VISIO KNITTING SYMBOL STENCILS, YET AGAIN
I’ve written about how I use Visio to graph my knitting charts before. Back in 2009 I reposted my original symbol set for what was then the latest version of Microsoft Visio. My original note about using Visio for graphing knitting dates back to 2005, although I was doing it for a quite a while before I wrote about it.
Microsoft Visio has evolved over the years. MS would tell us that this has been for our own good, and they’ve closed some pretty severe security holes in their Visio document formats that allowed entry of malicious code. That surgery has been so severe that the latest version of the program – part of the Microsoft Office 2013 suite – no longer accepts older file format stencils. But my graphing system, used to produce all of the knitting charts on this site was stuck in this older file format.
So. How to use the older stencils with the latest version of the program?
If you Google something like “Visio won’t open older file formats” you’ll find all sorts of advice. Some of it includes the intimidating step of editing your registry to bypass the security override.
I’ve done the work for you. Here is a ZIP file containing brand new stencils manufactured for Visio, MS Office 2013. It will work with the latest version, but not with older ones. The old-post links above will take you to pages where you can download the now-obsolete, earlier formats.
If you are lucky enough to have access to MS Visio (which is unconscionably expensive, but often available if you are a student, or have use of it via work) – you can now use my “tinkertoy” block building system to make charts like this:
For those of you who have other trusted stencils they need to resurrect and re-use with the latest version of the program, here’s what I did to rescue mine.
I found my original *.vss format files. I knew they were safe, containing no malicious macros.
Under the File tab, I clicked on “Options” in the blue bar at the left. On the pop-up Options menu, I clicked on “Trust Center” in the left hand menu bar. This opened a window with various privacy and security statements. In the main text area of that window, I clicked on the button “Trust Center Settings.”
This brought up yet another menu screen. I selected “Trusted Locations” and clicked on the “Add New Location” button at the bottom of that screen. I noted the default location Microsoft specified as the place where it first stores templates, and used that. I clicked “OK” to set trusted-status for that location, then kept clicking OK on the nested options windows to close them until I was back out at my main Visio window.
I copied my ancient *.vss stencils into the now trusted location that I had written down.
Visio could now open them, and I could use them, but I could not edit them, and saving the document could prompt dialog boxes keyed to the ancient stencil’s status. So I re-saved all of the stencil contents to the new *.vssx files you will find contained in the *.zip file above.
To do that, I used a drag-selection box to select all of the symbols in the available shapes sidebar, then right-clicked and chose “Add to My Shapes” from the pop-up action window. That pulled up yet another action dialog that gave me the option to save the selected shapes to a new stencil.
Yes, this is a long and overly technical post, but I do know there are a few folks who used my old Visio-based knitting notation system, who may have faced this problem. Now they have a work-around.
AN ACTUAL FINISHED PRODUCT
Yes, I do have lots of small ones, but I don’t make a lot of adult size sweaters, and even fewer for me. And even fewer of those are from commercial patterns. But this one is done:
This one ended up being an extremely quick knit. I used Sarah James’ Entrelac Pullover pattern. This is the second piece of hers I’ve knit up. The first was her Ribbed Leaf Pullover – a challenging bit entirely predicated on twisted stitches. Lots of twisted stitches.
This one was equally fun, but far easier. In essence, you knit four Entrelac panels; two small ones for the top of each sleeve, then one for the front and back of the sweater. Only the one in the front bears any shaping at the neck. A seed stitch panel is picked up along the long side of the sleeve panel, and knit longitudinally, using short-rows to add width at the top of the sleeve. That panel is joined to the other side of the sleeve Entrelac panel using a pick-up-and-knit-together technique, eliminating hand-seaming (although you could do it that way if you were timid).
The front and back fancy panels are joined at the shoulders, and a seed stitch panel is added right and left to bring the piece out to shoulder width and provide the desired total body size. Once those panels are done, the sleeves are sewn in and the side seams are done. Then cuffs, necklines and hem ribbing are added.
Because the piece is so square and boxy, adding extra width to the top size of 46” was easy. First, I used a slightly heavier yarn than indicated. My tiny bit bigger gauge gave me about an inch across the Entrelac. Then a couple of additional rows to the seed stitch panels made short work of the rest of the size adaptations.
My other change was the treatment of the ribbing. The pattern original advocates using the same variegated yarn as the body. Instead I chose solid black, as a framing element.
I am pleased by the the color play of Noro Taiyo – the yarn I used. However I strongly caution that this is not a good yarn for an inexperienced knitter, or for someone who doesn’t have the patience or inclination to tame it. Taiyo is a fluffy, multi-fiber single. It relies on over-spin for structural integrity. That means that the yarn kinks back on itself, twisting and tangling as one works. It also denatures quite easily. If you rip back and re-knit this yarn, you’ll have to re-introduce some of that twist, otherwise the strand will shred and break. Sewing up with it also introduces the counter-spin that shreds the strand. If you use this, spare yourself and find another yarn for seaming. In my case, I used Valley Yarns Berkshire for seaming and for all of the ribbing. Berkshire is a wool/alpaca blend single, roughly comparable in weight to Taiyo.
All in all, I am quite happy with the finished product. And even though it’s a very warm pullover, we still have lots of cold weather left in which to wear it.
