Summer Lovin’

September 1, 2012September 1, 2012 | Elanor

Well, It’s been 2 months since I added anything to the blog. Many apologies. I was working on a deadline that seemed to get harder and harder to achieve the closer I got to it. Miracle of miracles, it all came good on the day, and I let myself wallow in a petit knitting burnout for a couple of weeks. Then I was on holidays, and excuse upon excuse upon excuse later, here I finally am, back at the codeface.

So what have I been doing? Well, I’ve been working on a blanket which is pretty well charted out, but knitting up S.L.O.W.L.Y and I went on a super brilliant hat design course with the very cool, bus-dwelling Woolly Wormhead in This Is Knit in Dublin. More on that tomorrow. As a result, I have one and a half hat designs that I will be writing up tonight. No really! Back to work, Ellie!

My gorgeous little sister got engaged 3 weeks ago, and I’m very excited to be part of the wedding posse – you’re lookin’ at the Matron of Honour for the F/J bash of the century. I get to do the invite calligraphy and hopefully design a shawl and some shrugs for the shindig too! Not to mention the hen party!

So my dears, hope you had a lovely time with the childer over the summer holidays if you’re a parent like me, or else got at least a little sunshine. Be chattin’ to ya!

Knitting Circles 2

June 30, 2012July 1, 2012 | Elanor

I find myself needing to knit a disc. I want to join two cylinders with different radii.

What I need to knit is the perpendicular plane where they join. I actually need to make a ring rather than a circle, but the same maths should apply.

The equation to get the number of stitches to decrease each row would seem to be

$n_{sts} = g_{sts}\left (\frac{2\pi}{g_{rows}} \right )$

where n is the number of sts to increase or decrease per row, g_sts is the st gauge and g_rows is the row gauge. What’s really neat about this is it’s independent of start and end radius altogether. Sts will need to be distributed evenly across the row and staggered throughout all rows so as not to distort locally.

Carol Feller’s Short Rows Class on Craftsy

June 28, 2012 | Elanor

Carol Feller’s class on Short Rows is great. I learned the following new short-row stuff:

Japanese Short Rows
Set-in sleeves from the top down (picked up)
Bust shaping

I want a bunch of Craftsy classes for my birthday, starting with the Sew Retro dress, which I’ve had on my to-do list for about a year, then (in no particular order):

Lace Shawl Design
How To Say It
Shoot It
And of course, Carol’s very Oirish (and very kelly-green shurewudyalookatthat) Celtic Cables, if only because Short Rows was so dang informative.

Sigh. Add another thing to the 3-yr plan: have my own course on Craftsy… Have to get good at something so. :))

Where did Elanor keep her Armies?

June 14, 2012June 14, 2012 | Elanor

Up her sleevies!

Still working on armholes and armscyes and caps and ellipse perimeters. Was very happy to discover Ramanujan’s approximation for the perimeter of an ellipse:

from mathsisfun.com

And this great page from My Measuring Tape on drafting different styles of sleeves is easily adaptable to knitted wares.

I have been slowly working my way down through Knitty’s Knitted Sleeve editorial from ’05, and I’m now around about the point where I realise I really have to get the armscye sorted before going ahead with designing the sleeve cap :)

I have the bodice armscye mostly sorted now, but I’ve been looking for some kind of indication as to what slope to use for the curve of the cast off (working up) at the armhole. If it’s too slow to decrease, the armscye will be triangular, and if it’s too quick, it’ll be square. What’s the happy, curvy, medium? I found a physical armscye curve online, having read this article on pattern drafting on Your Wardrobe Unlocked.

So, if the physical object exists, there must be a software equivalent, right? (my design’s totally digital) Or even just an equation… but can I find one? Nay, I say unto thee, my google searching skillz extends not to such a hit.

Still workin’ on it.

Boy is design hard.

But I absolutely looooove it!!!!!

Ooh, update! I’ve discovered from this UTube video by munnikusum, that a good place for the curve to end (just before the vertical rise to the shoulder) is halfway up that shoulder line.

Arm’s Eye

June 2, 2012 | Elanor

Etymology always fascinates me.

Armscye

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In sewing, the armscye is the armhole, the fabric edge to which the sleeve is sewn. The length of the armscye is the total length of this edge; the width is the distance across the hole at the widest point.

