Knit Smarter, Not Harder with knitCompanion!

Hi, everybody. Welcome to our live event. My name is Brenda Kaby Anderson. I am a knitting and crocheting instructor and designer. And today, I am here with Sally Holt, who's the inventor and creator of KnitCompanion.

And we are very excited today to have a live event with you guys, talk a little bit about KnitCompanion, talk a little bit about technology, and also field any questions you guys may have. So you can go ahead and put your questions in the chat box, and I will be manning the, the chat box over here and relaying the questions. And we can get those answered for you during this live event. So let us know if you have questions. So for those of you who don't know, KnitCompanion is an app that helps knitters, and also crocheters, keep track of where they're at in their pattern.

So this is great for anybody who works from a PDF-style pattern. And it really, really, Okay, I have to tell you guys, I am, like, technologically, not very advanced, and I'm very afraid of learning new technology, and I, I'm like the poster child for the person who you would want to ask all the questions if you're like me, okay? So I'm here to represent all of you guys, and I'll be asking, Sally to show us some, some s- you know, show us how KnitCompanion works and all that. And I'll, also, I'll be asking her some questions myself. Okay.

Well, welcome, Sally. So KnitCompanion has been around for about 15 years now, which is kind of a long time. Um- It's shocking. Yeah. A long time.

So I was wondering, first of all, if you could just tell us how it started. Sure. So, I guess that means I've been around for 15 years doing this as well. So, but before that, I, you know, went to college and got a degree in computer science and actually worked in the tech industry for a lot of years, mostly at startup companies, which I actually really loved doing. And at the time that I started kind of dreaming about KnitCompanion, we actually, didn't have tablets, so as a knitter, I was doing a lot of traveling for work, and as my knitting was evolving, I wanted to be able to do, like, the cabled coniferous mitts that we're looking at here.

I wanted to be able to do those on the airplane instead of just, like, something more vanilla like a generic sock. I wanted something a little bit more challenging. And the problem I had was portability of my pattern and the way that I would track the pattern. So if I used a magnet board and I You know, they make the ones that are small, and they fold up. But if that, you put that in your bag, it's gonna kinda shift around some, and maybe you aren't gonna be able to stay quite where you need to be in terms of where the magnet is on your chart.

And sticky notes fall off and things like that. So I was kinda getting to the point where I had a chair in my house, and I was starting to knit, like, larger format things where I had to cut out different pieces of charts and stick them together to have a full row. So I had a cookie sheet with, long magnets that I was using for those big patterns to keep track where I was. Smaller magnet boards for smaller size patterns like these mitts. But I really, that wasn't super portable to take- Out of the house.

You can't just take your cookie sheet with you? You can't take your cookie sheet with you on an airplane. On the airplane. I don't know why. That really irritates everybody around you on the airplane when you set up like this- big cookie sheet on the- Excuse me on the tray table Just put it on the next- Yeah person's lap over there.

Yep. You know, hey- It's okay could you just hold this for the next four hours for me? So- It'll be worth it. This is a really great shawl. Yeah.

So, here, you can touch the yarn if, as a- to thank you for holding it. Okay. So, so I wanted to be able to take stuff with me. Mm-hmm. And I was at the first Sock Summit in 2009, and there were no tablets.

There were phones. The iPhones and stuff had just come out, but there really wasn't a tablet form factor yet, but there were the original Kindle book readers, those old black and white. They're, they're still around- Mm-hmm but the old original book readers. And you could get some limited patterns for them. Like, people had some pattern books for them.

And there were folks in line waiting to get into the marketplace, as we all did, like this huge line of people, like a big rush of people. And, there were a couple spots ahead of me, folks had a Kindle, and they were literally taking sticky notes and sticking them on their screen. And, you know, that kinda gives me I don't know, I have OCD or something. That gives, like, sticky on a screen just gives- Yeah me a little bit of an eh. But, I was like, but, you know, that's not a bad, 'cause you can have a book on there.

You can have your knitting patterns on there. Mm-hmm. But also coming from the tech space, I'm like, gosh, there's really gotta be a better way to do that, right? Uh-huh. And the timing was perfect 'cause that was, I can't even remember what time of year it was, 2009.

2010, Apple came out with the first original iPad. And I was like, "Oh my gosh," because when they did that, they took a lot of the capabilities they built for the Mac, like PDF- Mm-hmm stuff you can do to PDFs. They took a lot of that stuff that was on the Mac, and they just wholly moved it over to the tablet format. So unbeknownst to Apple, they actually moved over all of the PDF manipulation stuff that w- I really needed to be able to put something like KnitCompanion together, and we'll get into that as we do this. Uh-huh.

