Innovation Update

Kate from the UK has sent a lead on something that's even better than the narrow sticky notes I wrote about yesterday. She points us at removable, translucent highlighter tape.



It's inexpensive. Even better, it comes in several widths and lots of colors, and is packaged as either sheets of removable strips or in dispensers like adhesive tape. From a quick product search, it appears to be most widely used by teachers and professors for book highlighting, and by pilots for annotating aviation charts. A Google search on "highlighter tape" or "highlight tape" turns up a bunch of sources. Here are several sources that has a pretty complete listing of the available form factors (no affiliation):

http://www.windmillworks.com/catalog/c1_p1.html
http://www.crystalspringsbooks.com/products.asp?dept=333
http://www.avidaviator.com/tape.html

Some advantages include transparency - being able to "look ahead" in your pattern without displacing the mark, and availability in assorted colors. Why colors? Two reasons. First, some charts come in color. One might need to find a contrasting highlight to avoid "wiping out" one or more colors shown on the chart. Second, I'm no educational or visual perception theorist, but I know there are people who find reading much easier if they view pages through colored filters. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the chart-shy have perceptual wiring that would benefit from using color highlights, too.

I'll be looking for this stuff to try out.

More goodies in office supply stores

I've written about knitting tools that can be found in hardware stores. Now this train of thought takes me on another mental shopping trip - tools that can be found in office supply stores. Some are obvious:

• Drawing/drafting supplies - rulers, protractors, French curves, graph paper, tape measures, cartographer's measures (people who do full scale dimensioned drawings and slopers might find these useful)
  
• Calculators of all sorts
  
• Filing supplies - sheet protectors, binder and loose files
• Tote bags - Some of the smaller computer bags and the not-quite-briefcases meant for file-toting road warriors make excellent stealth knitting bags.
• Organizers - In-drawer, in-briefcase, and desktop organizers can be handy to corral knitting doodads
• Typing stands - Great for propping up charts or leaflets
  

Some are less obvious. Here's a smattering of the latter:



Transparencies - clear plastic pages that can be run through printers or copying machines. Need to grid up a picture or photo? Print a transparent sheet up with a graphed lines in the same height:width ratio as your knitting gauge. Lay that clear line-printed sheet over the image you want to transcribe to knitting. Voila! Instant knitting graph.

Circular paper clips - Instant stitch markers.

Check files - Yet another possible solution for storing those circs.

Tomorrow - another wish list item.