It doesn’t look very exciting, does it? But, it’s actually a breakthrough! I’ve figured out how to write knitting calculator so knitters who blog using Wordpress can easily install a plugin at their knitting blog. Then they will be able to insert calculators like these in their posts.

Yep, I’m going to start writing things like sockulators, hat pattern in a way that lets you post them at your blog, where you can easily find them. ( I will be asking for a link back from anyone who uses it. Or maybe I’ll auto insert one in a footnote in the post? I need to decide what seems fair. )

Anyway, right now, this runs. It’s hardly full features, after all, it’s just calculates gauge. I’m going to be turning it into a drop sleeve sweater pattern which I’m writing as knit Jim’s mystery sweater.

Then, if you want to imitate his sweater, you’ll be able to enter values here at the knitting fiend, or port the calculations over to your blog and describe what you did there.

Of course, if you just want a gauge calculator, I can make this available. I just like to wait a few days to make sure I didn’t do anything weird that causes problems to blogs. Usually, these plugins run run fine, but I like to look at the formatting to see if I should tweak it.

Running it at my own for a while always seems prudent!

PS. I’m looking into the typo with the Barbara shawl at knitting group tonight.

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | 23 comments
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But this time, I’ve decided that I want to continue bringing lessons to everyone but . . . well… I also want to make a little money. So, over the past few weeks, I’ve been organizing a new site that will provide some free content and some “by subscription” content. I’ll admit I’m still working the bugs out on the technology end, but I’ve decided I have enough there to host an introductory design lesson.

The design lesson will be “how to design an ascot scarf”.

I’m wearing one in the photo shown.

The first few lessons will be free, with later, more computationally intensive lessons by subscription. (The final lessons will include a calculator so you can create your own scarf pattern.) The first very simple lesson is here.

By the way, if you try the chat at that site, and I’m around, I’ll say “hi”. But… of course.. if I’m not there, I won’t. Sorry.

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | One comment
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The stitch pattern

Remember I said I was going to knit Jim a drop sleeve sweater using two particular stitch patterns? Notice this stitch pattern doesn’t look like either of these? Well… on Thursday, at knitting club, I showed the swatch to my Heather. We decided I should elongate “Welted Leaves”. Then, after finishing one repeat, I decided I liked it so much, I decided to just forget all about Crosses and Diamonds or whatever that stitch pattern in Barbara Walker’s book was!

I bet you are wondering: Didn’t you need to knit another swatch? I know that nearly all knit-purl combinations will have similar stitch gauges, so the swatch I already knit would do. Plus, this is a fairly loose style, 1″ or 2″ off in the chest won’t matter much.

So, now, I’m using a knit stitch pattern of my own making. On the needles it looks a bit rumply, but this will smooth out some.

Will it be a drop sleeve sweater

Oh… and I don’t know whether this will be a drop sleeve sweater. Over the weekend I was glancing at a book about knitting ganseys by Beth Brown Reinsel, and I thought: “Hhmm… this could be a gansey… Or at least, sort of a gansey. After all, underarm gussets do make hand knit sweaters more comfortable.”

Lucky for me, I know that drop sleeve sweaters are shaped just like Ganseys until I’ve knit to within 2″ of the underarms before I decide whether or not to add the underarm gussets. So, for now it’s either a drop sleeve sweater or a “sort of” gansey ! What will it be like? Beats me.

How to start a mystery sweater in the round.

If you like to not know what you are making when you start, you follow these steps:

• Figure out the number of stitches for the body. You need the sweater to fit the guys chest. Jim likes his sweaters t 40″ around. Mutiply by the stitch gauge: I had 5 stitches /inch– and round if required for your stitch pattern. So, I get 40 * 5 = 200 stitches. This will be the number of stitches for the body.
• Figure out the number of stitches for the ribbing: If your guy has a fat butt or a gut, this should be the same as for the body. If your guy has a slim butt, subtract 10% of those; 10% is 20 stitches. I get 200-20=180 stitches. Round to a multiple of 2. This is the number of stitches for your ribbing.

Using circular needles one size smaller than cast on 180; join being careful not to twist. Work knit 1, purl 1 ribbing for 1″ to 3″ (depending on how much you like.)

• Knit the ribbing: Change to larger needles. On next round, change to main needles, and increase to the number of stitches for the body (that’s 200 stitches in this example.) If necessary, do a bit of thinking to center your stitch pattern, and begin to work. Knit circular until you are about 2″ from where the underarms start.
• Think about the rest of the design as you knit: If you knit slowly — like I do you’ll have about a week to decide what to do at the underarms. But, you do need to stop and decide when you get near the underarms. (No, that’s a lie. You can put the body on a holder, start a sleeve and work to the elbow! )

The reason joining quickly is important is that the blogs displayed by this admittedly ugly widget depend on a) how many times it displays on your blog, b) how often it displays on your recruits’ blogs and c) how many times it display on their recruits’ blogs down to the 10th generation of recruits.

