africa, meaning I’d have to travel overseas. In the end I was making a choice between the Knitting School and a course in London, and I chose The Knitting School because the way students talked about Helen and the course in their testimonials was so warm and personal, and had such substance. Also, I’d been to London many times, and never to Seattle.

I attended 10 days of class with a one-day break somewhere. I lucked out and had amazing class mates throughout, and the classes themselves were everything I could have hoped for: challenging in all the right ways, stimulating, informative, fun.

The 10-day immersion was, in retrospect, just the right thing.

Learning by myself had been a stop-start affair, with the result that every time I started again, I was in effect starting over, because what I’d learnt hadn’t been properly entrenched. This time skills kept getting layered on top of each other: by the time we started working with the ribber, I’d cast on so many times, I doubted I’d ever forget how again.

Secondly, spending this much time in Helen’s studio was a good test for whether I could do this for a living. When I left there wanting more, more, more, I felt that was a good sign!

YOU TOOK A BIG LEAP WHEN YOU DECIDED TO LEAVE YOUR CAREER TO START YOUR BUSINESS. TELL ME ABOUT THIS JOURNEY AND WHY YOU DECIDED TO CHANGE YOUR FUTURE.

When everything I described above was happening I had worked in television and content management for 25 years +. I loved the work, but tv is an expensive business, which means that it is enabled by massive resources, infrastructure and corporate muscle, and it is invariably a stage for intense corporate and even national politics. And after all this time I was growing increasingly exhausted by seeing the same organisational dramas play out over and over again, and of spending countless hours working to achieve goals I didn’t quite believe in, and of never being able to point to something (tv channels and shows are not objects) and saying this is what I’ve done.

So the tactility and tangibility of knitting was incredibly gratifying. It was something I had full control over: I could make all the decisions myself, nothing had to be approved in triplicate or justified to a board, and the outcomes, even if they were imperfect, could be tied directly to the decisions I’d made (pattern, yarn weight and colour, needle size) and the work I’d done. I could hold the results in my hands and – even better – put them on! J

As is inevitable, given these circumstances, I started thinking about whether I could turn my new passion into an income generating occupation. Equally inevitably I came to the conclusion that there is no business model that makes hand knitting viable – and so my thoughts turned to machine knitting. So I arrived at the idea of machine knitting from a number of different directions.

I KNOW YOU ARE PART OF A FAMILY OF CREATIVE PEOPLE - BOTH YOUR BROTHER AND SISTER WORK IN A CREATIVE FIELD. IS THIS SOMETHING THAT YOU GREW UP WITH? WERE YOUR PARENTS CREATIVE, TOO?

It’s not something I thought about as a child, but yes, my parents are creative, even though they didn’t work in creative fields. My mom sews, knits and crochets beautifully, and my dad has a large collection of bonsai trees. My siblings are, respectively, a mosaist turned fibre artist, a jeweller and a homoeopath. I remember a conversation between us about how we could “barter” our goods: they would offer mosaic pieces, jewellery and remedies… All I could do was promise to keep Sex and the City on tv! (This was a long time ago.)

In a way I’ve always envied my brother and sister a bit, so it makes me really happy to have found a creative outlet of my own. My family is super supportive of my new career direction – even though my dad is a bit flabbergasted that the least “crafty” of his children has turned into a knitter!

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE LEARNING TO MACHINE KNIT?

My personal experience has been that learning from someone (as opposed to on your own) is invaluable, and can make the difference between loving your machine and wanting to take an axe to it.

Especially with a second hand machine it’s very hard for a novice to know whether things are going pear shaped because of you or the machine. It’s possible to go at it for hours and make zero progress, because of something you just don’t know to look out for, and that can take all the joy out of the process. (I once spent a day making wonky ribbing because one of my clamps had come loose…)

All of that changes if there is someone to give guidance until you at least have a feel for the machine and how it should sound and behave. Once you have a handle on the basics, it becomes easy and enjoyable to layer more advanced skills on top.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE STARTING THEIR OWN BUSINESS IN MACHINE KNITTING?

It’s too early to know if my way of doing things is sound – so don’t take my advice too seriously!

The one thing I would say, though, is that I think there is a bit of a pitfall around scale.

