Knitting - a succession of complicated projects

I want to be sewing a bit more but my serger has gone in for sergery (hahaha). It needs new blades. Apparently if you sew a million miles, the blades wear out and stop working. I am looking forward to getting it back.

In the meantime, let me bring you up to date on a bunch of machine knitting I have done in the last ## months.

About a year ago I purchased some software that has been a total game changer for me. It's called DesignaKnit (affectionately also known as DAK). For years I scoffed at this program. I had a number of tools I could use, including some software (Garment Designer, Img2Track) and some more old-fashioned tools (pencil and gauge specific graph paper) and I made a number of things, quite successfully, using these tools. 

DAK looks clunky if you download the demo version. I was primarily interested in how it could develop patterns (2D shapes) for garments and I couldn't (or didn't figure out how to) see these in the demo version. Instead I saw the extremely ugly "standard garment styling" module. The graphics are completely horrible! It put me off. 

It's also stupidly expensive. You need not only the software but also the cable and sensors that will allow your computer to interact directly with the knitting machine. 

Luckily, I found someone who owned a licenced copy that she wanted to sell, and got the software plus cables for a reasonable price. 

DAK has multiple modules. The aforementioned ugly standard garment styling is good only to get started on a sweater design. The game changer is the Original Pattern Drafting module (OPD). This is a very powerful but also completely open-ended drafting platform. Unlike Garment Designer, it has no preconceived ideas about what a sleeve shape might be and thus generates no annoying error messages when you change things around. 

Then there's the Stitch Designer, which allows you to graph out your preferred stitch design (whether knits and purls, cables, fair isle, or double bed jacquard). You can integrate your stitch designs with your shape files and see how the pattern will look on the pattern pieces. If your machine is electronic, DAK will allow you to download your stitch patterns directly to the machine. Or you can use it to develop a punchcard. 

And there is the Interactive Knitting module. With an appropriate cable, you can use your computer screen as a guide in real time to what you need to do on the machine, whether it's placing an intarsia image, reforming stitches or increasing/decreasing to shape the piece. This is a superior type of "knit radar" (a device that uses schematic drawings on a mylar sheet to provide a visual guide to shaping). 

My first DAK project was this hood. I used OPD to alter the pattern piece for better fit. In Stitch Designer, I changed the colour scheme of the fair isle stitch patterns. Then I further adapted the stitch pattern and applied these variations to my mittens and headband (pictured in the grid above). 

My first DAK garment was this cardigan. I conjured up a V necked cardigan with set in sleeves in the standard garment styling module and then adjusted the pattern using OPD. 

These are screen shots of the Stitch Designer module, which I used to develop these Christmas stocking patterns for my son, daughter-in-law and grandson. It was fun to find stitch patterns that suited each of the recipients and demonstrate what is unique to them and what they share. 

Interactive knitting helped me do the colour changes as I knitted the stockings. 

Then there were these fun hats. I made the first one for grandson Sam using simple dinosaur shapes I found on Ravelry. Then his parents wanted their own versions. Sarah's Triceratops and Jack's T Rex stitch pattern designs are personalized for them but use the same yarn, colour scheme and basic design (check out this brilliant Earflap Hat Pattern Generator). 

This purple number may be my favourite knitting project to date. It is adapted from a hand knitting pattern. I used OPD to translate the hand knitting instructions to flat pattern pieces. 

I could not have confidently knitted the cables (all hand manipulated on the ribber bed) without the interactive knitting feature of DAK. 

DAK is great for adjusting a specific pattern for gauge. My version of Rebecca Yaker's astonishing Equilibrium Jumper is knitted with yarns that are finer than the intended yarn. I developed a shape file (pattern pieces) for the upper portion of the sweater and plugged in my finer gauge to get stitch and row counts so I could use the yarn I had to knit her design. 

The last sweater in the grid is a sneak peek of a just-completed project that I ought not to reveal just yet. I will give it its own post in a month or so...

Next up is an interesting slip stitch cardigan designed by Halyna Shemchuk. I have to get swatching.