Ravelry On-The-Go: Options for Mobile Ravelling

Last year I spent about six months without an internet connection, and one of the things I missed the most during that time was Ravelry. I had a phone that had browsers capabilities and an occasional 3G signal, but the functionality of Ravlery was lost on the iPhone, many features being too fiddly to use without great frustration.

On the surface, Ravelry works on the Safari browser built into the iphone in exactly the same way that it does on a computer browser, but at a much smaller scale. You can zoom in and out, but it's just too small to use comfortably and easily. One thing that isn't possible  via the browser is uploads from a mobile device. So though you might snap project pictures on the go, you cannot upload them to update your projects.

Over the past couple of months, work has started on a new mobile browser version of Ravelry, but work seem slow and for a long while seemed to consist of just one menu times telling the user to come back later. Whilst knitters waited for further developments, a new name appeared on the scene in the shape of Wooly.

Priced at £1.99 ($2.99 USD) the idea seemed promising. An app that allowed access to your projects, queue, friends list an a few other things. But that was all that it offered: access. An update was released yesterday that allows the user to upload (but with no option to delete again) pictures, but as yet the app totally lacks any functions to edit project details, add or queue new projects, or search the pattern or yarn databases for information on the go. The app is lacking in functionality as the things that you really want to be able to do whilst on the go are to make project notes on your current projects, to track any modifications, and to look up new yarns and patterns whilst out yarn shopping, or queue patterns recommended by knit meet friends. The Wooly app works like a glorified gallery. It doesn't even work very well as a 'read-only' way of accessing Ravelry, as without a search function, the scope of projects and pattern you can access is limited to your own and those of your listed friends.

In the meantime, Ravelry's own mobile app grew up and developed a few new interesting features.

The mobile site now allows for photo-uploading direct from the mobile device using a free, 3rd party app. It also features a simple pattern search feature and access to the Ravelry forums (though this is still in development and doesn't allow replying to threads, yet). Again, there is no way to edit project details, but the mobile site is still very much in development and hasn't been put onto general release yet (to access the mobile site you need to be a member of Ravelry's Beta testing subset of nerds on the Swatcher's group.) There is more functionality in the mobile site still in development than the released Wooly app.

And that's kind of the problem. The Wooly app may work well in the future, but it's just a shell at present and shouldn't have been released yet. It doesn't offer anything like £1.99 worth of functionality, especially with the Ravelry mobile site offering the same features (and more) for free. If the folks behind Wooly had released it as a fully-formed app, then maybe it would be worth the sum, but in its current form it feels rushed, broken and doesn't offer anything new. I would recommend that folks would be better off pointing their £1.99 or $2.99 towards the Ravelry donations page with a note of encouragement to Casey to continue with the good work on the mobile site.

Sorry for the sudden quietness last week. I started a new job a couple of days after receiving the offer, and as it all happened so quickly I never really had any time to organise myself. I shall sort out the announcement of the competition winners this Wednesday!

New Pattern PDFs and Pattern Page Available

Since I went through what we might call the 're-branding' of my site over these past three months I came to the decision that it was time to rejuvenate some of my pattern PDFs.

I had lost the original template that I wrote my old patterns with, so decided to start afresh with a new, clean, elegant look.

The old format (on the left) could sometimes be cramped and could lack space. The new format on the right presents all of the information in a more organised fashion. All of the new patterns I have recently published come in the new format, and I am re-formatting all of my past patterns, too, so keep an eye on your email and Ravelry inboxes for new versions of any past purchases.

The information in the re-formatted versions of past patterns remains the same, with the exception of updated contact information and website details, so there is no need to replace any printed versions you may have in your collection.

To accompany the new look PDFs I have updated the My Knitting Patterns section on the site to incorporate all of the recent new designs.

There is an integrated cart system which utilises Ravelry's own pattern purchase system to make patterns available via immediate download with the security of knowing that the purchase is being handled by Paypal. If you are logged in to Ravelry you can even add items to your cart on the patterns page and then either check out here or on the Ravelry site.

If you have not yet received an updated version of a past pattern, do not worry. It will take a few days to complete the re-formatting, and the new versions shall be with you in a matter of days, but do remember, the actual pattern instructions and information remains the same.

Pattern and FO: Confetti (Rose Pebble) Socks

People have been asking me when the Rose Pebbles sock pattern will be ready, and here it is. They have gone through a bit of a name change, and the pattern has been released under the name 'Confetti', because that will keep it appropriate to all different colours of variegated sock yarn.

I am incredibly pleased with this design and that I have finally found a way of making the most out of variegated yarn. It took a lot of experimentation and failed ideas to get to this design, and I can say that I am truly overjoyed with it, mostly because it opens up a world of possibilities for some sock yarns I never knew what to do with before.

