The idea I hinted at yesterday has to do with magnetic boards. It's not something I can make at home, but it's a set of improvements I'd like to see made.
To recap, the standard issue magnetic board is very useful and very inexpensive, but it has some shortcomings.

Boughten

Scavenged

LoRan appears to be the leading (possibly only) seller of magnetic boards. LoRan appears to have been bought by or is marketing through the Dritz line of sewing and crafting notions. LoRan boards come in several configurations. Some have easel backs, so they stand up on their own. Some of the easel backed ones have small pencil-holding ledges along their bottom edge. Sizes appear to be 6"x10", 8"x10", and 12"x18". There are also supplemental accessories including separately packaged easel stands, plain gray metal/plastic magnet bars, magnetic bars with rulers printed on them, see-through magnifying magnet bars, and special packaged bundles of the base model boards plus accessories. There are also "after market" vendors that sell other types of place-marking magnets/magnifiers for use with magnetic boards.

My problem with the LoRan line are:

1. That it does a lousy job of protecting the charts while the work is in progress. I didn't realize exactly how lousy a job until I began using my improvised solution. The largest LoRan size is bigger than I need for 99.9% of my knitting charts. But the two smaller sizes are smaller than standard US 8x11" paper (or the standard Euro A4 size of 210x297cm, for that matter). Charts put on the boards get bashed up - even if both the board and the page are slipped into a page protector. This damage is especially bad if the board/chart combo is stuffed into knitting bags in between working sessions. My el cheapo scavenged cookie pan's raised rim did an excellent job of keeping my project together and unrumpled, and keeping the magnets in place in between uses.

2. The boards are flimsy and prone to bending and denting. Once they are no longer flat magnets have a more difficult time sticking. Again, my cookie sheet was thicker and (for non-cooking purposes at least) resisted warping and denting better than the commercial product.

3. The magnets are wimpy, and can't grab through more than a page or two, or are easily displaced in between working sessions. This one is a balancing act. There are incredibly strong magnets out there, but they would be difficult to move while working. Finding just the right amount of stick to stay put when needed and still be easy to move when necessary is difficult. Even more so when you remember that for most low adherence magnets, the magnetism slowly dissipates over time. What worked last year might be less useful this year. My cut up promotional fridge magnets did a fine job through up to two sheets of paper, but I like to keep all the pages of a pattern together when I'm working. I'd want something a bit stronger, perhaps something that could stick through a plastic protective cover, plus three sheets of paper, but not necessarily something thicker. The thicker the magnet, the more difficult it is to read Think thick rulers vs. thin rulers. Thick rulers are visually offset from what they are measuring, making taking accurate measurements more difficult.

What I want is something like this:



Wouldn't it be nifty if that transparent magnet-through plastic cover was a full-sheet magnifier page?

Now, how much more would I pay for something like this above and beyond the flimsy market standard? Not sure. If the least expensive packaging of the LoRan 8x10 sells for about $5.00 US (more or less), I'd pay around $15 for something this elaborate, provided the quality of the piece was commensurate with the price.

Remember - if you see this product for sale out there, you saw the idea here first. [grin]

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.

Yesterday's post got me thinking. (Always dangerous.)?

There must be tasks we wish our knitting or crocheting tools could do, either as tweaks to existing products, or as entirely new items. I've come up with several minor ones over the years. In the spirit of Anne L. MacDonald* At the risk of compromising patentability or re-inventing the wheel, I invite people to share ideas, and prime the pump with some of my own.

Counting Beads



I wrote about these back in my Stupid Stitch Marker Tricks post. This is intended to be an aid for people who are working row count repeats or those annoying "Decrease two stitches every sixth row" directions. It's a chain with links large enough to admit a knitting needle, and two different color beads, one at each end. On the first row, the knitter puts the needle into the link closest to the green bead. On the next row (or next right side row if working in the flat), the knitter advances the needle to the next link, and so on. If the links are used to count pairs of rows, a six-link chain could count 12.

Inch-Striped DPNs

I know I've seen photos of WWII-vintage DPNs that were striped, but I don't know if they were striped off in exact inch measurements (or 2 cm for our metric friends). If I had a set of striped DPNs I could use them to measure off length as I knit, without fumbling around for a tape measure or ruler.

