"
Store knitting patterns on your iPhone using Evernote. After trying for ages to find a practical way to use this slightly clunky desktop app/website/iPhone app, I’ve found it’s great for storing patterns I’m currently knitting. Sign up online and create a new note. (You can download the desktop app for either Mac or Windows, too.) Copy and paste the pattern text into your new note. You can even drag a picture into the note, too, which is great for cables/braids or even charts. Install the Evernote iPhone app, login in from your iPhone and you’ll see your pattern there. :-)
The Knitting Yarn Calculator is a tool for knitters. It helps you determine how much yarn you will need to buy to make a standard drop sleeve sweater based on the gauge and measurements that you enter. You enter your desired chest measurement, your stitch gauge and hit the calculate button. It will display how much yarn you need to make that size sweater. You can customize the application under the settings tab. This allows you to choose between entering stitches per inch or per ten centimeters for gauge, entering the chest circumference in inches or in centimeters, and you can also choose to display the result as yardage required or as meters required.The second part of this application is the Project Inspiration tab. Not sure what you should make for your next project? Have a color in mind but not sure what fiber to use? Just want to have fun spinning some wheels and daydreaming about all those fabulous projects you would love to make? The Project Inspiration tab has three wheels which you can spin independently to get a random result: the first is a list of colors, the second is a list of fibers and the third is a list of project types. You can even shake it to get a completely random result. Blue Merino Hat anyone?
Track stitches on your iPhone with Stitchminder. It’s a free app, and despite the slightly garish background of a blue ball of yarn, it works pretty well. Ironically, the preset column counts don’t have a heading for tracking stitches. Instead you can choose from column names like row count, increase/decrease row and pattern row. Make sure to set your Auto-Lock setting (Settings > General > Auto-Lock) to something like 5 minutes, so that you don’t have to unlock everytime you finish a row.
StitchMinder gives you four areas to work with, you tap them and the number increases by one. You can edit the label on each area to suit what you currently need to keep track of. Doing a hat with four sets of decreases? Label all the sections Decrease Row and tap after each decrease. You'll be able to see how many you've done. Set all the sections to count in descending order, and set the start number to the number you need to do, then tap away as you knit and you'll be counting down instead of up, which can be handy to see how much you have left (or simply for motivation). For each counting area you can choose a label - Rows Completed, Pattern Row, Pattern Repeats, Increase Row, Increase Repeat, Decrease Row, Decrease Repeat - so you can keep track of different areas of the pattern on the same screen. You don't lose your numbers if you close the application, turn off the phone or set it to sleep mode.
StitchMinder is not perfect though. There are Edit and Reset buttons right there next to the area you tap, it's far too easy to tap those by mistake and lose track completely. If you you enter the Edit screen your numbers will be lost when you return to the main screen, so Edit is really only meant for initial set up. The Reset button just sets the number to zero. There is no way to undo if you accidentally tap an area twice or tap the wrong area or accidentally reset.
This is what I'd like to see: One tiny Edit button to the right of each tap area which would take you to an Edit screen. You wouldn't lose your information when you return to the main screen. On the Edit screen could be a +1 and -1 button so you can adjust your current number if you need, I'd keep the initial set up options that you see now and place the Reset button at the bottom of this screen. I'd like the main screen to have a nice big Lock toggle button so that cats/children/other people bumping the screen couldn't cause you to lose your place. This could simply throw up a Pause screen like on a game.
As it is I don't see myself using StitchMinder much, it's too easy to lose track. Still, there is hope at the where knitting and iPhones collide.
update: The creator of StitchMinder wrote in to let us know that there will be a few updates to the app, including a confirmation message for the Reset button so you cannot lose your information so easily. Thanks!"
I will be watching for more reviews and waiting til a new contract for these and others but I think lovely!!! Thanks for sharing guys....
No comments:
Post a Comment