The stitch pattern used in this sock plays around with the depth of knitted lines, so breaking up the variegated colours of the sock whilst also giving a slight texture to the socks.

These socks have been knitted with a contrast heel and toe, instructions for which are given in the pattern, but they could easily be made with the working yarn if the knitter prefers. I just like the contrast of the fancy sock and plainer heels and toes.

The stitch pattern is so stretchy and comfortable, they feel wonderful to wear and are great fun to knit. The pattern works up surprisingly quickly and there is a lot of satisfaction in watching the pattern work its magic with the yarn.

Confetti is available on Ravelry now for $4.00, or click the button below.

Pattern: Confetti by Mimi Hill

Yarn: Yarnyard Bonny in shade 'Strawberry Patch'

New Pattern and FO: Lateral

Here's a fantastic little project for a single 50g ball of self-striping yarn such as Crystal Palace Mini Mochi. These fun little fingerless mitts are knit sideways on for a change to the usual mitten construction. They can then either be Kitchener stitched closed, or finished with either a three needle bid-off or bound off and seamed up. 

The thumb is knit in the round and sits at a natural angle to the hand, so they are very comfortable. The stripes on the thumb remain parallel to the stripes on the hand to keep the design very clean and lots of fun to knit. They can of course be knit without the stripes, but the stripes help to highlight the unusual construction.

The pattern for the Lateral Mitts is available on Ravelry for $4.00

Pattern: Lateral by Mimi Hill
Yarn: Crystal Palace Mini Mochi in shade 'Neptune Rainbow'

FO and Tutorial: Polymer Clay Shawl Pin

When I was designing and knitting my Nympheas scarf I decided that I wanted it to be as versatile as possible. The yarn was warm enough to keep off the chills but the pattern had enough drape and was lacy enough to make it a perfect summer knit, too. I wanted the knitting to act both as a casual scarf and an elegant stole, and decided that I needed a shawl pin.

I have never owned a shawl pin, and they are too expensive for me to want to purchase one, but this blog isn't called Eskimimi Makes for no reason.

So, out came some scraps of polymer clay, and this shawl pin was born.

To make your own you will need small amounts (¹⁄₈ to ¹⁄₄ blocks) of polymer clay in three or four colours and a small stick with a tapered (but not sharp) end. A spare 3-4mm Bamboo or wooden DPN would be fantastic for this, or a piece of thin dowel sanded to a rounded point would suffice.

Note: I didn't actually have a DPN or similar item available nearby, so will pick up something from the hardware store. I have made a makeshift 'stick' out of polymer clay, which works well enough for the purposes of taking the shawl photos, but might not be sturdy enough for everyday use.

I chose four colours for my shawl pin, to match the colours of my yarn. A beige colour, a light pistachio, pearlescent blue and gold, but choose whatever colours please you. Roll each of the colours into 'logs' of polymer clay. If you have larger quantities of some colours, split the polymer clay into two and roll multiple logs of those colours. The important thing is to keep them all the same length. Diameter is not important.

1. Press the pieces of clay together, and begin to gently squeeze them to form one single log of colour - try to keep each of the colours visible on the outside.
2. Begin to roll this log gently, so the clays begin to blend together.
3. After a little while you may realise that you loose sight of some of the colours. Take a sharp craft knife and slice down the length of your clay to reveal the marbling inside. Press the rounded 'outside' edges of clay to each other to form a new log with the marbling in the outside, fold in half lengthways and roll into a fatter 'sausage shape.
4. Press this sausage shape into a ball of clay.

1. Roll clay along the 'grain' of your marbling until it is 2.5mm thick.
2. Draw your desired shape for your finished shawl pin onto a piece of paper and cut out. Aim for a shape that is about 6-7cm long for a shawl pin meant to hold a fingering weight shawl. You may wish to make a larger pin for heavier/bulkier shawls and scarves. I decided on a shape similar to a guitar plectrum - I didn't plan it that way, it was just what I happened to cut, but you could go for a circle, oval, or something else all together.
3. Place your paper template onto your clay and cut around it with your craft knife.
4. Use a finger to run around the edges, smoothing out any knife marks and rounding the edges for a nice finish

1. Cut a hole in the centre of your shawl pin. It should be between 4-5 cm long. I shaped mine into an oval, but you could choose a circle or other similar shape. 
2. You may also wish to make matching finials for the 'pin' of your shawl pin. Small pieces of your marbled clay will set the finished item off lovely. Press clay around the end of your wooden stick/DPN and shape as desired. I used a stick of clay but it is recommended that you find something a bit sturdier (see note above)
3. Use a toilet roll inner tube to bake your clay on. This will give it the necessary curve whilst hardening. I wanted a slightly tighter curve than the cardboard tube allowed, so I cut a slit down the length and rolled it a little tighter using two small clothes pegs to keep it in place. I also rubbed a little pearlescent mica powder on the surface of the pin at this point, to give the finished item an extra little effect. Bake clay according to manufacturers instructions and leave to cool before wearing. Varnish if desired.