Two-Tone DPNs

This idea could be used in combo with the stripes, above. I wrote about this one in the post remarking on a really bad answer offered up by Lion Brand. If one had a set of similarly colored DPNs that had a different color marking one end of each needle, one could use that color to track where rounds began and ended. (Yes, I know most people look for the tail, but sometimes it can be less evident, like when you're knitting a flat motif center out.)? The knitter would knit all DPNs with the same color end, EXCEPT for the one that starts off the round. That one would be employed with the contrasting color first. If we used red and green again, we'd knit the first needle with the green end, so that the red end was rightmost in the work. All successive needles would be knit with the red end. As the knitter traveled around the work he or she would know that when a red end presented itself, that was Needle #1.

Long, Thin Sticky Notes

This one is left over from my stitching days, although I sometimes do use sticky notes to mark my place on knitting charts. I want a pad of sticky notes that's six inches wide and less than an inch deep. The sticky should be along the long edge, not at the tab end. If it had? 10 to the inch rules on it with prominent decads, so much the better. I want to use it to mark off the active row of an active knitting or stitching chart. Having rules on the thing would help me keep my place on the chart and if the chart's scale was 10 to the inch - allow me to do "speed counting."

Anyone have any other innovative ideas for working tools, storage ideas, charting aids, or other new thoughts for here-to-for unknown tools or tweaks to existing ones?

*Anne L. MacDonald is best known for her book No Idle Hands:? The Social History of American Knitting, but she also wrote Feminine Ingenuity: How Women Inventors Changed America.

It's no secret that I don't see as well as I used to. Between eye infections and all-purpose aging, I need help. For most things glasses work just fine, but there are a couple of minor annoyances even with glasses. One is the teeny labels etched onto most circ needles - especially the ones smaller than US #4s.

Now, if I were one of the Super Organized, I'd have a system for storing my circular needles. Perhaps one of the sorting hanger thingies (see below), or a binder notebook full of pockets. But I have a lot of circs and little patience for filing things away, so I make do. Most of mine live in a hand-me-down wood box that once held a bottle of gift wine. The lucky few among them get replaced in their original packaging. Not all of my needles are lucky. The less fortunate among them live in an incestuous tangle, stuffed into that same wooden box. Figuring out which needle is which is always a challenge that involves finding the size gauge that's supposed to live in that same box, and playing "size me" until the right one turns up. Either that or calling over one of my offspring whose eyes function better than mine and having them do the squint work for me.


I'm not this organized.

Enter my latest acquisition, hot off the gadget rack at my LYS.



It's another clever invention from Nancy's Knit Knacks - the Circular Needle ID tag set. (No affiliation). Tags are packaged in two sets - one for US#0-4, and one for larger needles. (Engraved labels on larger needles are easier to see, so I didn't buy the larger set.)?

I can find and read these tags in my needle jumble with no trouble at all. Needle ID bliss! Of course one still has to remember to put the tag back on the needle after the project is over, and manage not to lose the thing in between - but that shouldn't be too hard. I've stapled the little plastic zip bag of tags in the circ box and will stow the tags there between uses.

I also note that Nancy's has been busy, issuing a new needle sizing gauge that goes down to 000 (always welcome, although I wish it went down to 00000), and an electronic version of the old katchaa-katchaa style counter. I don't use the things but I know that many people do swear by them. It looks like the electronic one can subtract, which is nice if you need to rip back. I'm surprised though that it seems to have only one memory register. It would be even more useful if it could remember two things at once (like total rows, and rows in the current repeat).

High tech

Low tech

No affiliation here between Nancy's and me. I am however impressed that they manage to identify and market to so many niche needs, including the whole Knit Kard info system, the yardage gauge, and the WPI tool. There are lots of companies selling knitting notions, but most seem to be content with the old standards. Nancy's is one of the few that seems to be actively seeking out innovation.