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AND OLD AND NEW AGAIN
Sometimes we forget that not everything we do is original, unique or never-before done. Here’s a case in point from the world of needlework research, presented as an example that we are not unique, and as a mildly cautionary tale.
There are hundreds of folks out there delving into the historical needle arts – some to research and re-create the techniques, some to make investigation into the aesthetic, artistic, or symbolic aspects, and some to profile the creation and use of artifacts within their social and cultural context.
We are not the first to do this. I have stumbled across an article from June 1909, written by Kathrine Sanger Brinley, published in The Craftsman magazine – a product of the Gustav Stickley Arts and Crafts movement (and his commercial empire). That issue of The Craftsman is available on-line as part of the Digital Library for Decorative Arts and Material Culture, maintained by the University of Wisconsin.
The article is entitled “Needlework Designs from Old Paintings,” and describes Brinley’s observations on a tablecloth edging that appears in daVinci’s famous painting “The Last Supper.”
Her description is rather florid, although it is in keeping with the philosophical bent of The Craftsman. She concentrates on the embroidery on the tablecloth, and provides a black and white photo that appears to reveal slightly different detail of those panels than do modern photos. On the left is a snippet from her photo, on the right, a snippet of the original daVinci, as found on Wikipedia.
Brinley discusses a copy of the work, done by d’Oggiono, in the collection of the Louvre, but does not directly identify that copy as her source. D’Ogginio is considered to be one of daVinci’s personal pupils. I do not see a copy attributed to him listed in on-line sites detailing the original painting, nor do Louvre on-line searches turn it up, so I do not know if current scholarship still recognizes the piece.
Whether or not this piece has been discredited or lost, I can’t determine. I am no art historian, so I can’t say when in history Jesus’ feet were replaced by a door lintel. I can only observe that there are many more differences between the two than the presence of feet. In just this little snippet, the side figural band appears to have migrated from one side of the bread roll to the other. The modern photo also indicates the presence of a few more bands of patterning than does hers.
Brinley plunges full ahead with the assumption that the tablecloth’s patterning is embroidered, not woven, and attempts a reproduction of the design. Now to my eye, it’s more probable that the cloth shown was inspired by Perugia style weaving, and that it was not a depiction or conjecture of an embroidered textile. But let’s set that aside, too.
She posits a counted thread technique for the bands, due to their linear character (also an artifact of weaving), and cites the prevalence of cross stitch in Italian embroidery history. She concludes that the piece was originally worked in cross stitch, stroke stitch (aka double running), and point Lance (short, straight stitches); also double Italian cross stitch (which she calls out as double-sided cross stitch).
She gives a drawn diagram for the design, and displays her own flat frame, with its in-process snippet.
Interestingly enough, while she cites the work as being counted, her own renditions are not. They’re penciled onto the ground cloth and stitched free of count.
Having graphed over a hundred patterns of this type myself, I can say that if in fact the original was embroidered, Brinley’s chart is a probably a vast simplification of what the original design might have been. Even if the original was woven, how it is shown in the painting is not a photographic depiction. It is another victim of the fidelity and resolution that results when a fine stitched or woven piece is rendered in paint – especially when that detail is not central to the composition’s central subject.
So.
What we’ve got is a historical-historical embroiderer, bent on re-creating a pattern from what she believed to be a period artifact, and making an assumption that the original was stitched and not woven; and that the fidelity of the source painting was true. She went on to suppose that the piece was produced using methods contemporary with modern stitchery (informed by some historical examples). She created an eyeballed redaction inspired by the artifact and presented it as accurate; then rendered it using her own methods.
Is her chart faithful to daVinci’s original? I can’t say. Obviously, I am leaning towards a Perugia-style tablecloth and not a stitched one. I’m also not inclined to accept her design version as accurate. But I can say that I feel for her efforts, respect her attempt, and hope to avoid her pitfalls in my own redactions of other works.
GADGETS – THE HUMBLE BREAD TAG
I haven’t made a knitting gadget post in a long time. Here’s a frugal crafting tip, echoing something I posted in 2004.
Save those little, rectangular plastic clips that seal up bags of commercial bread, pizza dough, bulk food purchases, and other groceries. They are very handy for knitting and crochet. Here are some uses.
Stitch markers. Very obvious. All of the standard and exotic stitch marker tricks can be done with these, marking repeats, separating design panels, using them to delineate a group of stitches that will be added or decreased away, using them as an in line abacus to keep track of row or pattern repeat counts.
Progress tags. Like fancier plastic clip style closeable markers, tags can be fastened onto in-progress knitting to mark spots of interest, like centers of pieces to be matched together later while seaming. Because tags are larger than commercial clips, and disposable (in my house, a renewing resource like wire hangers), they can be written on with a Sharpie marker, for one-use notation.
Seam basters. Use the jaws of the tags to hold pieces together when seaming instead of pins.
And here you see another use: pick-up tracking. I have a lot of stitches to pick up along the edges of my current project’s center entrelac panel. The desired number works out to ten stitches per edge triangle. It’s very easy to lose track, an annoying to constantly repeat the count. But if I clip a tag onto the needle, pick up ten stitches after the tag, then I clip it and repeat, the process is relatively painless.
String-Or-Nothing 