I employ three people already, because, the way I looked at things, it would be impossible to generate meaningful income if I tried to be the only one designing, knitting, finishing and marketing. Having staff means I can produce more – but of course having to pay salaries puts pressure on a young business.

In short: it is important to be clear with yourself about whether you want a hobby that pays for itself, or a business – and then to be realistic and honest about how much you need to produce and sell in order to achieve your objectives – and then to determine what resources would make that possible, and how you’re going to put them into place.

WHAT IS YOUR DESIGN PROCESS, AESTHETIC AND PHILOSOPHY?

My design process, aesthetic and philosophy are all definitely still developing, as is my ability to translate all of those things, technically, into knitted pieces.

At the moment I see the process as a kind of narrowing funnel, where creativity and discipline play almost equal parts. When starting with a blank page, everything is possible, and I have to gradually take possibilities away in order to create focus.

The first choices I tend to make, are about yarn: what fibres and what weights am I working with? Right now that is 100% merino wool from the Eastern Cape in SA, as well as natural cotton; I’m exploring sources of linen and tsumugi silk for the near future.

Then I have to figure out a palette. I’d always thought of myself as a minimalist when it came to colour (when in doubt, wear black) – but I am endlessly seduced and distracted by colour possibilities. My yarn supplier, Dana Biddle from Colourspun, hand dyes her yarns into the most ravishing shades, making this process extra hard.

And then I think about shapes and silhouettes. I try to design garments that are flattering for a variety of body shapes… and clothes that have dignity. That’s neither a sexy nor a fashionable word, but it’s an important one to me.

Lastly, even though I want people to buy my goods, I am very much opposed to excessive consumption. I want people to wear my things for years, and to love them, and even pass them on. So I concentrate on fairly simple, wearable shapes, distinguished by beautiful details: a pocket, a contrast edging, an unexpected seaming detail.

WHERE DO YOU SEE WRAPT IN 5 YEARS?

There are no guarantees that Wrapt will take off… But if I could magically give it the future I want for it:

In 2023 it has its own premises: an airy production space, with a small showroom attached, where people can touch and feel and try on.

It is respected in South Africa as one of a group of businesses that has revived the textile industry in the country, creating thousands of jobs in the process. Wrapt itself now has around 15 employees: small enough to retain its agility and familial feel; big enough to be competitive in its niche. Employees love the company; it treats them well, and opens career paths for them both internally and externally.

The backbone of sales come from the online store, mostly from SA, but we have some international fans as well.

We introduce small new ranges twice a year, but certain basic pieces are always available; customers sometimes order them in two or three colours. Our signature piece, as it has been right from the start, is the Wrapt Wrap: a simple rectangle that gets reimagined every year.

In a nutshell, my hope for Wrapt in five years is that it is a thriving business: not too small, not too big, just right.

Now in 2024, we reached out to Hannelie to see what was happening with Wrapt.

I had been working from home, with three knitters I’d trained myself (very shortly after being trained at The Knitting School!). We worked on second hand machines from the Singer stable: they were sold under the Empisal brand in SA in the seventies and eighties, and are still quite freely available.

After a few orders that were almost too big to handle in this way, and under the influence of a couple of Stoll salespeople, I started looking at the possibility of acquiring a couple of industrial machines. The market was feeling quite lively, and while Stoll machines were completely out of reach, I thought that something much more modest would enable us to scale quite quickly. I was very keen on the Kniterate developments, but they weren’t shipping to SA at the time (and are still not as far as I know), so I’d started looking into various lowish-cost Chinese made machines.

It’s quite hard to know what to pin on COVID and what would have happened regardless. Just before my husband and I were due to go to ITMA (Textile and Garment Expo) to look at the possibilities we’d identified, an opportunity came up to buy three second-hand machines from a factory in South Africa. This meant an accelerated timeline and no shipping costs – shipping anything big to SA is super expensive – and we were swayed by these factors, and by some less than stellar advice.

This turned out to be an unfortunate decision. The machines were old, with primitive software, a terrible interface and very limited local support. While they were able to do shaped knitting, they were really best suited to cut and sew; in order to optimise their size and capabilities, they should be knitting big, wide sheets of fabric 24/7.

COVID struck just as we started to get in work, and we lost an entire winter. Once restrictions eased work trickled back, and we did production both for our own brand and for other designers on the bug machines, but it remained challenging, with far too much time wasted on trouble shooting and re-knitting to be viable.

