Navigation Tips

Free Patterns can be seen along the sidebar (on right side),
or you can use the Free Patterns label to view all posts.

Free Pseudo-Patterns or Pattern Outlines can be found using the Free Pseudo-Patterns label.

The most comprehensive listing of Patterns, Pseudo-Patterns, and Pattern Outlines can be found on the Pattern Bibliography page.

Please read the Blog Housekeeping section in the sidebar for more info.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Air & Cap Karma



Not sure what I will do with Air. I really love the blue color. I'm thinking the other two colors may look better after I knit it up. Perhaps I just need to warm up to them. I'm really not a big fan of green, but you'd never guess it from the amount of green in my stash...

What would you do with this yarn?

I guess it is not quite as bulky as Reynolds Blizzard, however I might be able to substitute it in a pattern I meant to knit up with my 3 balls of Blizzard. Maybe?





Here's the 4th hat made from that big ball of blue yarn, it's chemo cap #13 for this year's Cap Karma Chemo Cap project. I still have a big ball left. It just never ends! The hat above is the Cap Karma hat (pattern here) with an extra repeat of rounds 1-8 before doing the decrease to make it longer -- can you tell I'm trying to use up all this yarn? lol. The hat is considerably larger than the two you saw before, you can see this in the photo below ... sorry it's not such a great photo since I took these at night with bad lighting, but you can get an idea of the size...




Left hat is the 3AM Cable Hat knitted with a fold-up brim. Middle hat is the 3 Cables Hat.

Don't you just hate how this blue variegated yarn stripes?

--<>--

Well, I finally typed up the pattern to my Ariel Scarf (which I started typing up a couple months ago... yeah, things move slowly in this house, lol), but I can't post it until I figure out a better way to make my patterns more readable. I've been putting the pattern above the notes section which enumerates the abbreviations I use in the pattern. Apparently this list of abbreviations gets missed despite adding something to the effect of "Please read 'Notes' section at the bottom before starting" directly above the cast on instructions, and adding the blurb at the top of my blog underneath the blog title, "Patterns on this site may use 'Unorthodox' abbreviations, please read NOTES section of each pattern before beginning."

So I'm going to play around with rearranging the text in my Ariel Scarf pattern post, perhaps putting the NOTES section above the PATTERN section.

Someone suggested putting the word "NOTES" in red so it stands out more. I'm wondering if I should make it blinking red, like the blinking red text in the sidebar of the Cap Karma blog, which I put in there aeons ago and can't remember how it was done, but don't think I have enough brain power left to figure that one out again...

I'm not sure what I'll do. Will need to play around with it some more. I wonder if there is a way to make all the abbreviations in the row-by-row instructions "link" to the corresponding explanation in the NOTES section. I'm not sure whether that can be done, but I imagine it would be awfully tedious to try and link each abbreviation on every row of instruction. But it sure would make it easier for people if they could just click on the link to go to the explanation of that abbreviation. Yes? No? Maybe? ... of course the link probably wouldn't work at all after you print it out. :-(

I don't have a printer to print out my pattern to see whether any of it gets truncated. Does that ever happen to people?

I'm also wondering if posts don't show up completely in some browsers. I use Mozilla Firefox and things look fine to me. But you never know. I know someone who upgraded her Blogger template and then all the text in each of her posts appeared centered to her, yet they all looked normal (viz. left justified) to me in my browser. So I know weird things happen in Bloggerland.

Maybe I should just give up on this whole pattern posting business since it takes too much time away from actual knitting. Perhaps I should present the pattern in several different formats and see which one you guys like best. Anyhowz, this will all have to wait until I have more time to fiddle around with the post...

Time for bed. I can't believe I'm losing an hour of my life this weekend... :-( I used to set my clocks before going to bed. Now I'm just too tired, it'll have to wait until tomorrow morning. Zero knitting done today :-( , but we did manage to look at a few Open Houses today.


.

5 stitch(es):

Manda said...

Most patterns do put special abbreviations or referenced stitch patterns above the pattern proper. I've only written a few patterns myself, but it is surprisingly difficult to get your head around the best way to format it. Perhaps it would help if you looked at Knitty, Magknits, etc. and examined how they lay their patterns out? I'm a big fan of your dishcloths. I'd hate it if you gave it all up. :(

Unknown said...

Marie,

I had this problem with my hat pattern until a friend of mine sent me the free link to convert the pattern to a .pdf file. So I typed up the pattern in Word and Excel and then printed it to a file which converted it to a .pdf file. Now everyone can view it with the symbols intact. It was really easy and took about 2 minutes. I'll see if I cant find that link for you to download the program that does that.

Libby

Unknown said...

Marie,

Here is the link.

http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp

click on the free download and go from there.

Its pretty easy and it has a page to instruct you how to use it.

Libby

Pheelya said...

You can make links in your pattern on the web. They are called anchors, but you are correct in the fact that they will not convert when a person goes to print the pattern.

I highly recommend Libby's suggestion for converting and posting the pattern as a pdf file so that nothing gets cut off in the printing. When I find a pattern on a website that I really like, I convert it a pdf before rinting so that I don't lose anything.

I really hope you do not give up on the pattern posting. I have been waiting patiently for you to post the pattern to the Ariel scarf. It is gorgeous! Please, please don't give up :)

Just my two cents worth, people need to learn to read patterns completely before they start knitting. If you have posted a "NOTE" and you have clearly pointed it out, then you have done you job as a designer! I am a teacher and I am constantly reenforcing to my students that they need to completely read directions before they start ANYTHING! (homework, projects, tests!)

Please don't give up, your patterns are really beautiful! I'm actually searching through my stash this weekend to see if I have yarn to CO the Persephone Scarf! And I've already mentioned that I can't wait for the Ariel pattern!

-Dorothy

THE KNITORIOUS MRS. B said...

Hi!
I would knit a Mason-Dixon type ballband pillow with your "Air". The colors are beautiful. Combine it with a solid color and different fiber content for the background.