But, I saw that, and I was like, okay, there's a color screen. It can work with any pattern. Yep. And I can, you know, put out an app. And at the time I put out KnitCompanion, that first version, it was wildly expensive.

We were still paying 10 cents for a ringtone. That was approximately what we were willing to spend- Oh my gosh on a mobile device, was 10 cents for a ringtone, and I put out an app that was $16.00. And you would have thought I got comments like, "We're knitters, not yachters." Oh. And all these kind of comments. Oh my gosh.

And I was like, okay, but it took us a year and a half to build this, and we're just getting started. Like- Uh-huh you look at that original version of KnitCompanion versus now, it's like 18 times bigger than it was and does- Yeah so much more and is so much more powerful than it was. Mm-hmm. But I was like, you know, this is, like, this is basically free. But- Mm-hmm it's all perception and it's all where you're coming from.

But that's really where knitCompanion came from. Yeah. So- Well, I have to say, like, I could tell, Okay, just for all of you out there, when I was first asked if I wanted to do this live event, I'm like, "Oh, you have the wrong girl. Like, I don't know anything about technology. I'm nervous." But then I went to the website and I looked at it and I was like, "Whoa, this is, this is, this is like answering all of the questions that I didn't even know that I had already." Like, there's It's so organized, and I could tell, like, immediately looking at it, I'm like, "Oh, whoever made this is a knitter." Like, they're actually addressing This isn't just, like, a technology thing s- like, "Let's make some money off knitters." This is, like, made by You can just tell that it's made by a knitter because- Yep all of the things.

I mean, we all have such common struggles, you know, like our, our markers slipping off, we forget what row we're on, we, we don't like it when there's a chart on one page and, and half of the chart's on the other pa- you know, there's- Yeah all these things that we have in common as knitters, and I just went to that site and I'm like, "Oh, this is someone who actually is a knitter and who knows what we want." Right. It was amazing. Right. Yeah. And it's funny because I always joke, I'm, I'm Starting knitCompanion, it was definitely partly out of my own frustration.

Mm-hmm. And of course, you know, I wanted to get out of kind of the rat race that was tech, and still is, even worse now maybe than ever. But I, I wanted out of that, but I also wanted to use it. I mean, I had 25, 30 years of experience at small tech startup companies. I wanted to use and leverage that, right?

Yeah. So, so, you know, of course it's a business and I need to be able to pay my mortgage and keep the business running and all those kinds of things, so it's of course a business and it has to make money. But ultimately, like, I really also wanted a tool that was gonna solve the problems that I had. Yeah. Personally, like, very selfishly, I wanted something that was gonna solve my problems.

And I will say, the first version, one of the things I know we talked about before, was, was what are some of the things that changed? So personally, I like charts. I'm, I'm a chart girl, and we'll talk as we go through this about some of the challenges with charts that, or, or the, like, legit problems with trying to use charts. Mm-hmm. But, I was always a chart girl, like, just a long string of abbreviated I call it assembly code 'cause I'm a programmer, but- mm-hmm like, a bunch of abbreviated stuff with comments in between, and you're supposed to keep your eyes on your knitting but also be able to track along that row.

Yeah. Like, that was not for me. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so the pictures for charts was really made a lot of sense to me.

Oh, yeah. So I kind of, as a knitter, personally skipped right over written instructions. Mm-hmm. Like, I went from knitting lace and garter stitch to using charts. I never used written instructions.

And so the first version of knitCompanion basically was like, m- what are you talking about, written instructions? Nobody uses those. And so- you know, that was 15 years ago in Maricopa, right? But that was a big learning thing for me. So now, of course- Ah a whole section of new capabilities has, have been- Mm-hmm introduced in the app over the 15 years to really provide a ton of powerful capabilities for keeping track in written instructions, being able to repeat a set of instructions before going on to the next ones, you know, having only the right side instructions available.

Yeah. Having your kind of fabric pattern, like the beautiful cables in this Kinder Forest Mitt, at the same time being able to see the shaping instructions for the thumb gusset, which are on a- Ah completely separate page of the pattern in a completely separate format, being able to bring those together and see the written instructions and those additional shaping instructions together. Yeah. All of that kind of thing, has been added to the app over time. And honestly wasn't in the app the first time around because I, you know, personally didn't use them that much.

So, it's kind of been, it's been, it's been super fun. Like, it has made, it has made me a better knitter to understand so much more about the, like, in-depth- Uh-huh approaches people take to being able to get to the finished object, right? Yeah. From a pattern to the finished object. Yeah.

So it's been, it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. That is, that is super cool. Well, Sally, we have a question that's come in, from Gail. It says, "I have a small laptop I use for your app.

