Monday, January 23, 2012

Knitting machines and spreadsheets

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I can't remember who I got this idea from, but someone shared this idea on Ravelry a while back. If you are working a pattern that involves a lot of counting (eg hand-manipulated lace etc) then you can create a spreadsheet where one cell equals one needle. I'm working something up in a partial knitting pattern, so the red bar indicates the eight needles I'm working on, and the blue square indicates an extra needle which is wrapped.

I did this in Openoffice, which allows you to resize your columns in cm. It's possible to do this in Excel, but you might have to fiddle about a bit, because I've never discovered what unit of measurement Excel uses for this. It has really speeded me up no end, so I highly recommend it. I have to do 28 repeats of this pattern for the length I want.

All the parts for the passap top are done. Not having a lot of joy with it though. The v-neck has been done, just needs casting off and sewing down to hide the cut edges. The sleeves were mounted on a 2mm needle and cast off - alas, they are too tight, and made a "gorilla" sweater (sleeve heads too tight). So I need to do something with them. I'm determined to get there - it's just taking longer than I hoped it would. Unpicking a cast off is thankless work (yarnmonger has suggested I take the serger to them, it's becoming quite tempting!). It might be because the main fabric is tuck and the cast off was done on a single stocking stitch row.

Finished the first pompom sock and need to cast on another one. Crocheted a "salsa belt" from the recycled sari silk but have now run out. So much for the yarn diet - does "finishing off" yarn count?! I could wait until the Sewing for Pleasure show in March at the NEC (I will be on the guild stand on the Sunday) but it's highly unlikely they'll have sari silk (it was an Ally Pally purchase in 2010).

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