Cogitating
One of the things I’ve always wanted Stitch-Maps.com to be able to do is highlight the spaces between stitch columns.
Or, to put it another way, to break …
...moreA little surreal
You know how I’ve said that I drew stitch maps by hand, long before developing Stitch-Maps.com? Well, I found a little proof today. And it was a little …
...moreRosebuds
Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake. Stitch-Maps.com had been up and running for a few months before I started making use of stitch maps in the classes that …
...moreCoronet, addendum
The original plan was to map a doily pattern and convert it to a wedge shape. But once that was done, I found I couldn’t stop fiddling.
Looking at …
...moreCoronet, step 2
Okay, this was the fun part: color-coding the in-the-round stitch maps for Coronet, using one color for the repeated stitches and another for the “extra” stitches needed to balance …
...moreCoronet, step 1
Over the weekend I was seized by the need to map a lace doily pattern and convert it to a wedge shape. (You know, because I just can’t get enough …
...moreNew Vintage Lace
Have you seen New Vintage Lace? I love this book! Andrea Jurgrau takes vintage doily patterns, lifts out and rejiggers their intricate motifs, and reinvents them as stunning hats, …
...moreA change of heart
You know how I said Stitch-Maps.com would throw up its hands and say, “I can’t do that” when asked to draw a cable cross on a WS row? Well, …
...moreThe WS conundrum
Cable crosses are typically worked on right-side rows. But what if Stitch-Maps.com is asked to draw a cable cross on a wrong-side row? What should it do then?
…
...moreWhere to draw the line?
With hundreds of possible cable crosses, where should Stitch-Maps.com draw the line? Which cable crosses should it support, at least at first?
To figure this out, I pulled …
...moreA matter of legibility
Like I said, I think most cabled stitch patterns are best charted using traditional, grid-based charts. Then you can use simple, streamlined symbols like these:
But with …
...moreThe LT/RT controversy
When it comes to cable cross abbreviations like 2/2 RC, the StitchMastery Knitting Chart Editor really gets it right. That piece of charting software recognizes a slew of cable cross …
...moreChoosing abbreviations
The first step in adding support for a new set of stitches to Stitch-Maps.com is figuring out what abbreviations to recognize. Which bits of text should map (no pun intended!) …
...moreMusings
Don’t get me wrong. The grand majority of the time, I think that cabled stitch patterns, like knit/purl patterns, are best charted using traditional grid-based charts. The grid provides structure, …
...moreJolie, revisited
Long-time readers of this blog will remember Jolie, a lace scarf knit in Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine.
Ditto my rantings on how its edging …
...moreUpdated
You know those Sidewinder socks I posted about yesterday? The pattern has been available for almost two years, but now it features a little facelift:
The cat is outta the bag
What have I been doing for the past couple months? Not blogging, clearly. Not knitting, either. Rather, I've been working on this:
And this:
Deviating from Plan A
Lately I haven’t been knitting much because another project has grabbed all my interest, but I still need to have something on my needles, you know? So I’m futzing around …
...moreThe Yarn Thing
Did you catch The Yarn Thing podcast this morning? (Yes, yes, I know I should’ve reminded y’all about it yesterday. My flimsy excuse was that I was out of the …
...moreMyths and fabrications
Tomorrow I get to give a presentation to the Seattle Knitters Guild, and I’m really looking forward to it – but that’s a recent development.
For months, I …
...moreSucker
I’m a sucker for stitch dictionaries. That’s why I had to get this:
To each their own
One of the reasons I love charts is that they’re a sort of universal language. It doesn’t matter where a chart comes from – a publication written in English, German, …
...moreUnnecessary funkiness
Some of you may have noticed that, of late, the actual knitting content on this blog has been... well... sparse. Practically absent.
Partly it’s because my attention has been …
...moreStump the Chart Wizard
When most knitting books go on the road, they go in the form of a trunk show: garments featured in the book are packed up, shipped to a yarn shop, …
...moreThey made it!
All morning, I kept listening for the tell-tale drone of the UPS truck. False alarms made me all jittery, then crushed my spirit. Finally, mid-day, these arrived:
Who woulda thunk?
I had the best time today writing up the pattern for a scarf I plan to knit.
This is odd. Most designers (myself included) would say that pattern-writing isn’t …
...moreRed-letter day
This morning, FedEx dropped off a long-awaited package: print proofs for Charts Made Simple. The color cover was separate from the interior, and the interior had been printed on …
...moreA million little details
Blog fodder has been a bit sparse lately. Not much knitting. No stash enhancement. No trip to Rhinebeck. sigh
Rather, it’s been nose-to-grindstone, getting Charts Made Simple ready …
...moreThat depends
Another bit of early feedback on Charts Made Simple questioned how mosaic charts are drawn: If the mosaic is worked on a base of garter stitch, should the chart squares …
...moreColor and texture
In the past few weeks, I’ve sent an early draft of Charts Made Simple to a few knitters, and asked for feedback: Does the book cover what it should? And …
...moreAvoiding hiccups
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been adding illustrations to Charts Made Simple. The goal has been to get the manuscript ready for review next week: four friends have …
...moreWork avoidance as a productivity tool
Okay, I admit it: I fibbed yesterday when I said I finally managed to get Camille on Patternfish because I had gotten Yachats out of the way. No, truth be …
...moreWavy is the way to go
A few weeks back, I posted a couple charts for a lace edging. Both had a zig-zag left selvedge (just like the edging), to account for the change in stitch …
...moreEasily amused
For four years now, I’ve been drawing all my charts, schematics, and diagrams in Adobe Illustrator. It ain’t cheap, but it’s worth it: Illustrator produces publication-quality vector graphics (no jaggies …
...moreWhich do you prefer?
Lately I’ve been playing around with lace edgings. Here’s a favorite:
Normally, you’d see it charted like so:
A little epiphany
Over the past few years, I’ve drawn a lot of charts: for tech editing clients, for my own patterns, and just for my own use. My tool of choice is …
...more