I also have it on my phone, but they don't sync together. Is there a way to do this?" Yep. There, um- Yeah, so- Oh, okay. The, they just said- Yeah "These are the only two devices I want them on. Thank you." Yeah.

So, if your computer and your phone are Apple, you can use iCloud to keep everything in sync. But if you're outside the Apple s- ecosystem, like you have a Android phone and a Windows computer, or a Chromebook, you can use just about any cloud to keep things in sync. I personally like to use Dropbox. So you can get a free Dropbox account. It's got a couple of gig worth of storage in it.

And w- while you can use any cloud, you can use Google Drive, you can use Box, you can use, like, any cloud that's out there, it's fine. What I like about Dropbox is that it keeps a 30-day rolling history. So when you take something on your computer and you upload it to Dropbox, and then maybe you work with it on your phone some, and then from your phone you upload to Dropbox, Dropbox automatically keeps 30 days back of- the changes you've made. So it's if you do something and you're like, "I hate that" or, "I broke something," whatever, you can always just go back to yesterday's. Oh.

And it's the only cloud that does that automatically as part of its free basic package. And it's kind of, I gotta tell you, that's kind of a nice safety thing for any kind of files that you have that you're editing, especially from multiple places. Mm-hmm. That's just a nice thing to have. In fact, I tell people who are in the Apple ecosystem- Who are using iCloud to keep things in sync.

You know, you should still be backing up, 'cause keeping things in sync isn't quite the same as backing up, right? 'Cause if you delete something from one device or change something on one device, the definition of automatic syncing is it changes everywhere. But now you've got that question, how do I get back? If that was, happened wrong, how do I get back? So even if you're using iCloud, I recommend you use something like Dropbox or Google Drive or Box to go ahead and back up, archive if you will.

Mm-hmm. That way, you know, you have your working, syncing system, and then you also have a nice archive. And Box, if you're outside the Apple ecosystem, it gives you both at the same time, and that's kind of nice. Okay. That's a good tip.

Didn't know any of that. So, do you wanna start doing a, a demo with the Coniferous Cable Mitts so that people can kinda see- Yeah in action some of the things we can do. Maybe you can show some of the more popular, uh- Yeah features of the app for us. Yeah. So I'm gonna start with some of the just kind of super basic stuff.

So without even kind of doing anything fancy, just out of the box, the app is gonna give you this yellow bar, and I call this the sliding row marker. And I've got this little red dancing circle. Hopefully you can see that. It's just, like, a little pointer to kind of help point out what I'm doing with my finger. So, this sliding bar, this is, I call it the sliding row marker, and it just keeps track of where you are as you move row to row through the system.

And I know when we first introduced the app, I picked yellow 'cause we think of yellow as a highlight color, so I thought that would make it really obvious that that was, like, your row highlighter, to keep track of where you were. And so yellow was really obvious choice. Turns out yellow's not actually a great choice from an accessibility perspective. But we've kind of stuck with yellow because I do think it cues people to understand that that's a highlighter. Mm-hmm.

But we also very quickly added the ability to change this bar and the way that it works. So I'm gonna, up at the top here, I'm in knit right now, which is where you kind of keep track of where you are in a pattern. I'm gonna tap edit at the top, and I'm gonna go into this, tool that lets me customize this marker. So you can see here this box, it's yellow by default, but I can go ahead and pick a different color. So I'm gonna pick It's gonna seem like a really odd choice, but I'm gonna pick gray, and that's turned that yellow bar to gray.

And you're like, "Why would you ever do that?" Right? Like, why would you ever do something like that? But I'm also then gonna go ahead and, tap this invert option, and now it's very obvious why- Uh-huh we wanted a gray bar. Look at that. It's so clear.

This invert, I'll turn it- What you're, what you're looking at- Yeah is so clear, and you can see what's directly above it, what's directly below it. Yeah. But your eye goes right to that spot. I love that. Yeah.

Yeah, and you know, I have to say, so people are always like, "Well, what kind of things have you incorporated in the app where you got feedback from customers?" And I already talked about, you know, support for written instructions, like duh. Mm-hmm. But actually, this inverted marker came from, a lot of customers that were doing some really advanced work with lace and cables. Mm-hmm. And they were like, "I cannot see.

The color is obscuring, like, the color on the row is obscuring the colors." And a little bit later we might get to that c- color work chart, but that color gets obscured. Mm-hmm. Is there a way to not do that? And this inverted marker with a gray tone is phenomenal. Mm-hmm.

