I went looking for this info on the site but apparently when we moved to this location from the old Blog City address, it all squirted out into the ether. Hope that this is still helpful.

Still working on the needle characteristics summaries. In the mean time, here's something else somewhat useful - a cross-maker chart of needle sizes.

This chart lists modern needles only, and should hold true for both straights and circs of the same line made by the same manufacturer. I will keep adding manufacturers, plus I will also go through my collection of older needles and post sizes. But not today...
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KNITTING NEEDLES - PART VI: CIRCULAR LENGTHS - originally posted 23 June 2005

As promised, here's a chart showing the circular needle lengths available from commonly listed (and some not so commonly listed) manufacturers. I've compiled this from on-line catalog sources. In the case a manufacturer had a web page, that info trumped what I could find in catalogs. Centimeter equivalents are rounded off to the nearest whole unit, except for the 16" size. Various catalogs list 16" needles as being either 40 or 41cm.

Technorati : KNITTING

While my current work languishes, here's a picture of another past sampler. This one I stitched in 1996. It hangs in my husband's office:

Again most of the patterns are from The New Carolingian Modelbook, and the piece is a mix of plain old cross stitch, long armed cross stitch, and double running stitch, worked in DMC embroidery floss on 36 threads per inch linen (18 stitches per inch). The center twist is the same one I used on the knitted Knot a Hat earwarmer band. (It's also pictured on Ravelry.) You can see the difference in proportion between square unit based long-armed cross stitch, and the not quite square knitting stitch units. More rows to the inch than stitches across to the inch gives the knit version the slightly squashed appearance.

The quotation on this sampler is "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for the are subtle and quick to anger." From JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and totally appropriate for a software developer.

Technorati : blackwork, cross-stitch, embroidery, knitting, sampler

Work has a nasty way of eliminating any discretionary time whatsoever, but five minutes here and 20 minutes there, I have finally managed to finish the plume flower double running strip:

On to the next band of lettering, and on to thinking about what to do after that one is done. The current rate of production coupled with a workload that promises to double again in the coming month will give me ample time for that bit of consideration.

I hope to resume my explorations into charting software possibilities. I've got an itch to publish more patterns (including the just-completed strip), but without tools and time it's just not happening.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery

Charlotte asks about the colors of the bands on the Clarke's Law sampler. She says that each successive band looks lighter than the one before. I answer:

So far I've used only two colors of embroidery floss - DMC Red #498 and DMC Black #310. The top band was done in long-armed cross stitch, using two strands of red. Long armed cross stitch produces a particularly dense and raised texture.

Outlines on the grapes band were worked in double running stitch using two strands of the red, but the background grid filling was done in one strand - also in double running.

The current plume flower band is worked in double running using just one strand.

Between the relative densities of the various source patterns and the density of the working methods I've ended up with the progressively lighter look for each band even though all are worked using the same thread.

My plan for the rest of the bands is to do more of the double running work, choosing bands of different visual densities and working some but not all of them voided (with a background fill, but not necessarily solid). The next one will probably be somewhat closer in look to the grapes panel, but in between that and the current band in darkness. I will alternate bands of various densities with the black lettering. I've used plain old cross stitch for both the letters and the red embellishing squiggles that loop around the letters. If you compare it to the long armed cross stitch snippet above you can see the difference in coverage between the two.

When all of the lettering is done I'll consider working more long armed cross stitch. Depending on how much room is left on the cloth, I might just go for broke with one massively large pattern, working it voided, so that the piece has a nice dense anchoring segment at the bottom. Or there might be a couple of bands of progressively darker stitching leading up to it. I haven't chosen the patterns yet and I'm not sure exactly how much room I've got, so you'll have to stay tuned to see how it all works out.

To answer Ellis - the reason you can't see any lines drawn on on the linen for stitching over is because there aren't any. This piece is done on the count. I'm using the weave of the linen as my guide, copying patterns drawn out on graph paper, with each grid of the graph paper corresponding to square of 2x2 threads.

To answer Marya - if my pattern contains a straight line that spans two or more graph units I do not make one big stitch over all of them. I make an individual stitch for each grid unit, even if they are all in one straight line. This keeps the work neater and more true to the graphed original. Long stitches are also more likely to catch on things.

To answer [anonymous] who noted that all of these patterns seem to rely on just 90 and 45 degree angles - yes, you're right. I can't rule out totally that diagonals over a 1x2 grid unit weren't used (30/60 degrees), but so far I haven't found a historical piece that used them in this type of pattern. It's possible that some in-filled blackwork diaper patterns (the dark outline, different geometric filling variant seen below) used stitches at those angles, but I haven't had the luxury of examining enough historical works close-up to make that determination. Lots of modern blackwork does use those angles. But for me, I'll stick to the orthodox and limit my design to 45s and 90s.

Technorati : blackwork, cross stitch, embroidery

Apologies to the person out there anxiously awaiting the rest of my charting review series. I've had a serious attack of work obligations that has eaten into all time not spent sleeping. Even family maintenance has been scaled back. Blogging and research for blogging is right out. But for all of that, I do reserve to myself a half hour in the evenings for de-stressing. So I do have some progress to show on my Clarke's Law sampler:

When this band of plume flowers and branches is done I do the next line of text. At the current rate of life-obfuscation, I won't have to worry about picking the next band pattern for weeks yet to come.