While the expression “arm’s eye” was used in older sewing texts (e.g. Gynametry by M. V. Coleman, published in 1887 by Byrd & Pattillo) it appears that in poor prints the apostrophe and the crossbar of the lower case “e” were indistinct. The neologism “armscye” was created by readers who concatenated the orphaned fragments “arm” and “s” with the corrupt “cye”.^{[citation needed]}

Until the beginning of the 20th century writers favoured the original term or at least a more logical variation (e.g. “armeye” in The Perfect Dressmaking System by Ella A. Bennett, published in 1914). However, as self-proclaimed experts copied each other, the term “armscye” eventually became widely enough used by home sewers to gain general acceptance.

Knitting, Crochet and Yarn Oscars

May 26, 2012May 26, 2012 | Elanor

Ninaknits posed a question in the Budding Designers Forum on Ravelry about The Value of Pattern Design. It got me thinking about how to constructively raise the awareness of all the hard work people put into their knitting patterns.

So here’s my idea: awards for the knitting industry as voted for by peers and industry leaders; i.e NOT a popularity contest. Something along the lines of the “1st Annual Knitting and Crochet Industry Awards”. With Knoscars or Ravtas (Although probs best to keep it distinct from Ravelry).

Popcorn and Pretzel by Jessica Spencer

The idea is to follow the movie Academy Awards example and have nominees and winners announced with a big hue and cry. Lots of razzle dazzle and maybe one day a red carpet!

The thinking behind keeping it peer-reviewed is that Ravelry and PatternFish and sites like them are basically pattern popularity contests already, so we don’t need to replicate that. And also, a huge part of what we want to do is celebrate outstanding members of the design world, including tech editors, test and sample knitters, publishers, photographers, all the support crew without whom the really great patterns and collections would just be mistake-riven, badly-shown FOs.

We need a panel of judges that really know their stuff and have experience across the whole industry. Any volunteers? Perhaps the winners of the previous year could be invited to join the panel for the next year. There would be no prizes, other than the kudos (and, I imagine, the associated pattern sales boost). Incidentally, did you know there’s no crocheted or knitted “Oscar” pattern? That I could find on rav, anyhoo.

Categories could be:

Best Actor & Actress in a Leading Role = Best Knit & Crochet Designer (Lumped together cos I’m not getting into a discussion here about which craft I think is male and which female)
Best Actor & Actress in a Supporting Role = Best Tech Editor & Test Knitter
Best Cinematography: Best Photography
Best Director:Best Publisher
Best Documentary Feature: Best Womenswear
Best Makeup: Best Accessory
Best Original Score: Best Unusual Knit/Crochetwear
Best Original Song: Best Kidswear
Best Picture: Best Collection or Book
Best Short: Best Individual Pattern
Best Sound Editing: Best Menswear
Best Sound Mixing: Best Homewear
Best Visual Effects: Best Technical/Most Innovative Pattern
Best Animated Short: Best Yarnie/Yarn
Lifetime Achievement Award

The word “Best” looks weird to me now having typed it so many times.

So whaddya think? Can this work, can we make it happen?

Winnie’s Craft Cafe

May 22, 2012May 22, 2012 | Elanor

I was in Winnie’s Craft Cafe this weekend. Address is 3 Woodbine Park Booterstown, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, call +353 1 260 3734.

I was unfortunately accompanied by a tired but manic toddler, so there was no sitting down, having a hot chocolate and sampling cake for me, it was as much of an in-out job as I could make it!

It’s quite difficult to find unless you know it’s there – not really the kind of place you’ll just happen across as it’s in a small parade of shops in the middle of a housing estate. Sat-nav lady got me there safe and sound though, good girl.

Winnie’s stocks Sirdar, Patons, some Rowan and lots of lovely Drops. Drops is brill stuff cos it’s pretty good quality AND cheap. I don’t know how they do it, acually.

I came away with 3 balls of Fabel, 2 of metal-shiny cotton viscose and a single sirdar supersoft aran for a commission. And some pins so I could block some sample swatches I needed to wash. And the whole lot was 10-something. Euro!

I left hastily before my son could fall over again or rip anything else off the walls (and before they realised they’d undercharged, I mean, they must have)!

Definitely will go again next time I’m home. I’m determined to get that slice of cake!

Catchloops

Data and knitting

Author: Elanor