Adventures in Pattern Writing: Episode 4, Put It All Together

See this?

Do you know what this is?

If you guessed that it was a draft version of the pattern for my Packer socks, you would be correct! After knitting and reknitting, procrastination, deciphering notes and scribbles, charting and recharting, fighting with computers, cutting and pasting, writing and re writing, with some cursing and hair-pulling mixed in for good measure, I was able to hit print on the first draft of this pattern.


I would celebrate, but it is only the first draft. The next step will be to knit another pair of the socks, using the pattern and making note of any changes that need to be made.  I haven't even started the test knitting, and I already have a list of necessary edits. I'm still not totally happy with the instructions for the short-row heel, I'm going to dig through some sources and make notes as I knit and hope to be able to refine the language a bit. I also need to measure the gauge once this pair is completed.  


The graphs might need to be adapted for use by a right handed knitter. Because I am left handed I knit backwards from left to right instead of from right to left, the way a right hander would. This sometimes changes the way graphs are read.

Despite these minor setbacks, I feel I'm making good progress on the pattern over the past few weeks. As soon as I finish the pair of socks on my needles, I will start work on the test pair, and make further notes about what needs to be changed or clarified. I've yet to decide on what player's number will be on the back of the socks and who the recipient will be. I'm not sure if I should keep them, as I already have a pair of lucky Packer socks (though are they still lucky despite now having seen two losses?). However, in my world, few people are actually qualified to own handknit socks. The pattern is designed for a foot wearing a woman's size 8 shoes, which does limit potential wears. I'll have to think about it.

Adventures in Pattern Writing: Episode 3, Perfectionism Rears Its Ugly Head (Again)

I'm what you might call a selective perfectionist. Some things I can just slap together and not care, but when it comes to knitting, I'll redo, redo, redo until I'm happy with the results.

While this tendency can product some particularly excellent results, but it also has been the cause of massive amounts of frustration, and copious amounts of inappropriate, foul, colorful language.

After finally conquering inserting my charts from Microsoft Excel into Word, I started working on importing all of the heel charts (numbers 0 to 9) into the pattern. Then I looked at my Matthews jersey, hanging on the drying rack, I looked at the 52, I looked at the charts for the 5 and 2, I looked back at the 52, back at the charts. They didn't look the same.

Sure, the 5 and 2 I charted looked like a 5 and a 2, but not like the ones on the jersey. The numbers on the jersey were, blockier, had more straight edges. At that point, I already knew what was coming, but I fought it for awhile. Maybe it was the jersey's problem, not mine. I decided to compare the numbers on my Rodgers jersey (yes, mom, MY Rodgers jersey). Again, my charted 1 and 2 looked like a 1 and a 2, but not like the ones on the jersey. Crap.

The Original Five

I wasn't ready to face reality just quite yet, though. Clearly, I must own two faulty jerseys, so I dug out Husband's jersey, and the dog's jersey. Nope, the numbers were consistent from jersey to jersey and not the same as the ones on my socks.

Once again, I fought the inevitable. It wasn't really going to matter, I told myself. No one is going to look at the numbers on the heels of these socks and point out that they are not shaped exactly like the numbers on the players' jerseys. What kind of person notices that sort of thing? Most likely no one would ever know, and if they know, it is even more likely that no one would ever care.

Edited Five

Except for me. I would know. And I cared. And I knew what I had to do.

I printed out ten blank heel charts. Then I went to the Packer's website to find pictures of jerseys, and I recharted all of the numbers. And the process started all over again, hand drawing, charting in Excel, cutting and pasting (using Paste Special, at least I remember that) into Word.

And, I'm glad I did it. Otherwise it would have bothered me, and I would have ended up doing it at some point anyway. We all know I'm crazy like that.

In other news, the knitting on the Spatterdash fingerless gloves is done and I was lucky enough to find buttons for them. I just need to block, weave in ends, and assemble. Yay!

Adventures in Pattern Writing: Episode 2, Cue the Panic

Who'd of guessed that these socks
would cause so much trouble?

If you follow my blog regularly, or if you browse back through some past posts, you know that last July, I designed and made a pair of Green Bay Packer socks for her birthday. Ever since they came off the needles, I have been meaning to transfer the pattern from scribbled notes and crude graphs into an actual pattern, usuable by someone not residing inside my head.


Last November, I finally took the time to convert the graphs from paper and pencil drawings to an Excel spreadsheet. I then converted one of the graphs into jpeg form, to make it easier to insert into my finished pattern. and promptly allowed myself to become distracted by something else (I'm hoping it was at least something shiney).


