6/6/2021 Crispy!
As you might be able to tell from the last few posts, I've been going through my old patterns and updating them in various ways. The biggest change is that I've finally created a pattern template I'm happy with. Secondly, I'm uploading the patterns to the cloud for direct .pdf download so that they are available off of Ravelry as well. I'm also thinking of contributing them to crochetpatterncentral.com and knittingpatterncentral.com and possibly others. I'd like to reach as wide an audience as I can because I think a good thing, while subjective as to its goodness, is worth sharing widely. So now my patterns will all go into this template and it will be a cohesive collection. I think it looks nice and crispy, and I really like the way the colors, lines, and rounded corners all come together. Adam kindly designed the title page graphic for me when I asked him for one--or maybe it was actually his idea--it's been so long, I can't remember. He's also given me a lot of pointers while working in GIMP, the free and open-source graphics and photo-editing program, so thanks definitely go to him for helping me to get to the happy place where I am. Don't even get me started on the chart-making software he made for me when I asked him for it. It's one of those programs you use, and suddenly it's been 4 hours.
I've been working on this template off and on (mostly off) for maybe 8 or 9 years! Really just a cumulative 3-4 months, probably. I created it in LibreOffice Draw. LibreOffice is an office suite akin to Microsoft Office and is also free and open source. Draw can be a little quirky, for example, I can't find a way to turn off auto-capitalization, so when I'm listing stitch abbreviations, I type out "sc -- single crochet" and it corrects it to "Sc -- single crochet." That's really my only complaint for now. I recently updated my software and an old quirk that I would have complained about was fixed, so yay for that! Thanks programmers! For the curious, the quirk was that when I edited text in LibreOffice Writer (the word processor), the formatting (bold, font, font size, etc) would not carry over when I copied from Writer to a text box in Draw. It made the whole copied text bold and a different font, but now the formatting carries over! The "find and replace" function in Draw seems to have improved as well, almost negating the need for me to type up the patterns in Writer in the first place. I am certainly not an expert in all things "Draw," but I've swum a few laps by now, so if you have a graphics project for which you think Draw might be the right tool, don't hesitate to contact me if you need some help getting started.
In addition to the template, I've been changing the pattern lexicon to make it more concise yet thorough to eliminate potential guesswork. When I first started designing, I would write patterns up in the vintage way which are more like knitting patterns. For example, writing out how to start a row, writing out the pattern repeat, then saying to do the pattern repeat "to the end of the row, ending with..." and then writing out how to finish out the row...then saying to repeat such and such rows until the piece measures so and so. Instead, I write out how to start the row, write out the pattern repeat, specify how many times to iterate the pattern repeat, then instruct how to finish the row. This way, all stitches in the row are accounted for. Another thing I tend to not prefer in patterns is, for example, when Rows 1-3 are given individually then the next line just says, "Rows 4-6: repeat Rows 1-3." Then the next line says, "Row 7...". Sometimes, I end up accidentally skipping Rows 5 and 6 there, especially if instead of "Row 7," it says "Next Row." So I like to account for each individual row so that the crafter is certain not to miss a row. It's not that I don't like the vintage way of writing patterns, but I tested for Frank O'Randle for a few years, and he often called this vintage way of writing "lazy," and he liked to account for every stitch of every round. Then again, his patterns tend to be different from round to round, so no round is ever really repeated, and within each round, the pattern repeats can get pretty complex. He tends to have repeats within repeats within the main repeat. I don't necessarily agree with the "lazy" sentiment, but I'm glad to have been exposed to his style of pattern-writing as it allowed me to learn a more concise way of pattern-writing while maintaining detail and clarity. I don't necessarily think either way (vintage or Frank's style) is the right way absolutely for all patterns, so I will likely fuse the two when one or the other is not entirely appropriate to the pattern.
So that's what I've been up to every morning for the last week or so! I've still got about 6 more patterns to bring over, and one of them is a doozy! A blanket pattern that incorporates several different types of squares! That'll be a long one. On top of that, I've got a mountain of designs in my head just waiting for me to ski down. Now that I don't play Clash of Clans anymore or read articles on the web as much as i used to, I've been spending my time finally pursuing endeavors that got pushed to the side when I started doing those things. I tell ya, this pattern-writing is much more fulfilling, and I can't help but wonder where I'd be if I hadn't distracted myself for 5 years. Best not to dwell, though. Do what you love because you want to! Comments are closed.
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