A NEW BEGINNING

I also realized that production wasn’t where my heart was. It’s interesting, as an exercise, to figure out ways to optimize every element of workflow and production, but I didn’t enjoy it as the focus of everything.

Towards the end of 2022 I realized that the shape of the business was causing much more strain than enjoyment. I sold the big machines, kept the Empisals, and shut down the studio. Fortunately all my employees managed to find other work.

Now I work from home again, from our Jo’burg apartment, and I’m perfectly happy to describe what I do as “micro-enterprise”.

It’s a very mixed model: the backbone is a small mohair range we make for a retailer in Cape Town called Aafricaa Store: I develop the range in consultation with them, and then the small production runs are done by a few freelance knitters that I was lucky to find. The range is sold under my brand.

Because of pricing complications I make a separate set of items for my website and for a couple of Jo’burg stores also under my own brand. And I do occasional work for a few local designers: Lunar, Viviers Studios and GuguByGugu in particular. This ranges from once-off pieces for shows to small production runs.

I source merino wool and mohair locally, either from one of the spinners (in the case of mohair) or from indie dyers (merino wool). South Africa is the world’s largest producer of mohair, and it is spun here. I use a brushed mohair (78% mohair, 13% wool, 9% nylon), a boucle blend (39% mohair, 39% viscose, 13% wool, 9% nylon) and an exquisite mohair-silk blend (78% kid mohair, 22% silk). I’d have liked for the nylon not to be there, but have made peace with it; all of these yarns are beautiful.

Cotton is easily sourced locally; however, the only way to get it on cones is to order 40kg per colour, which I did when I had the studio, but not anymore! I have, on occasion, imported a merino/cotton blend that I love working with, and I sometimes bring in linen from Lithuania, since flax isn’t grown locally at all.

The resurgence of machine knitting hasn’t reached SA in a big way, so I was lucky to come across a small group of knitters in Springs, a nearby town. I was quite apprehensive about outsourcing production, but after some teething problems it’s working pretty well!

It’s all mohair knits, knitted on chunky machines, and the patterns are very straightforward and simple. Mohair is very expensive: I’ve learnt that unless production is kept simple, the resulting products become too expensive to make sense.

At the beginning of September I will be spending a couple of days with Design Academy of Fashion in Cape Town showing students some of the capabilities of chunky machines. There is very little attention given to knitwear in fashion training, and with the exception of one institution I don’t think anyone has offered it as a practical option. I hope that the DAF involvement will grow over time.

I am most happy when I am involved and absorbed in figuring something out, whether it’s a knitting technique or a construction solution or a color palette. I love yarns and fibers for themselves and see them as the point of departure for everything I do.

The thing I am most resistant to is repetitive work, like having to knit two or three or 10 of the same thing. Once the process is underway I often don’t mind it as much as I’d imagined, though!

I also don’t love the relentless effort that has to go into sales and marketing. My natural inclination is to withdraw my attention from a product as soon as I’m happy with it – which, of course, is lethal!

Future plans

I’m really happy with the relationship with Aafricaa Store. It has some potential to grow, but mostly I’d like to nurture it, as it provides some stability.

I’m also cultivating a new relationship with a small store in Antwerp, Belgium, which, if it works, I could use as a template for a couple more. Mohair knits are expensive for the local market, and highly valued in Europe; while I don’t want to get into export myself, it could make sense to work with a few boutiques on this basis.

I’ve been writing my own patterns from the very beginning, so I have a lot of them. I recently started polishing a few for publication. I realize that the machine knitting community is quite small, but I’m interested in testing the waters. As a start I’m focusing on mohair patterns for chunky machines. I ran a KAL for a couple of these for the Machine Knit Community last year and was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiastic response”.

There is a lot I (Helen) can relate to in Hannelie’s comments. Especially the love of process, the disinterest in the marketing side of running a business - thank you, Angie! It is very interesting to me to hear how she has adapted to circumstances in and out of her control and to hear about the nature of running a small business in South Africa.

Thank you, Hannelie!

Revisiting Hannelie

A NEW BEGINNING

Future plans

Garment Analysis – Stine Goya Snake Knit

Books on Pattern Design by Kathleen Kinder