About a month ago, during a very slow day at the Motor bank, while my co-worker was shopping online, I took my notes and typed them into an almost readable format. And by "almost" I mean, the basic instructions typed into a Word document with notes like "insert instructions for heel  here," "probably should figure out the actual stitches and rows per inch," "Chart A to go here," and "find a better way to word this" scattered throughout the pattern. At least I had all the pattern pieces were saved now.


Or so I thought.


The other day, I sat down to finally try to put all the pieces together, and went to pull up my charts. They weren't on my laptop, or my desktop, or my thumb drive, or my other thumb drive.


Cue the panic. I wasn't even sure if I still had the paper verisions. Was I going to have to start all over on these charts. I mined through my previous posts to see if maybe, just maybe, I had posted all of the charts on my blog.




The one chart I could find.

 Nope. Just the heel chart. Okay, well, at least I had a method to retrieve the heel chart. That was something. Then it occured to me, last fall there was a stretch of time when the screen of my laptop was out of commission, and I used my old laptop. Maybe, possibly, hopefully the charts were saved on there.


So, I dug out the old laptop, and the charger and let the machine charge while I went into work. I got home, booted up the machine, and, thankfully, the Excel file with the charts was safely saved.


Thank you. But the fun wasn't over yet.


I only had the files saved as Excel sheets, and inserted them directly into the Word document using copy and paste was creating all sorts of trouble for me, charts extending over several pages, distortions. And of course, for the life of me, I couldn't remember how I did the last time.


After some research (and cursing), I did figure it out. I think I actually used a different method this time, but seeing as it worked just fine, I'm not going to fret about it. The charts, in both Excel and picture format are now safely stored on my laptop, and my desktop, and both my thumb drives.


And, in case future me ever desperately returns to this post, wondering how I managed to convert the stupid Excel cells into a much more Word (and pattern) friendly image, here's what I did:


From Excel, highlight the cells you need and click copy.


Go into the Word document, select Edit, and choose the "Paste Special..." option. This gives you the choice if you want to paste the chart as an Excel spreadsheet or as an image (or some other ones). So simple, why on Earth did this cause me so much stress?


Now, future self, go buy me a beer for all the stress and time I just saved you. And stay tuned for Episode Three of Adventures in Pattern Writing, where I attempt to put everything together.

Adventures in Pattern Writing: Episode 1, Chart It!

Last summer, I tried my hand at designing a pair of socks. They were Green Bay Packer Socks knit for my mother's birthday. While there are several things that I would change about them, overall I considered the whole undertaking to be a success. The socks were such a huge hit with my mom, she has already requested more!


However, despite the socks being such a huge hit, I still haven't gotten around to actually writing down the pattern (though I have gotten several requests for it). My notes and hand drawn charts were placed in a pile and left to sit.


Today, I noticed that the pieces of my pattern notes were getting scattered around the house, and I realized that it would be only a matter of time before either the whole pattern or several key pieces were destroyed or go missing. I came to the decision that I needed to sit down and actually write out the pattern.


Now, because on good days, I have the attention span of a gnat, I know that the best way to take on any large project is to take little baby steps. To decide on where to start, I considered what would be the biggest pain to reverse engineer in the event that pieces of the pattern are lost or destroyed? With that question, the answer was clear, the charts.


On these particular socks, there are several pieces that I charted out, the Go Pack Go band around the top of the leg, the numbers on the heel flaps, and the large G on the top of the foot. 


First, I did a little research on the easiest way to make charts on the computer. After looking at several methods, I decided to use Microsoft Excel for charts. It is easier to add and delete rows using Excel, and the charts can then be cut and pasted into Microsoft Word when I start on the final pattern. The next step will be converting the Word document into a pdf file (there's probably no real need for this, I just prefer my patterns in pdf form), but that can't be too hard, right?


Now, non-knitters may not know this, but knit stitches are slightly wider than they are tall (if you look at the pictures really closely and know what you are looking for, you can see this), so I needed figure out what sizes to use for the cells. I ended up making the cells 15 pixels wide by 10 pixels tall, giving me a 3:2 ratio, which should work pretty well. After re-sizing the cells, I then turned on the border for each cell and was ready to start charting.


I started with the leg band, mainly because that was the one chart I didn't want to make any changes to. It went pretty quickly, so I was able to move onto the chart for the top of the foot. I knew I wanted to make the G look a little less jagged around the edges and a little more symmetrical. I started with the original chart in the spreadsheet, and made changes, square by square until I was happy with the result. 

The original heels needed some more work.

The heel flaps made me a little more nervous, as I was making big changes to that piece of the sock. I wanted to switch from a heel flap to a short row heel, which would change the entire shape of the available stitches from a rectangle to a triangle (upside down triangle, in case you are trying to picture it). Like with the top of the foot, I figured the best thing to do would be to block out my available stitches.