Sigh.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery

I'm still working on my round-up of charting software reviews. I've got three or so more dedicated programs to try, and then I'll attempt to bend standard graphics programs to my use. In the mean time, work eats at my life. I did get a little bit of time to stitch while we were watching the Olympics yesterday. Here's the result of that hour plus the prior week's worth of dinking around on my Clarke's Law sampler:

Complex, but in a blocky, heavy-torso, post Renaissance way, kind of delicate. It makes the grape border above the line of text seem meaty by comparison. This strip is mostly reversible. Some small bits like the diamond in the center of the plume/flower's base and the bark texture lines are discontinuous, and I didn't bother to either start or finish off my threads invisibly. But with a bit of tinkering to norm the non-attached bits of detail, there's no reason why this pattern couldn't be worked totally two-sided.

For those of you who are thumbing through TNCM looking for this one, it's not in there. It's part of the set I'm grooming for the next book. If the investigations into a feasible charting method ever pay off...

Technorati : Embroidery, blackwork, counted-thread

Continuing my exploration of dedicated and general purpose software for use with my two great needlework passions - charted patterns suitable for counted thread embroidery (in specific - double running stitch) and knitting. Again I'm not testing one main feature of these programs - the ability to turn images including photos into needle-painted ready-to-stitch images. I don't care about that feature, although it's clearly the hook on which most of these programs hang their hat.

PC Stitch Pro v 9.01 by M&R Technologies

PROS: Standard features that one would expect - cross stitch, floss palette tied to major manufacturers offerings (in this case, in a companion program that allows color editing, but does not appear to allow one to mix across makers lines without direct finagling, or to blend colors - two features that Pattern Maker had). Includes back stitch, but not a separate straight stitch). Includes standard flipping/rotating/mirroring manipulations. Allows back stitch to be displayed in color. Allows printing pages with a selectable number of overlap columns so that navigation among multiple pages is easer. Allows auto-outlining of blocks of contiguous cross stitch with back stitch.

CONS: Selection is limited to rectangular areas (no free-form lasso), oddly called "select all" on the edit menu. The selection area can be resized as needed, and does select back stitches along with block units. Back stitch cannot be displayed with voids between individual stitches or by symbols that otherwise indicate beginning and ending of individual units. Back stitches can't be right-click erased like cross stitches or erased using the eraser tool, they need to be individually clicked on and removed using a pop-up window.

KNITTING AND CROCHET SPECIFIC USE: Can be used for standard colorwork mappings, and true type fonts (including the same knitting font mentioned yesterday) can be substituted for the symbol set. Symbols can be displayed on a color background and more than one symbol can be assigned to the same color. You can also override the program to assign more than one color to the same symbol. Like all graphing solutions not specific to knitting, there is no artificial intelligenge programmed in that would prevent building impossible to knit stitch configurations (this is rare even in the knitting world). Could handle block unit diagrams for linear filet or multi-color tapestry crochet, but even if one had a pre-made font for crochet symbols, this isn't well suited for stitch graphing.

VERDICT: Handy for cross stitch but unremarkable for my intended uses. I don't like the interface with the separate floss management program, or the way selection is handled.

Previous posts in this series are here, here and here.

Technorati : counted-thread, crochet, cross-stitch, embroidery, knitting

In the middle of this charting program exploration I have had time to do a bit on my Clarke's Law sampler. But first to answer a question. Aileen read my last couple of posts and wondered what I would consider a complex double running stitch pattern. I answer with pix of my current piece, plus a snippet of this pattern done up using Pattern Maker Pro, from yesterday's review.

The nickel shows scale (click for better size shots of each). This strip is stitched using one strand of DMC floss, color #498 on 32 count linen (16 spi). Not particularly fine, but fine enough to show the patterns. The entire stitched area is about 15.75 inches across. From the top of the dark red twining strip to the bottom of the the D of ADVANCED is about 8.6 inches.

The top strip and the cross stitch words were all done using two floss strands. The outlining of the motif in the wide grape strip was done using two strands, and the squared background was done using one. (I've since found historical precedent for the squared background treatment).

All of the strips between the words will be relatively light in value, done in some combo of plain or voided double running stitch, but they won't be as wide as the grapes (well, maybe the last one will be just to balance). I won't do another dark band in long armed cross stitch (either foreground or voided) until after the entire quotation is done. I think it will take another three bands of text before the whole quotation is complete. Then I'll fill out the cloth with a mix of styles, perhaps doing some in two-tone. It's all fly by night here. I'll also figure out something to eke out the line ends where the lettering comes up short. I think that NOT centering each line of text works better for my purposes, especially because I'm breaking text between lines in an unorthodox manner.

Now back to writing up the results of my stitch charting program explorations. Which for my knitting and crocheting readers, will have value. Either of the programs I described yesterday can be used to graph out colorwork repeats, or linear crochet (filet and tapestry styles). Pattern Maker Professional also allows you to assign a True Type knitting font (like the one from Aire River) to the symbol palette, and then using the program in symbols-on-graph mode, to compose knitting charts. Here's a sample from PM showing a simple double 1x1 twist cable:

Where this falls apart though for knitting is if you try to display both colors and textures at the same time. The purl symbol will always be associated with one chosen color, the knit symbol with another. Although you can override the program and display more than one symbol per color, this program links symbol and color in a way that you can't have multiple colors per symbol. Numbering rows is also problematic.

As I write up the rest of the sampled programs I'll include their potential for use by knitters.

Technorati : counted-thread, crochet, embroidery, knitting