Stitch 'n Bitch: The Knitter's Handbook (32 page)

GET THE WORD OUT
:
Let the world know about your group by setting up an e-mail list online that makes it easy to e-mail everyone at the same time (
yahoogroups.com
offers a good way to do this, as do some other Web servers). Go to
www.stitchnbitch.org
and get your group listed on the Web site. Then, see if your local knitting shops will let you post notices about the group. Include the time, place, and the e-mail address for signing up and getting info. If you’re active on any Web-based bulletin boards and think the members are right for your group, post the information there as well. And of course, if you see someone on the bus or in your local bar who’s knitting, ambush her and invite her to join.

STAY REGULAR WITH FIBER
:
No matter what evening you choose, there will always be a few people who won’t be able to make it—so don’t drive yourself crazy trying to please everyone. Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday nights are your best choices. We start our meetings at 7:00
P.M
., since that gives people enough time to get there after work, without a lot of empty time in between. Once you’ve decided on a time and place, try not to change it. Since many members of Stitch ’n Bitches won’t come every week, it’s good to establish yourself at the same Bat time and the same Bat channel every week—it makes it easier for people to show up whenever they can make it.

The KnitList is a great source of knitting info, but for more personal content, I recommend reading any of the ever-expanding crop of Weblogs dedicated to the subject. Weblogs, or “blogs” for short, are online journals created by folks who are willing to share their lives and experiences, diary style, with Internet users worldwide. Reading a person’s knitting blog, where she has posted, often on a daily basis, information about her current knitting projects, her current knitting challenges, and, frequently, pictures of her completed projects (or works in progress), can be a really intimate experience. Many Weblogs are interactive, with space for visitors to leave comments. Today there are well over a hundred knitting Weblogs, and more are being created every day—just type “knit blog” into any Internet search engine to find the current batch.

It isn’t hard to start a Weblog of your own—you can set one up for free at
www.blogger.com
, or you can download software to help you create a blog on your own Web server at
www.movabletype.org
. Having a digital camera (or access to one) is also helpful, since putting up pictures of your projects is one of the coolest things about blogging, and it also makes your site more interesting to readers. And once you’ve got it set up, adding an entry is about as easy as writing an e-mail.

The Internet is a great source of free knitting patterns.
About.com
’s
knitting site (
www.knitting.about.com
) has a ton of them, many (but not all) of which are accompanied by photos. The
KnitList’s
Web site (
www.knitlist.com
) contains the many patterns that are contributed each year to a knitting “giftlist”—contributions from the members of the KnitList for everything from afghans to washcloths to mittens and sweaters. Then there’s the spankin’ new online knitting magazine
Knitty
(
www.knitty.com
), which has awesome free patterns contributed by some of the hippest chicks on the net. And don’t forget to do a simple Google search for any knitting pattern you might be hunting. Putting in the words “free legwarmers knitting pattern” brings up quite a few sites that contain such a pattern, and simply typing in “free knitting patterns” brings up over six thousand matches.

There are also a couple of sites that actually make use of the main function that computers were invented for—computing!—on their pages. These sites let you type in certain numbers, press a button, and whammo—they spit out instant, customized patterns. Here are a few to try:

C
REATE
Y
OUR
O
WN
G
RAPH
P
APER

www.thedietdiary.com/knittingfiend/KnittersGraph.html

Since knit stitches are wider than they are tall, if you want to sketch a picture of your boyfriend to knit on your sweater, you’ll need to do it on what’s called “knitter’s graph paper”; otherwise your beau will knit up short and fat. On this page, you can enter your yarn gauge, then generate paper that’s the actual size you need.

G
RAPH
P
APER
PDF G
ENERATOR

www.tata-tatao.to/knit/matrix/e-index.html

This Web page basically does the same as the previous site, but it also allows you to print the paper at a reduced size. But what’s even cooler is the fact that it generates the paper as a PDF file, which means you can save it on your computer and print out as many sheets as your heart desires.

C
USTOM
D
OG
S
WEATER

www.thedietdiary.com/cgi-bin/chart_dog.pl

Just type in your dog’s measurements, and your yarn gauge, and this page will generate instructions for a form-fitting frock for Fifi.

T
HE
S
WEATER
M
ACHINE

www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/liz/sweater.html

Amazingly simple, this Web page only asks that you decide on a style for your sweater (bottom-up or top-down drop-sleeve, or top-down raglan) and choose a size, and it pumps out a pattern for you.

