Android Yarny

05 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by Ana in Crochet, Knitting, Technocrafting

I got an android phone last summer, and after swearing at it for a month, I woke up one morning and realized the Lovely Droidia was really a very helpful and groovy … phone? (She’s asleep, so I’m hoping she won’t think we’re not friends.) My abnormal relationships with semi-animate electronic devices aside, I recently found three free Android apps that are accessible and sure to feed any yarn addiction.

Knitters Friend by Moorhen Apps is a portable hook and needle conversion chart. for knitting, it’s got three dropdown lists. the top one is for metric. the middle one is for U.S. needle size. The bottom one is for UK/Canadian. Select a number in one dropdown list, and the others change accordingly. For example, selecting a 5 for the metric box at the top makes 8 appear in the middle U.S. box and 6 in the bottom UK/Canadian box. To change the conversion chart from knitting needles to crochet or crochet steel hook simply hit Menu and the option you’d like. While the dropdown lists themselves are completely accessible, the labels aren’t, so you have to remember that the top box is metric; the middle one, U.S.; and the bottom, UK/Canadian.

County by BobbinsSoft is an electronic row counter. Each time you finish a row, hit Menu and Increase, and each time you rip out half a dozen rows because you skipped one or two vital stitches while caught up in your favorite TV show, hit Menu and Decrease. This app is great when you’re new to yarn crafting and still bitter about having to keep track of rows. It’s also great when you’re working on a really intricate project or when you do a lot of knitting on the go, especially if you’re plodding through patterns with repeats within repeats.

Yarn Shopper by Beekeeper Labs is a skein estimator: supply a few basic project details, and the app gives you a list of possible yarns and the number of skeins or hanks you’ll need to buy. Again, the app is generally accessible, but two of the edit boxes aren’t labeled. From top to bottom, the information to be supplied is name of project (edit box), yards required in pattern (edit box), yarn weight (dropdown list), and fiber content (edit box). The OK and Cancel buttons are at the bottom, and the results appear in nice readable text. To add yarns or get more results, hit Menu and adjust the filter. This is definitely not a good app for someone on a stash diet.

Who knew yarn and technology could come together so beautifully?

Casting Off

03 Feb 2011 Leave a comment

by Ana in General

I’ve been thinking about starting a knitting blog almost since I returned to knitting. But it’s taken me at least five years to get around to it. The only way I can explain the delay is this:

Last month, I made a pair of black socks for a priest whose birthday is the day after mine. They were a Christmas gift, and a friend and I made a special trip to Jo-Ann’s to buy the yarn.

I didn’t finish the socks in time, but that didn’t matter because my family and I wouldn’t be visiting him at his current parish until mid January, so I worked on more urgent projects first (some hats and a pair of slippers that needed to be delivered sooner), and I got back to the socks eventually, working on them two or three rounds at a time, leaving them forgotten on nightstands and coffee tables, distracting myself with UFO’s that had sat in the basket for months.

The day before we went to visit, I worked on them in earnest, a pair of garter strips flanking two wavy cables that leaned into each other, then away, without ever touching—like people or good intentions—and I had more than half a sock to go: 80 stitches per round, eleven rounds per vertical inch, eternity on a yarny scale.

By morning, I was two inches short, so I left them at home. When we returned, I completed them.

Except for the cast off.

My excuse was that I wanted to make sure the band of ribbing at the top of the ankle was the same number of rounds on both socks, but the reality was that binding off meant giving them away, and giving them away meant believing them worthy of being shared.

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