Other Websites
This website has, without doubt, been built on the shoulders of giants. Here are some other websites that contain a whole wealth of Machine Knitting information and well worth checking out…
The Knitting & Crochet Guild (UK)
The Knitting & Crochet Guild (KCG) is the premier educational charity and authority for yarn related crafts in the United Kingdom. While they have championed hand knitting and crochet since 1978, they became the official home of UK machine knitting history in 2019 when they formally merged with the Guild of Machine Knitters.
The Guild does incredible, vital work preserving the heritage of knitting. Their publicly available resources include superb beginner guides on choosing, buying, and safely using knitting machines. However, their true treasure lies in their membership benefits. Guild members gain access to a physical archive of all things knitting related held in Yorkshire (available to view by appointment or on Open Days). Members of the Guild also receive the quarterly Across the Needlebed online publication, the Slipknot journal, and access to the full digitised archive of historic Guild of Machine Knitters newsletters. Joining the Guild is one of the best ways to support the long-term preservation of the wonderful heritage of knitting.
We also need to personally thank them for helping us and being so supportive of our current Heritage Fund project application around machine knitting (we’ll update on that when we have more news).
Knitting Machine Museum
As much as I wish this was a physical place in the heart of a UK city (it’s actually our ultimate goal to make this happen), this is the next best thing.
Run by the incredibly passionate Maggi Bloice (who is originally from the UK but now based in Brittany, France), the Knitting Machine Museum is exactly what it sounds like—a staggering virtual and physical collection of both modern and highly obscure vintage knitting machines.
Maggi has been collecting since the 1980s. Her website serves as a brilliant visual archive where you can view detailed galleries of incredibly rare machines like the French Erka, early Pingouin garter stitch machines, the Turmix Unic, and vintage Knittax models, right alongside familiar Brother, Knitmaster, and Passap machines. Beyond the hardware, Maggi maintains a massive archive of historic letters, patterns, and magazines dating all the way back to the 1930s. It is a fantastic reference tool if you are trying to identify a mystery vintage machine, and she even welcomes visitors to see the physical collection if you happen to be holidaying in Brittany!
Passion Tricot (France)
A truly wonderful website Passion Tricot is an absolute treasure trove of technical diagrams, cross-brand compatibility charts, and step-by-step maintenance tutorials that transcend language barriers.
It acts as a massive reference library covering almost every major brand, including Brother, Silver Reed, Toyota, Superba, Singer, and Passap. You will find deep-dive visual articles on how to safely dismantle and deep-clean carriages, replace sponge bars, punch your own 24-stitch pattern cards, and troubleshoot mechanical faults. They even host a “little museum” of vintage machines and a comprehensive list of original accessories for older models, making it a brilliant companion site to Machine Knitting Central’s database.
Please note the website is written in French. If you don’t speak French, simply open this site in Google Chrome, right-click anywhere on the page, and select ‘Translate to English’ and ta da you can read all the pages in English.
Needles of Steel
Originally created in 2007 and constantly updated, Needles of Steel is an absolute institution in the machine knitting world. Known to many as the “Machine Knitter’s Treasure Chest,” it is a massive, lovingly curated directory of links to free patterns, tutorials, and techniques scattered across the internet.
If a free pattern exists for a flatbed machine or a Circular Sock Machine (CSM), it is almost certainly catalogued here. The site is meticulously categorised by garment type, gauge, and technique—whether you are looking for standard gauge baby clothes, chunky ribbed sweaters, or complex intarsia charts. Because they index links from across the wider web (including many historic pages saved via the Internet Archive), it is the ultimate site to use alongside when you are hunting for your next project.
Machine Knitting etc. (MKManuals)