New Pattern and FO: Nympheas Lace Scarf

Nympheas is a brand new pattern from Eskimimi Makes. This beautiful lace scarf is made from a single skein of 4-ply/fingering weight yarn and blocks into a beautifully sized scarf, 30cm (12") wide and a generous 180cm (6ft) long.

The lace texture is perfect for a summer knit to keep off the breeze whilst being airy enough not to be too warm around the neck. Texture is added to the lace pattern by the raised stitches that run up the centre of each motif, giving the lace pattern dimension as well as a beautiful outline.

The scarf can be worn wrapped casually around the neck, or, due to the width of the finished piece of knitting when blocked, worn around the shoulders as a stole for special occasions, perhaps fastened with a beautiful shawl pin.

The pattern comes with both written and charted instructions, and can easily be made wider or narrower by increasing or reducing the number of main pattern repeats worked. The garter stitch edges add a little extra texture whilst mirroring the undulating sides of the main lace pattern beautifully.

This pattern makes fantastic use of a single skein of sock yarn that is perhaps too beautiful to stay hidden in shoes.  It can be dressed up, or simple thrown on for an elegant touch to casual jeans and a top. I have made a matching shawl pin to go with mine, and I will write up a tutorial for making simple but pretty polymer clay shawl pins tomorrow.

Nympheas is available to purchase for $4 via Ravelry, or directly via the button below (no Ravelry account required).

Pattern: Nympheas by Mimi Hill of Eskimimi Makes
Yarn: Yarnscape Dance in the colourway 'New Growth'

Creative Photography Contest Winners

Congratulations to Crafts from the Cwtch, winner of the Creative Photography Contest Award with their entry, Pixie Winslet.

The votes were close, but Crafts from the Cwtch just pipped the other entries to the win.

Crafts from the Cwtch wins the beautiful Creative Photography Prize from Fyberspates and donated by Jeni Hewlett herself, a skein of hand-dyed Sheila's Sock yarn (shown in petrol blue). 

In second place, Crea in the City wins the amazing crocheted clock from CrocheTime on Etsy for her entry, A Yarny Hair Day, and Bear Ears' Dark Side of the yarn wins a beautiful duo of handmade cold process soaps from Kismet's Companion on Folksy. 


I will be contacting each of the winners tomorrow. For now, congratulations to all who took part, the standard of entry was very, very high. 

Blocking The Lace Scarf

For some reason, I absolutely adore blocking things. I don't mean I love my knits to be blocked nicely, as I'm sure everyone loves that, but more that I love to wash and squeeze the water out of my newly finished knits, then spend forever pinning them out into perfect dimensions.

Maybe it is because it is the flush of success at having completed the knitting and bound off, or perhaps it is the joy of seeing beautiful knits shaped into perfection, but I love to make sure that every stitch is in place.

Until now I have battled with hundreds of pins at a time, but I have always fancied some blocking wires to make the job not only easier, but also more precise in creating lovely, straight lines.

Point number one: These are not blocking wires. Rather, they are welding rods. Purpose-made blocking wires are just too expensive at the moment, and though I had heard of people using welding rods to great success, I wouldn't have had a clue which ones to look for until Viv of Kismet's Companion pointed me in the direction of this eBay auction where I picked up 20 of the 50cm rods for £3.99, and they work perfectly. They could do with a little rub with some sandpaper to round off the clipped edges, but as I don't have any at the moment that is a job that shall have to wait.

For now, they have been pressed into action, keeping the edges of this 170cm long scarf well tamed and perfectly straight, with the use of only a dozen or so pins, rather than the 200 or more that it would usually have taken me.

And to add to my happiness, this pattern should be ready by Monday!

FO: Dual Striped Baktus in Blackberries

I have rarely (never?) knit the same pattern twice before, but something about a zauberball just asks a knitter to play with the shifting colours, and a Baktus scarf is a simple and yet effective way of allowing you to do that. I loved knitting both of my Baktus scarves, because a Baktus is one of those 'oh, just bung something in the oven' type projects that always come out looking marvellous. I knit this triangular along the same principles as my Regnbue Baktus, but with a little variation on the striping.