From that point, I decided what size to make the numbers. During this process, I had to consider the triangular shape I was working in, and the fact the the numbers on the original ended up being too low. 

One of the revamped heel charts.

I ended up settling on 8 squares wide by 14 squares high (though I will actually have to knit another pair to be sure that this size will work).  I took these figures and went back to my paper and pencil. It took awhile until I was happy with the way the numbers looked, but it was worth it to get the finished charts saved in Excel.


There is still lots more work to do to get the pattern written. Plus, after writing the entire pattern, I want to make another pair, following the revamped pattern to see how those turn out. But I am really hoping that at some point I will be able to post an entire knitting pattern on this sight for others to use. 

Adventures in Sock Design: Episode Two- Off the Needles

Completed Socks

Success! I have Mom's birthday Green Bay Packer socks off the needle and presented to her on her birthday! My first pair of self-designed socks have been completed.






For the most part, I'm happy with how they turned out. But, of course, there are things I'd like to change, adjust, and try again. My main disappointment was the how the numbers on the heels turned out. Mom's a huge fan of Clay Matthews, hence the 52 on the heels. However, I assumed that placing the numbers centered on the heel flap would keep them high enough, but the bottom of the numbers wraps around to the bottom of the foot a little bit. That will need to be changed. I'd also like to revisit both the shape of the numbers and the G on the tops of the feet, they turned out okay, but they could look better. There's always room for improvement, right?


Despite the socks being completed, the design challenge isn't yet over. In addition to fine tuning the design features of the socks, I also need to translate the pattern from the pile of scribbled notes and charts into an actual written pattern. Since I was knitting on a deadline, I pretty much just took shorthand notes on what I was doing, which would be readable only to me, and only on a good day.


However, the socks were very well received. Mom immediately put the socks on and posted pictures onto facebook. Then, ignoring the fact that we live in Wisconsin and it was July, she wore the socks for the remainder of the evening (with an unmatching t-shirt and shorts, quite the fashion statement). That reaction is how people stay on the knit for list in my book.

Adventures in Sock Design: Episode One- A Bad Start

I've been knitting for some time now, eight years, give or take. During that time, I've tried my hand at designing some really simple projects, mainly iPod cozies, and modified some designs, like Sophie's Avatar inspired hoodie. However, I never really have tried to create something of my own design from the ground up.


For my first ground up design attempt, I'm doing something very familiar to me, socks. I've made lots of socks (lots of socks by my standards, not by a professional knitters standards) so I know the basic elements that go into the creation of a sock. I know roughly how many stitches to cast on, how to make a cuff, how to knit a heel flap, how to turn a heel, the amount of gusset stitches to pick up, and how to decrease for a toe. 


I've been wanting to design my own socks for awhile, but lacked that final kick in the pants motivation to actually start designing. My mom frequently requests socks from me, and her birthday is at the end of the month. So, a perfect chance to try my hand at designing.


Anyone who has met my mother knows, she is a huge die-hard fan of the Green Bay Packers. So what better for a birthday gift than a pair of Packer socks. Find some green yarn and some gold yarn, do a little stranded color work or striping, and easy-peasy a pair of socks.


Right?

The colors look better in real life!

Wrong. I should know by now, if something is easy in my head there is no chance that it will actually be easy. 




My first hurdle came in finding the correct color of sock yarn. I flipped through catalog after catalog and poured over websites with no luck. Anything I found in the right shade wasn't the right weight or was way too expensive. Finally I came across the Solid Series by the Loopy Ewe. This sock yarn comes in 90 different colors, including Kelly Green and Sunshine Yellow, which turned out to be the perfect colors that I needed. 

Inspiration Pile

I had my yarn, the next step was to pour over my resources for inspiration and ideas. I had an idea about what I wanted to do, but needed to look around and be sure. Armed with a clipboard and some knitter's graph paper (normal graph paper has squares, but knit stitches are not square), several patterns, and Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks for reference, I began to sketch, erase, doodle, and curse. 


I had my ideas, yarn, needles, and some scribbled notes that would start to serve as my pattern, I was ready to cast on. I cruised along through the first cuff, and a stripe and started on my first chart. That's when the next problem cropped up. When I cast on, I used 64 stitches, but for some reason my chart was based on 65 stitches. Some minor modifications and onward. The I realized that when following the chart, I needed to account for a cuff-down sock essentially coming out upside down. Another rip back and more modifications.


Then I started making real progress. I finished working the first chart and the next stripe underneath it. Then, I tried on the sock to check the fit (my mom and I have about the same sized feet), and couldn't get the sock past my heel. When working the stranded colorwork, I didn't think about stretching the float (the yarn carried behind the work) enough to account for the stretch of the knitted fabric. 


And now we're ripping it out and trying again.