A Sense of Direction

Last year, I got a windfall. My mother had given me some birthday money, and I also received a $100 Amazon credit for some survey work I had done. I decided to use this money to flesh out my knitting library. I followed my usual process: reading reviews, checking candidates out of the library, reviewing them, and then purchasing the ones I thought had staying power.

The design book I chose was Knitwear Design Workshop: A Comprehensive Guide to Handknits by Shirley Paden. So far so good. It's a workbook, so it's not something I'm reading cover-to-cover. Instead, I'm figuring out how to use the book--a tool like my needles and stitch holders.

The first four chapters are the basics, and that's where I'm living now. In these chapters are dozens of charts and tables, as well as a set of silhouettes for making sketches and design notes. I'm not a paper-and-pen notebook kind of person, so I'm trying to figure out how to convert all this to the computer. The tables and text-based notes are easy; word processing and spreadsheets will do the trick, and I might try keeping all of this in OneNote, a program in my MS Office package that I'm liking more and more (I can't believe I'm writing that...).

I'm not as sure about the sketches. I have the ability to scan them in after I've done them, but unlike my daughter, I don't think I'm much of an artist (though maybe I'll add that to my things-I-want-to-learn list!). So I'm not sure what's going to be helpful here. I need the silhouettes for making notes on, but I'd love to find a way to put my notes on the silhouettes in electronic form. Maybe Publisher is my answer. I'll be playing with that next week, I expect.

So tonight, I am creating spreadsheets for measurements and notes. My first project is going to be a sweater for Carl. We've been married for more than five years, so the boyfriend rule no longer applies. (For those who don't know, the rule is that you cannot knit a sweater for a boyfriend; if you do, by the time you're done, he won't be your boyfriend any more, and he'll probably keep the sweater anyway!) I'll write more about the actual sweater in the next post.