Last week was a very Life-Dense week. I didn't get as much time to knit as I usually do, so progress isn't as dramatic as it otherwise might have been. Still, I got another meta-motif done and sewn onto the ever-growing counterpane:



At the rate of one meta-motif per week, I think I'll be working on this queen-size blanket for another 25 weeks or so. That means March or April '06 is my earliest possible completion date at the current rate of production. I'd better start (or resume) another project and work on the two in tandem just so that I have something interesting to report on. Production on this piece will slow down if I'm time-splitting my nightly hour or two of knitting. Possible completion well into 2007?? Stay tuned...

Yesterday during the attack of Life that kept me from blogging, I did find a minute to answer a question about winding balls from hanks. I tried my best to describe how to do it, but was very frustrated not to be able to show how. So this morning The Small Child and I dug out some scrap yarn and took some pictures.

Start by spreading out the fingers of your left hand (right hand if you're a lefty). Stash the free end (as opposed to the end attached to your hank) between your index and middle finger.



Wind the yarn in a figure 8 around your thumb and little finger until you've got a hefty butterfly going.

Once it's too big to wind this way, take it off your fingers and fold it in half. Note that I've still got the free end between my fingers. The end that I'm winding is hanging down in front.

Now hold the folded butterfly in your left hand, with your finger sort of encapsulating the thing. (When I teach kids to do this, I have them think about holding a baby bird in a sugar cage.) Winding your yarn around your fingers, begin to build up a ball. Wind a bit in one direction, then shift your grip and wind in another.



The goal is to make a very soft, squishy ball so that the yarn isn't flattened or stretched out. When my fingers are full (like in the photo above), I pull my fingers out, rotate the ball in my left hand and start winding again in a different direction.



Eventually the ball will outgrow your grip size and you won't be able to fit it between your fingers as you wind. Don't worry. Continue to wind LOOSELY until you're through, preferably over at least one finger to introduce extra "give" into the wind so the yarn isn't stressed. If you want to use the thing as a center pull, avoid capturing the free end as you wind. (It's just above my thumb in the photo above). Keep going until you've finished.



The end product. A nice fluffy ball. You can see the center pull end trailing off past my thumb, and the outside end trailing off the bottom.

Even though I have a ball winding machine, I wind more than half of the yarn I use this way, mounting the hanks on my swift, but making the balls by hand. The biggest exception is lace weight yarn. Anything that comes in hanks of more than 700 yards is going to take an eon and a half to wind by hand. That's worth hauling out the winder and wrestling it into submission.

After Friday's post on using Microsoft Visio for graphing knitting patterns I received some questions:

What's Visio?

Microsoft Visio is a professional level drafting/drawing program - something I've co-opted into serving as a pattern development tool, not something that was designed for that purpose. It's main use is technical and scientific illustration - Gantt charts, flow process models, flowcharts, conceptual diagrams, infrastructure diagrams, business graphics, organization charts and the like. For example, network planners use it to lay out routing diagrams for offices, as it not only can handle a dimensioned architectural drawing, but it can also keep count of the networking hardware placed on the drawing, producing a "need to buy" list as the plan progresses.

In my work life, I'm a proposal writer working in engineering and telecommunications companies. I use Visio extensively to do? technical illustration and project planning. Visio isn't the sort of thing that most people have lying around the house, but because I have worked as a consultant I have had to buy my own copy. I use Visio Pro. Visio Standard (the entry level version without some of the industry-specific bells and whistles) is about $200.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010857981033.aspx

What's a stencil?? Can I use these with other programs?

One feature of Visio (both versions) is the ability to establish a collection of standard shapes, and call that collection up when needed. These collections are called stencils. I created a set of stencils for Visio that contain knitting stitch and graphing symbols. I attach the stencil to the active drawing, and then using all of Visio's drafting features - draw up my chart.

Visio stencils are unique to that program, and cannot be used with others. There may be (emphasis on uncertainty here) one other program that can import them, but I do not own that program and have not tried it. It's called SmartDraw, and the suite edition that includes templates sells for just under $300. It purports to import Visio output, but there's nothing there that says it takes the stencils directly. I suspect that you'd need to take the sample Visio drawing I include in my template set, then use it to create a new SmartDraw symbol library. As far as lower cost/hobbyist targeted programs with the same functionality - I don't know of any that import Visio stencils. Please chime in if you do.