With this version I decided to knit one half of the scarf in two-row garter stitch stripes, with the second half of the scarf being knit in four-row stripes. The colours blend together a little more on the two-row stripes, with the wider stripes giving a bolder contrast between areas where two colours meet.

I used the same increasing and decreasing methods as for my last Baktus, because I find that it gives a neater edge. On the four-row sections I carried the unused yarn under the working yarn, down the edge, to keep it twisted snug against the knitted fabric. To knit the Baktus from a single ball of yarn I wound it into a centre-pull ball and knit from each end, though last time I managed by winding the yarn into two equal-length/weight balls before beginning.

If we imagine that each of the two ends of yarn is a separate ball, yarn a and yarn b.

c/o 4 sts.
Rows 1 and 2: (yarn a) Knit until last stitch, knit last stitch through back loop
Row 3: (yarn b) Knit until last stitch, kfb
Row 4: (yarn b) Knit until last stitch, knit last stitch through back loop

I repeated the above four rows until my scales told me that I had used just under half of my yarn, and then I continued as follows:

Rows 1 and 2: (yarn a) Knit until last stitch, knit last stitch through back loop
Row 3: Pass yarn a under yarn b to twist them together. (yarn a) knit until last 2 stitches, slip 1 purlwise, knit last stitch through back loop, pass slipped stitch over.
Row 4: (yarn a) Knit until last stitch, knit last stitch through back loop
Rows 5 and 6: (yarn b) Knit until last stitch, knit last stitch through back loop
Row 7: Pass yarn b under yarn a to twist them together. (yarn b) Knit until last 2 stitches, slip 1 purlwise, knit last stitch through back loop, pass slipped stitch over.
Row 8: (yarn b) Knit until last stitch, knit last stitch through back loop.
Until 4 sts remain.

I used a larger sized needle than I did for my first Baktus, and was a little more daring with my yarn usage, only giving myself a 2g lee-way with my precise miniature digital scales, but this was a good decision as it yielded a scarf that was 180cm (6ft) long when blocked.

The scarf has more drape than my first Baktus, which I think is a combination of the larger needle and the yarn Though they are both made from zauberball yarn, this scarf uses the single ply Zauberball whereas my first scarf used the two-ply 'crazy' zauberball, the structure of which seems to have a bit more body and less drape. I'm really glad to find this as the two scarves have two very different looks, even if you do not take into account the vastly different colour schemes.

Pattern: Baktus Scarf by Strikkelise
Yarn: Schoppel-Woolle Zauberball in Blackberries

3KCBWDAY7 - Crafting Balance

3KCBWDAY7 - Crafting Balance

Are you a knitter or a crocheter, or are you a bit of both? If you are monogamous in your yarn-based crafting, is it because you do not enjoy the other craft or have you simply never given yourself the push to learn it? Is it because the items that you best enjoy crafting are more suited to the needles or the hook? Do you plan on ever trying to take up and fully learn the other craft? If you are equally comfortable knitting as you are crocheting, how do you balance both crafts? Do you always have projects of each on the go, or do you go through periods of favouring one over the other? How did you come to learn and love your craft(s)?

I would say that I am primarily a knitter  someone who enjoys knitting, and my Ravelry projects page reflects this, with 94 of my projects having been knitted, four crocheted and one project, the cthulhu ski mask, being a knitted and crocheted collaboration.

When I first started out playing with yarn my choice was not so distinct as all four of my crocheted finished items were in my initial ten projects. My first pattern uploaded to Ravelry was a crocheted piece, my Self-Designing Scarf, a simple piece in a single stitch which rather than using complex or interesting stitches to create the design, employed a way of working a yarn with long stretches of slowly emerging colour to best effect.

I have often wanted to explore crochet a bit more in-depth, but it does seem that all the crocheted projects which catch my eye are rather large in scope - beautiful blankets and throws which would take me ages to make - so I never get started. I have often wondered if a few toys would be my best way into appreciating crochet a bit better. I am not a great toy maker, partly because I have nobody - no children or friends with children to give them to, and I don't want to clutter up our space at home with toys everywhere, though I did fall a little bit in love with the expression on my crocheted manta ray's face before I managed to lose him one day.

So, good people of the blogosphere and beyond - can you recommend a future project for me? I tell you what I do have: About 250g/330m of the aran weight yarn I used to make the cthulhu ski mask with. It's a dark mossy green colour as you can see from the top picture - can anyone think of a fun (and not too difficult) project for this yarn?


To read all about how others taking part in Knitting and crochet blog week balance their knitting and crochet, simply perform a Google search for the tag 3KCBWDAY7, or click here.