The Knitting Fiend

I’m often asked good questions from knitters who visit my site; I like to both act on and/or answer them. I’ll usually answer the techniques one right in the knitting technique articles since that’s where the answers are most useful. But, some questions are more general, and I think if one person emails to ask, likely several want to know the answer.

Since I don’t like to answer general questions in article containing a pattern, calculator or haiku, I thought I should get in the habit of writing a blog to answer some of these questions.

Here are a few recent ones:

• Q: Do the sockulators have negative ease built in?
  A: Yes and no. If you pick a sock size using pulldown menus, the sock is the recommended size to fit your foot. If you actually measure your foot, you will discover that the sock circumference is probably smaller than your foot. If you pick “custom” and enter values for the sock, those are the length and circumference of the sock. (This was a great question, and I edited the instructions to clarify this.)
   
• Q: Why doesn’t my blog show up on your mega 600+ blog roll?
  A: Either because I didn’t find it while drinking wine and clicking madly at bloglines or because you don’t have a feed. If I missed your blog, let me know the URL. If it has a feed and it’s about knitting, and you don’t also post ‘XXX’ rated articles I’ll add you. (By ‘XXX’, I don’t mean foul language; I don’t mean jokes; I don’t mean politics or religions I object to. I mean ‘XXX’; yes I noticed a one or two. If notice that, I’m not adding it. Nope. )
   
• Q:Why don’t the numbers in the little boxes in the pattern generators print?
  A: They should print, and do print using my printer and the four browser installed on my mac. If they don’t print for you, I’m afraid I don’t know why. It might be something I did but if so, I don’t know how to fix it. It also might be your browser or your printer. To solve the problem, I’d first try another browser; Internet Explorer is numerically the most popular browser, but is in many ways the worst one out there. (Microsoft can get away with violating standards because they know programmers will work around them. People marketing new browsers know they have to work in a standard fashion.) Many browsers can be downloaded for free. Try Firefox or Netscape.

  By the way, even though I can’t fix this, I’m glad someone asked. Now if I ever learn the reason, and discover the solution, I’ll implement it.
   

• Q: Why don’t I publish full feeds?
  A: I publish abbreviated feeds for a number or reasons, the two maine ones are: 1) The pattern generator probably won’t run correctly on feed readers and even if they do, I can’t check. If I publish these feeds, I will get questions. People asking won’t mention they are trying to get it to work on a feed reader, and we’ll go back and forth a while before we figure out what’s wrong. (I know this sounds silly, but people often don’t know that I can’t necessarily ensure everything works spectacularly on the platform they are using.) 2) While I like blog services to post snippets of my blog with a link to my site, I don’t want splogs grabbing my feed and publishing the whole content under their name at their site. This happens to knitting blogs all the time. (Needless to say, I don’t want the visitors to those site trying to run the programs, failing and emailing me with questions I can’t answer because I don’t know that the person stealing the content did a bad job and introduced bugs!)
   
• Q:Do I write these calculators myself.
  A: Yes. Oh, and sockulator II to create the toe up sock pattern is edited and finished now! (I’ve already gotten email from people who knit it while it still said “TEST”.
   

That’s all for now! Feel free to ask. I’ll usually answer either privately or here at the blog.