Machine Knitters Guild of San Diego

It is with great sadness and sorrowful hearts that we announce the passing of our dear friend, Karalyn Rainey on May 9, 2025.   She was such a sweet, beautiful, patient and talented person and loved all things related to fiber.  She was a friend to all of us, was passionate about teaching machine knitting at Grossmont Adult School, was one of the founding members who established the Machine Knitters Guild in 1983.  She has done more to promote the art of machine knitting in the San Diego community that anyone else.  She began knitting when she was very young and also worked as a professional machine knitter in the cottage industry realm.  

She loved life and was one of the most friendly and positive people around, even when she found out that she had cancer, she approached the news with positivity and was sure she would be healed and back to teaching. 

She was such a sweet, beautiful, patient and talented person. She knew as much about hand knitting, crochet, spinning, and dying fabric and yarn as she did about and Machine Knitting.  She was instrumental in creating the most wonderful machine knitting community here in San Diego and with Zoom, reached people world-wide.  Her enthusiasm and love of the craft was amazing.  She was like the energizer bunny, upbeat, happy, had great sense of humor and seemed unstoppable.  If she wasn’t near her knitting machine or teaching, she had something to hand knit or crochet with her. 

To say that she’ll be missed is a complete understatement.  She will always live in our hearts, minds and memories.  Her one wish was that we continue knitting even though she can’t be here teaching us now.  So we will honor her with everything we knit and think about her as we do it, remembering her sweet voice and instructions in our head.  We truly were blessed to have her all these years.  Goodbye dear friend.