So, if you join now, you have a chance of getting lots of traffic. I suggest you join, try displaying it on your sidebar for a week, and then, if it doesn’t work deleting it (because, let’s face it, it’s ugly! Plus, who knows if we’ll get traffic from knitters.)

I joined. I checked “hobby” — because “knitting” isn’t a choice . . . yet. Give it a try by clicking join Blog Rush.

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | 13 comments
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Table of contents for ChacoDropSleeve

1. Swatching for Jim’s Next Sweater
2. Welted Leaf Pattern: Charted
3. X-and-Diamond Border

I’ll be using two stitch patterns in my next “original” design for Jim’s sweater: “Welt Leaf Pattern” and “X-and-Diamond Border”. Both are fairly simple knit-purl combinations with 8 stitch repeats and appear on page 36 of Barbara Walker’s “Treasury of Knitting Patterns”.

Because I like following knitting charts, I charted out “Welt Leaf Pattern”, it’s shown below the right. (If you have trouble reading charts, refer to How to read knitting charts. If you scroll to the bottom, you can find all 7 articles in that series.)

I’m planning a simple drop sleeve sweater for Jim. The chest will measure 40″ around. So, the body will just be one big tube up to the armholes. Tonight, I plan to calculate out the body and cast on the ribbing.

Later this week, I’ll explain how to organize the two stitch patterns– which pretty much involves centering the two patterns. There’s not much to doing it, but my philosophy is: There is always a newbie knitter out there who wants to know. Why not post the tutorial?

Who knows, if I get ambitious I’ll make a podcast!

• Tip 1: Notice how I linked back to my previous article about reading charts? Linking back is helpful for the reader. It also reminds Google that page exists and is about reading knitting charts! (This is called a ‘SEO tip’ because it has to do with pleasing a search engine.)
• Tip 2: Notice that the first time I mention Barbara Walker, her name is linked her knitting books at Amazon.com? That link helps knitters find all her knitting stitch pattern books, which quite frankly, most avid knitters eventually buy. If they happen to buy after clicking my link, I make a few bucks.

  But neither of those two are the tips! The tip is this: I inserted that automatically using a free Wordpress plugin called “aLinks”. I described how to use aLinks at Big Bucks Blogger. (I can write a better tutorial at anyone’s request. ) Do you want to see how powerful that plugin is. Look at this: Elizabeth Zimmerman! I didn’t code that: aLinks did.

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | 6 comments
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For some reason, in the past, I have never been tempted to turn the little dial on my camera to the little “movie” recorder. On Saturday I did. I discovered I could take movies. I filmed on very, very bad one and deleted it.

Then, I broke filming into clips and recorded a fairly bad set of clips. Rather than try for perfection, I decided I’d teach myself how to actually finish a video and show it at my blog. So, I imported the pretty bad clips to my mac and edited in “IMovie”. Then I uploaded to YouTube. Now, the worlds can see my pretty bad podcast.

I could bore you by listing everything wrong with the quality– but I made so many mistakes, the list would be pretty boring.

So instead, I bring you a relatively poor quality podcast showing me blocking my “Floridays Shawl!”

Now that I’ve figured this out, I’ll probably show streaming periodically, and also provide links to things associated with the steps in the podcast (when the links are available.) That way, knitters can benefit from the things that are best shown on video and also from the things that are best show as stills.

Later this week, I’ll try to collect the links for the various stitches. The shawl is easy, and the general idea can be used to create your own shawl in your own yarn. The one thing you really need is a yardage estimator so you have enough yarn. So, I’ll get that together… some time!

Hope you like the video!

1. Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr : 5,040 yds./lb. – 1 lb. cones. 50% fine grade Merino wool, 50% Chinese Tussah silk.
   Jagger recommends dry clean only; hand wash.
2. Twisted Long stitches: I haven’t written a tutorial!
3. Eyelets: How to Knit an Eyelet Row
4. Bind off: Picot Edge Bindoff

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments
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1. I have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.
2. I work part-time for Argonne National Laboratories. When working, I wear my pajamas. (Good thing I work at home!)
3. I take care of two cats: ‘Mo and Piewacket. They are pretty domineering.
4. I’m going on vacations next week! (The inlaws will be staying here taking care of ‘Mo and Piewacket.
5. I love pesto so much, I dug up a 8ft x 20 ft strip on the west side of the house to grow basil.
6. I was born in El Salvador and we moved to Bufallo, NY in January of 1966. Yes, it was a shock.
7. Uhmmm…I like knitting… a lot…(but I’m slow.)