Can you do everything in Visio that dedicated programs like Aran Paint or Stitch and Motif Maker do?

No. I'm NOT using a program that knows the slightest thing about knitting, or that is optimized for this sort of thing. There are no limits that keep me from using impossible combos of stitches, and no tools that let me do things like replace all the red stitches with pink stitches everywhere in the active document. There's no blank canvas that can be flood filled by a background stitch. Instead I have to build my diagrams stitch by stitch, adding my stitchs (or groups of stitches) like a kid laying out a doll's dance floor of alphabet blocks.

What I do have is an unlimited size and shape canvas on which to work; and the ability to group, layer, copy/paste, rotate and reflect my custom symbols as needed. If I'm doing colorwork, I have an infinitude of possibilities, and even do color matching by Pantone or other color codification system. I can make up custom symbols on the fly, adding to my library as I go along and am not limited to the symbols present in a knitting font package (in fact, I don't even bother with one). I can also export my designs to all standard web graphics formats, or paste them into other documents as desired.

Is Visio easy to use?

While large parts of the thing would be intuitive to anyone familiar with other drawing programs, Visio isn't the easiest program to learn if you've never used any drafting program before. There are lots of inexpensive training courses out there, some web-based, and some at local community colleges. Or if you're adventurous you can do what I did - just start monkeying around with the thing.

Can I do the same thing with other drawing programs?

I'm pretty sure you can, although not every drawing program works in exactly the same way. ? In ages past, I co-opted Aldus Superpaint (on my late lamented Mac) for doing stitching and knitting diagrams. That one was a hybrid drawing/drafting program. I set up a series of ground textures that corresponded to filled and unfilled grid squares (some with specific symbols in them). Then I created a paintbrush the same size as one grid square. By selecting the background fills and using the paint brush as a stamper, I "daubed out" my charts. This is how I did all of the charted illustrations in The New Carolingian Modelbook.?

I also have convinced Canvas to serve as a knitting/stitching design aide, but that was a bit more painful. The version of Canvas I used did not have a robust stencil capability. You could make libraries of symbols, but they weren't as accessible as in Visio. I ended up making one document with reference copies of my symbols. Then in a new document I established a snap-to grid equal to the size of a stitch square, and copied/pasted the symbols from my library document into my new design. It worked, but it was cumbersome.

I also know that some people use non-drawing programs for this purpose. Others have written quite extensively about creative adaptation of Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheets (and even MS Word) as stitch chart creation programs.

If you've smacked another drawing program around for this purpose and have some hints to share with others please feel free to add your comments to this pile.

As you can see, motifs continue to accumulate on North Truro:



The observant will spot more evidence of my continued existence in the photo's lower right. Apologies for the quality of this shot. I recently replaced the hand-me-down 1.3 mega pixel camera I had been using with a hand-me-down 3 mega pixel camera. In theory, the best quality setting of the latter should be better than the best quality setting of the former. Apparently there is room for contention in this theory. Still, you can see how the design continues to grow. Next week's progress shot will feature the thing on the top of a queen size bed so you can see how far I've got to go.

I'm afraid that while this piece remains interesting to knit, I'm rapidly running out of things to say about it. I don't anticipate any earth shaking discoveries until I get up to the bit where I have to improvise half motifs to go around the edges:

Since I prefer the look of a nice straight edge and matching edging to the rippled look of a "bare motif" spread, I'll also have to invent something to eke out the east/west sides. Plus the actual edging of course. You can see the full motif smack in the center of this layout (full yellow hex in the center). The half hexes are in blue. They'll pose a bit of a challenge because they'll have to be knit flat as opposed to in the round, but since I chart my patterns by repeat, I don't need to do any redrafting - just remembering the circ/flat inversion and only working three rather than six "petals."? The squares on the edge next to the half hexes also need to be modified. There will be left and right halfies to preserve the pattern's lines. The hardest part will be the half triangles needed to eke the thing out east and west. Fiddly but easy to do. I never quite like the way they turn out.



Thought for the day:? Life is only as complicated as you make it.