Lately I've had a couple of nice e-conversations with people about living in England and actually knitting on the Cam, and was thinking fondly of those days and those connections. So I was warmed up, so to speak, when I received a note from Mary (no relation... but do we perhaps need a Knitting Mary webring? Also, her blog is called Quite Contrary, which is the best Mary blog name). She knows Liz, which is where the connections come in.She had read this post, in which I hint at previous dissatisfaction with making something nice with the usual fall colours palette. And she pondered this for a while, and came up with this post. We were all wowed here with the Photoshop, because I just take a picture, maybe crop it in Picasa, and stick it up. Who knew, but we have Photoshop on the downstairs computer -- the "kid computer"... Last night we had a wild time with filters and stuff, crystalizing and blurring. I know, you were all photoshopping years ago... but I wasn't! Now I just need to get the recent pictures and the Photoshop in the same place...
Now, the bit about needing some help. I made a sweater from Stephen's data. It's just a plain old rectangular cardigan with a V-neck, but what makes it special is the band of chaotic swirls knitted around it. When I was knitting it, I carried around with me a large print-out, 400+ stitches long, and I highlighted and crossed out and folded over, to help me know where I was on the swirly chart. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a woman who wants to knit the sweater, but she is blind. She says if she has a Word document, that'd be fine, and I assume the computer "reads" it to her, but I don't know. So, my question is: How do I get this data into a form she can use, without sitting and translating and typing, 4 black, 7 white, 3 black, 1 white... for several 400-stitch rows? Eh?
Erm, not too sure. It the chart made up of coloured blocks or symbols? If it were symbols which were used in word processing, you could scan it, then use text recognition software to generate a Word document and then a find and replace operation to turn say @ into Black. But if it's coloured blocks, I don't know. Can you employ some minions, i.e. Arthur and Elaine? :-)
ReplyDeleteI vote to have Arthur chart it! Sorry, aside form that I can't be of much help.
ReplyDeleteI would check back with the knitter to see what she recommends you provide in terms of notation. She may be able to guide you so you don't end up going down one path only to find out that it doesn't work for her. You could ask her to send you a word file of other patterns so that you can use them as a template. Please keep us posted - this is fascinating to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad that you were able to have fun with Photoshop.
ReplyDeleteOften I work out colour combinations by instinct, and then play a bit with images to double check.