Ok.. there is only one thing to do: Tag people in the machine knitters web ring! I tag:
knutty4knitting, Needles of Steel, Zeppo’s knitting blog, Knit Man, Knittsings, A Distant Knitter and Knitting on the Rogue River.

Yes… I could use their names. But since joining all these paid for post blogs, I’ve learned it juices their google search efficiency to use their blog post names inside the link! (Weird, hun.)

For the convenience of any of those tagged, if you have a hard time thinking up 7 people to tag, check out the machine knitters feed list. There are 23 knit bloggers on that list, and I bet they’d wouldn’t mind a simple meme like this one.

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | One comment
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I know these two knitters are wildly popular. Plus, I had, in the past, seen direct evidence of the popularity of The Yarn Harlot. She once mentioned my button hole calculator at her blog, and let’s just say… well…you can read my reaction here.

Anyway, Wendy saw my trackback, visited and commented on my post. We chitchatted back and forth. I mentioned my sockulators and my links (which are a major source of traffic for me.) Anyway, since Wendy was blogging about knitting socks today, Wendy, The Mega-Powerful Knitting Blogger (with a very cute cat named after me Lucy) wrote this somewhere in the middle of her blog post:

Speaking of Socks
Do y’all know about all the great sock resources over at Lucia’s blog, The Knitting Fiend? There are patterns, tips, tricks, and calculators. Lots of great sock resources!

She posted at 5:44pm Eastern Time. It’s now 5:09 Eastern time. So, wanna’ know how many hits I got so far?

1 http://my4.statcounter.com/pro…amefrom.php?project_id=1355365
2 http://www.wendyknits.net/
3 http://wendyknits.net/
4 http://wendyknits.net/
5 http://www.google.com/search?h…tting blogs&btnG=Google Search
6 http://wendyknits.net/archives/001221.html
7 http://wendyknits.net/
8 http://www.bloglines.com/myblo…play?sub=34251423&site=1075769
9 http://wendyknits.net/
10 http://www.stumbleupon.com/ref…hedietdiary.com/blog/lucia/523
11 http://www.ask.com/web?q=knitting fiend blog&qsrc=0&o=0&l=dir
12 http://wendyknits.net/
13 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/magicloop/message/7361
14 http://wendyknits.net/
15 http://wendyknits.net/
16 http://search.msn.com/results….hawl patterns&src=IE-SearchBox
17 http://wendyknits.net/
18 http:// www.wendyknits.net/
19 http://wendyknits.net/
20 http://wendyknits.net/
21 http://wendyknits.net/
22 http://wendyknits.net/index.html
23 http://wendyknits.net/
24 http://www.wendyknits.net/
25 unknown
26 http://www.diaperpin.com/forum04/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=154696
27 http://wendyknits.net/
28 http://www.wendyknits.net/
29 http://www.wendyknits.net/
30 http://www.google.com/search?q…rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
31 http://search.yahoo.com/search…nfonia knitting pattern&fspl=1
32 http://images.google.com/imgre…v=/images%3Fq%3Dhow%2Bto%2Bset
33 http://wendyknits.net/
34 http://wendyknits.net/
35 unknown
36 http://www.wendyknits.net
37 unknown
38 http://www.google.com/search?h…floor mats &btnG=Google Search
39 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en
40 http://www.google.com/search?q…icrosoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8
41 http://wendyknits.net/
42 http://wendyknits.net/
43 http://kimrue.typepad.com/knitterama/
44 http://www.wendyknits.net/
45 http://www.wendyknits.net/
46 http://www.wendyknits.net/
47 http://www.google.com/search?s…:en&q=knit front back front%3f
48 http://wendyknits.net/
49 http://wendyknits.net/

Now, you’ve got to figure, that at most 10% of Wendy’s visitors click that link. And they can’t all visit within 15 minutes of her posting. So… if roughly 40 visited me in 15 minutes… that means… How many knitters visit that Wendy’s site?!

Update (Friday Morning):
This is the effect after two days. One link from Wendy increased my traffic by roughly 500 unique visits on both Wed. and Thursday. (Wendy looked at her daily hits, and she appears to get 30 to 40 times the traffic I get.) Let me assure you, no matter what Compete, the “objective” third party traffic tracking system says, I do not get as many visitors as Wendy Knits or The Yarn Harlot!

But you knew that, right?

© lucia for The Knitting Fiend, 2007. | Permalink | 18 comments
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