Welcome @whofilets.  I saw your query about machinery on PR and am glad you have found your way here.  We know about Joann's, although we don't have it over here, and also the much better and late lamented Hancock's.

I hope you are enjoying living in England and that the culture shock is not too much for you.  By the way, there is an area in Covent Garden called Seven Dials.  These days it's a chi chi little enclave, but used to be known for all sorts of unsavoury goings on.

Yes that's where I took the avatar picture back in 2019! I didn't know it was unsavoury- there's always so much history everywhere, just layers and layers of it!

A warm welcome from a fellow Suffolk TSPer  We love to see photos once you make inroads to your stash 

Thanks! I should take some before and after pictures, for sure. Right now just imagine some piles of mess and carboard boxes taped and re-taped

Hi!
My name is Claudia, I've been reading old posts and hoping to contribute too.
I'm originally from the US, lived all over the US with a few stints in other countries. For a while I worked in a big Joann's- a "big box" craft store chain, at a location that was big enough to have its own cutting counter staff. I worked just at the cutting counter/fabric department. There was also a mini Husqvarna/Viking dealer in the store. I learned what I could from my coworkers, who were mostly great quilters. I was a newbie- I had sewn a few things off and on, learned as a kid from my mom and auntie, sewed a bit in college. I didn't have a lot of time to actually sew while I worked at Joann's- it was one of two part-time jobs I was holding, which together barely made a livable wage, AND I was going to school part-time.

But I did have time to buy lots and lots of fabric, especially discounted remnants! I carried all the fabric and remnants and tools with me from state to state and now to a new country. I left the sewing machine behind and am looking for one here. I've been mostly knitting or crocheting these last few years, bc that was more portable, especially on long car rides. I also inherited a cross stitch/embroidery stash from my late MIL.

Now ALL of that stash, years of fabric and yarn, is shoved into my awkward little loft space. It's more space than I have ever had for sewing, but I need to get through some stash if I want to be able to move around at all. I've already found a Project Linus branch to give some of it away. Wish me luck in my stashdown goals!

I have old dusty dreams of machine knitting. I inherited a machine from my childhood best friend's step mom- it had been her late mother's, and sitting in their garage. It went on to sit in my mom's garage for several years, and now the garage has gained those layers of Other People's Things and the strata of Stuff, For Later. I think the knitting machine might not even be in there anymore. If it is, it is an archeological dig deep into the garage space, which is now in another country. (if you can't tell from my use of "garage" it's in the US and I am living in the UK now).

I also scored a bunch of 80's Vogue Knitting magazines once, someone had dropped them off to my LYS at the time. There are so many machine knitting patterns in those, and so few pictures of the projects! very different layout to today.

Someday I might dive into the world of circular sock machines. I haven't seen a single one on Gumtree but I see a new listing for flatbed knitting machine on that site like every week. Two of my knitter friends have circular sock machines, but they're again back in the States. Someday I'll visit them and their machines and try it out for myself.