Punchcard, Mylar, Electronic, Charting!
By isrbrown. Filed in Uncategorized |
Tonight was MK World Live’s Free Session Session. We had a good time with a nice group. (Thank you Ladies!) I’ve been trying to force myself to utilize the machine functions that I have available to me. I know how to knit with punchcards, mylars, and the electronic machine as long as I have my manual handy. I know this could be true for the rest of my life but . I’d like to be able to sit down and do this without my manual eventually.
This is probably why I enjoy Hand Manipulation so much. I know how to do that stuff. Well, no not everything but the stuff I like to do I know how to do via hand manipulation. Remember though that I bought the Silver Reed with the intention of taking my knitting to the next level. The goal is to utilize the power of the Electronic Machine to do some of the work so that I can spend less time doing those by hand so I can do even cooler stuff. I’ve had the machine 3 months. I’ve been letting the ribber do my ribbing manipulations (pshew thats a relief). I haven’t been using the electronics much though.
Well the holidays are over by jinkies! I am putting the carriage down and demanding that I spend even less time messing with yarn and more time with the machine !
GASP!
I’ll miss the yarn for now but the good news is that I’ll work on knitting down some of my acrylic stash while I do the things I need to do. I’ve been told to practice… I am so shocked! Practice is the only way to get these tools into my brain and regular knitting. Practice MUST be done!
Even better it means socks. I’ll be knitting sock projects instead of large garments. I need to be able to knit the stitch or color patterns and not be afraid of shaping. This is a hold back for me. I am used to hand manipulating stitches which means I could make row by row adjustments. If I am letting the machine do the majority of the manipulations I’ll be less likely to do this so there must be planning and yes… lots of swatching oh this is going to be fun.
I’m going to try to do a podcast this weekend which will likely be about charting. There are several ways to do this.
Manually, using graph paper and LEAD 1.0
Using Spreadsheets on the computer
Using Charting Software
There are probably more ways. I went and visited Jo Newton’s website. While there I found fun and interesting charts that are for sale all are downloadable these days too! Great way to fatten your chart stash. Jo’s done some lovely work, even some alphabet charts. I am not an artist so I have to buy charts. Lucky me though my family has several artistic so I’ll be doing charts from original works for upcoming projects. I haven’t purchased from Jo, although when I see other than Christmas Angels I probably will. I love angels, I know I know some people think I enjoy farm animals but this is really not true. I may even order a custom chart from her and compare her results with my interpretation. So you can see a real Artist (Jo) against a non artist (me).
When I visit a web page I always look at the links on that page. Jo has gone beyond the simple links page. She has written a little tid bit about each one so my suggestion would be to have a nice little visit.
OH and just an FYI … I went to Jo’s site for some inspiration and am reporting back on my experience. I am not affiliated just thought I’d share the joy.