T
HE
S
WEATER
P
ATTERN
G
ENERATOR

www.thedietdiary.com/knittingfiend/OrderForms/Top Form.html

Much more complex than the Sweater Machine, this page lets you choose from a wide variety of sweater styles and also requires that you enter a good amount of information before it will give up the goods—that is, a custom pattern.

T
HE
S
OCK
C
ALCULATOR

www.panix.com/~ilaine/socks.html

This lovely page lets you enter your yarn gauge, the length you want your sock to be, and certain measurements from your foot (such as calf and ankle circumference and foot length), then produces a pattern that’s perfect for your peds.

T
HE
S
CARF
P
ATTERN
C
ALCULATOR

www.girlfromauntie.com/patterns/clothing/yasp/yasp2.html

The Girl from Auntie makes scarves even easier with this page for generating a pattern for a striped scarf in stockinette stitch. You choose how wide and how long you want your scarf, whether you want stripes lengthwise or widthwise, and enter your stitch gauge. Make a pattern for a long, skinny scarf or a short, fat one—the scarf generator doesn’t care, as long as you’re happy.

While those Web sites can get you started generating patterns, they are very limited as to what you can make. Happily, there are a number of computer programs out there that can help you design a much greater variety of projects, even if you’re not a designer.

Programs such as
Stitch Painter, AranPaint
, and
Stitch & Motif Maker
allow you to create and print out complicated stitch patterns for your projects incorporating colorful designs and textures such as cables, braids, and bobbles. Stitch Painter will even take a digital image and transform it into an intarsia knitting chart.

Other programs, such as
DesignaKnit, Sweater Wizard, Garment Styler,
and
Garment Designer,
let you generate patterns for knit sweaters—and even knit skirts—of your own creation. Garment Designer, for instance, will make you feel like you’ve died and gone to knitter’s heaven. Say, for example, you walked by your favorite shop and saw an awesome tunic hanging there, with bell-shaped sleeves, a bit of a fitted waistline, and a wide boat neck. You know you could knit it yourself, and you even know that you have some yarn at home that would look great done up in that style. But where on earth will you find a pattern for a sweater exactly like that? Even if you did find one, there’s no guarantee it would be designed to work with the yarn you have.

Enter Garment Designer (
www.cochenille.com
). With a piece of software like this, you can rather quickly pull together a pattern for that exact sweater—choose the style, the sleeve type, how the sleeves are set in (raglan, drop shoulder, or shaped), the length, the fit (loose or fitted), the size, and even the gauge of the yarn you want to use. Then, just like a fairy godmother, Garment Designer will pump out the pattern for you, with the instructions written out all nice-like with little schematics you can refer to as you knit. The possibilities are endless, making Garment Designer a great and fun toy for grown-up girls. (At $165 it’s a bit pricey, though, so you might want to remember it when your next birthday rolls around.)

Of course, a Stitch ’n Bitch is a great way to get together with the gals and knit your little hearts out. But sometimes you need a little extra guidance from the experts—and more than you can get
from all those Web sites. That’s when it’s time to hook yourself up with a local or national knitting guild.
The Knitting Guild of America
(TKGA) offers conferences and even knitting correspondence courses (how old school!) to help you learn to become a Master Knitter. They send you instructions, you send in swatches and essays, and their panel of knitting experts reviews your work and either awards you the certificate or makes you do it over again. Their Web site (
www.tkga.com
) also lists all the local branches of the guild—which are, essentially, high-end or more serious versions of Stitch ’n Bitch groups. Some of them, like New York’s Big Apple Knitting Guild, offer classes, field trips, and a lending library.

But TKGA isn’t the only group that organizes conferences:
Knitter’s
, a magazine published by XRX, Inc., holds
Stitches
conferences, big old meet-ups for knitters of every persuasion, a few times a year in a variety of locations: East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest. In the summertime, they even have something called Camp Stitches (
www.knittinguniverse.com
). I’ve been to Stitches East the past two years, and I have to say that it’s the funnest thing ever. Grab your girlfriends and share a hotel room: This is a weekend that’s jam-packed with classes, shopping, and even a banquet and fashion show. Not only do you get to meet and learn from the most famous knitters out there (yes, they exist), but you also get to spend a few days doing nothing but talking and thinking about knitting. Yay!