Persistent Knitter

I’m a bad knitter. I haven’t been doing much knitting. What I have managed has been on the bus to and from work. I’m trying to finish up the pattern for theknitter.com’s SOTM club in Feb. (Yes, I’m aware that is only 5 days away)  It’s a fun pattern – dyeing with koolaid; a pretty lacy pattern with ribbing to make it fit well.    It’s going to have a child size and a small ladies size. I figured with the colors it would be a perfect kid’s sock. My daughter gets the kid’s size as soon as I finish the second one.

So my time has been occupied by trying to finish the Knit Visualizer Manual.  I’m in the section that describes Parsing.  How to type in your patterns and make it understand you.  It’s one of those things that can work really well on simple to medium complexity patterns; but will choke and die if you type anything confusing into it (or have a typo).  It’s also a complex thing to describe. I sure hope I’m doing it enough justice.  I’ve got 5 days to finish the sock pattern (which I know I’ll do with no problems) and 5 days to get Knit Visualizer released.  Well, the second one I’ll be close on.  very very close. :)

I haven’t knit much in the past few days; I’ve been trying to get the Manual for Knit Visualizer done. It’s probably the biggest task left for me to do before I can release it out to the world for general consumption/criticism. Here’s a sneak preview at one of the coolest features (IMO) Knit Visualizer contains:

http://www.persistentknitter.com/blog/photos/KVLayouts.pdf

Yeah, it’s a PDF, but a small one. I didn’t wanna have to redo all that formatting in HTML.

The final full manual will be available for free download on knitfoundry. When it’s done. Soon. Really!

Look what followed me home:

(click for larger version)

My friend Debbie was cleaning out her basement, and I happened to be reading email at the right time. I jumped at a chance to get an excellent carding machine for a good price.  I have so many fleeces to process – and this should really help.  A friend conveniently had some handfuls of really fine fleece with her that we tested it out on. It did a great job on it.  I can’t wait to get started processing more fleece! (So I can buy more of course).

This weekend my friend Christy was gracious enough to have a group over for knitting/dyeing/socializing/eating.. She had dyeing going on in the backyard (ooh the colors they produced. WOW); and there was a siseable group of us knitting/chatting/spinning and having a great time.  I made some good progress on my mom’s sweater, Bjerk. We had a fun time deciding how this word should be pronounced.  Ingrid insists that it is "b-york" and I say it’s "B-jerk".  (Which do you prefer?)

Here are a few shots I took with my new camera/phone.  Click on the pictures for larger version.
   

In photo 1, left-to-right we have Ingrid’s knees, Rebecca at the spinning wheel, then Dianne and Sally.
Photo 2: Debbie, Michelle, Joann (hiding in the background) and Judy.

It was so much fun to hang out, relax with good friends and see all the dyeing activities.   I feel totally lucky to be part of such a great group!

When you build something made up of electrical parts, it’s a good idea to test out the configuration before you commit to putting them together permanently. You can sometimes take them apart after they are put together, but it’s a pain, and better overall to not have to do it very often.

So here’s my version of a robot swatch (click for super high resolution version):

To trace the path of the circuit, we start with the battery. It goes through one of the red posts (red means HOT, don’t touch, there’s current going through here) & into the red button on the right.  No, it’s not a "big red button" but it was all I could find that fit into the holes on the breadboard.  If the switch is in the "on" position, the current will travel down to the red LED on the bottom right of the circuit.  When that red LED is on, it means there is power going to everything hooked up into the board.  (This was not my idea, but it is a good idea. it’s in the book I got http://robotroom.com).

So now there’s a power bus on the board that is ON, (assuming we’ve pushed the button and our red LED is lit). The whole point of this circuit is to decide if there is more light on the right or left, so the robot (yeah, this is a robot – couldn’t you tell??) can decide to turn left or right based on where the line it’s following is.

The Green and Yellow LEDs in the middle (pointed to by the "Decision Indicators" text/arrow), are what tells us which side is brighter.  The photoresistors that sit between the yellow/green LEDs and the red power-on LED on the right are detecting how much light is in the room. They change the value of resistance based on the ambient light.  It’s harder to see, but there are also headlights in that area – bright white LEDs that will help light the way.  The chip in the middle tests the voltage and tells the green or yellow LED to light up.

The stuff on the left side (with one red LED) I’m still working on. There’s a way to amplify the voltage (or current? I always get that mixed up) so that you can light more than one LED in a row.  When the robot is done, it’ll have three yellow lights all along one side, and three green lights on the other side. You can watch the robot ‘think’ by seeing which sets of lights are on. Plus blinking lights always make it look cooler!

Katie finally agreed to wear her hat and scarf for a photo. The gloves are some store bought ones she’s had for a while. They matched really well, so she has a full "set":

Doesn’t she look angelic? Ha! :)

I have too many things to do, and not enough time. But that won’t stop me!  Here’s a run down of all the things I’ve got currently going on (in addition to my day job, being a mom and so on!):

Knit Visualizer (www.knitfoundry.com/software.html)

• I have a few things left on my TODO list to get this puppy ready for release. I’m hoping the Mac version will come out at the same time – but I have a bit more testing to do to make myself confident that it will work just as well as the PC version.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to ‘flip a switch’ and start selling online this month.  I should be able to get this working code wise – but there is a tiny bit more work to do distribution wise (burning CDs, making downloads work and secure, yadda yadda yadda)

Spinning

• Blue/Gray ish roving, only one bobbin left to spin up, then to ply it with the other bobbin I’ve already spun. I love using my WooLee winder! It works great, and when I plyed with it the other day – it was heaven to not have to stop and change hooks
• Just bought some goregous super soft, wonderful feeling batts of wool from theknitter.com I don’t know if she has it on the website or not, she had just received it in, and a group of us were over and she let us troll through her basement. I bought a lb of each blue and grey. I’m contemplating either weaving something with it or knitting myself a sweater (fair isle of course) with it.

Knitting

• Bjerk sweater: Need to finish the neckline; and sew in the sleeves. Then weave in the ends. it’s not a good bus project so it’s been a bit neglected.  Shouldn’t take much time to finish up. The recipient has agreed that we won’t subject it to the post office trip, and she’ll pick it up in early march when she’s visiting us again
• Mittens: Mitten 1 complete, Mitten 2 is about 1/3 of the way done. Super soft – I can’t wait until they are done!
• Cow/Sheep/Pig sweater for alex: Languishing in the drawer, I’ll get back to this soon.
• Hat for Alex: Ordered blue yarn to make a hat for him. might want to make a sweater out of the same yarn – we’ll see how ambitious I get. The hat will be a quick weekend project.
• Sock design for Feb SOTM: Half way done; gotta finish this up and soon!  I finished sock #1 in the kid/Katie size. Fits perfect, but have to do the next size up for hte pattern. I know Katie will like the pair when it’s done.
• Various socks in progress, gotta finish some 2nd socks.

Weaving

• Secret Agent dishtowels. I’m over 1/6 of the way done!  These should weave up pretty fast. There’s minimal finishing (hand sewing down the seams, after I machine zig zag the raw edges). I can’t wait to start using them
• A vague plan to make a scarf/shawl for myself out of handspun. It’s vague because I haven’t started spinning for it, although I do have a pattern in a book picked out :)

Robots

• Dear Husband bought me the coolest book ever for xmas: Robot Building for Beginners . I have a lot of great background for this hobby (and some of the tools necessary); but not enough stuff. Waiting for a bonus check to start spending lots on this hobby. I’ve picked up a few of the smaller things to get started with.  Last night I had fun playing around with putting a variety of switches onto my breadboard* and plugging in different color LEDs into the circuit I’ve got wired up there.

* A breadboard is a thing you can use to build up ’sample’ circuits. It’s kind of like testing for gauge in knitting; except a lot more essential to figure out if it’s going to blow up or even work when you put it together.

My first blog post of the new year! (And it’s a picture I took last year. Silly)

I have finished weaving towel #1, and am working on towel #2. The pattern is much easier to remember, and goes about 5 times faster. I’m almost half way done (click for a larger version):

I really like how this looks. It’s easy to weave and looks really neat.  Towel #3 is another more complicated pattern; we’ll see how I like that one.  I’ve got 6 towels to weave off in total;and I’ve already got my next weaving project in mind too (but not yarn yet – I think I’m going to spin it. Maybe).