So, like, I, when I'm knitting, I read my knitting, and that is how I can kind of tell that I'm on track or off track when I go to do the next row is 'cause I'm actually paying attention to what came before and if it's lining up. But I also get super excited about seeing a motif develop, and I get excited about what's coming on the next row. Mm-hmm. And it's the thing that keeps me knitting instead of putting the knitting down and watching TV or doom scrolling, whatever- Mm-hmm is that ability to see what's coming. Mm-hmm.

And this inverted marker, like you said, it just makes it so easy to see what's happening. Yeah, definitely. So, yeah. So these are, this is just basic. And this is still a sliding marker, so you just move it with your finger to slide it up and down.

Right now we're really just using this PDF as it was laid out by the designer, you. Like, we're just using this PDF in its original layout form. But one of the things that makes KnitCompanion so different is it gives you a set of tools to be able to extract information from the PDF, and work with it in a more intelligent fashion. And so I'll show you, for example, I'll just do this right now, show you how it can find this chart, understand this chart, and then give us a bunch of additional tools for working with this chart. So the tools that I'm talking about are all in an area of the app called setup.

So I'm gonna go ahead and tap setup at the top. And over on the right side I'm gonna tap the plus. And I wanna work with a chart here, so I'm gonna pick chart piece. And my chart's on page five, so I'll go ahead and pick page five. And I'm just gonna kind of draw around where the chart is on the page.

And then down at the bottom I'm gonna tap this wand. And we use something, this is probably only three or four years old in the app. We use something called Computer Vision, and Computer Vision looked inside the area I outlined. It identified the edges of the chart, and then inside the chart it looked for all of the rows and columns. And I tried to identify those.

And it actually drew this red grid over the top of the chart, and tells me at the bottom, like, "Hey, make sure you check that things are lining up." And almost always it does, but- A word to the wise, whenever you're using anything where the computer seems smart it's important that you be able to quickly identify whether what the computer has done is correct, especially with knitting where things- or crochet where things need to be super precise. Like, you can't be, scraping this chart and then introducing different symbols and thinking that's a great thing to do. You have to really be able to say this is actually precise, and the user needs a quick way to be able to tell that the computer did it right, and then also make any corrections. So you can a- if it didn't find the edges, you can adjust it. You can adjust the rows and stitches that it found.

Here it did a good job, so there's nothing to adjust. So now that KnitCompanion understands this chart and understands it correctly, when I go back to knit, here I have a page that's just the chart. So if you're working on a smaller device, you'll see we got rid of everything else that was on that page. Sometimes you'll get a chart and then it's got a bunch of other stuff on the page. When you're working on a small device, one of the critical things is maximizing your screen real estate, and making sure you're only looking at what you need at any given point in time.

And so we are working with just this chart. In addition, I no longer use my finger to move. It doesn't actually slide with my finger. Instead we have what's called a one tap marker, which is this little guy over here on the side, and when I tap it automatically moves me up to the next row. And I don't actually think, 'cause I have my little echo, anti-echo device here, I don't think voice control's gonna actually work correctly here.

But, um- yeah, it's not 'Cause I have all my mics off and everything, but we have voice control as well where you can just tap into the microphone and then you can speak to your tablet and say, "Next, next," and it will automatically, you don't even have to put your knitting down to tap the one tap marker to move to the next row, you can just advance the marker. And it's got a whole plethora of commands. You can go next. You can go back. You can tell it to check off steps.

We'll see that in a little minute, what the steps are. But you can use it to check off steps and all kinds of things. So- Yeah once it understands about, your instructions, charted or written, it can give you this one tap marker, and we're gonna in a little bit see even more stuff that we can get with the one tap marker, but just the basic one tap marker is pretty- Mm-hmm pretty nice than the sliding marker. Yeah. I just wanna interject if I could.

That voice command thing is, like, a game changer to me because that's the thing, like, you know, the closest thing to get at keeping track in my patterns when I'm working, like, a larger chart is the magnet board with the magnets and moving them. But the thing I didn't like- Yeah about that is you, you either have to decide you can't see where you're going or you can't see where you've been, you know, either/or. But also the main thing for me was you actually have to move it, which doesn't sound like a big deal- Yeah but when you're, like, in the middle of knitting or crocheting and you're, like, really into it, maybe you're also watching a movie- Yeah and maybe you're also talking to your friend, then all of a sudden- Yeah you're like, "Did I move that? Wait, did I move it?" Wait, did I move that? "I can't remember if I moved it." Wait, I turned- I can't tell you how many times- I turned my work.

Yeah. I can't even tell you how many times I have just been like, "Did I click the button? Did I move the thing?" Like, none, none of those That's why stitch- Yeah markers or, not stitch markers, but row markers just don't work for me. But that- Yeah voice control thing, being able to just be like, "Next," 'cause I can say that 'cause I don't have to take my hands off what I'm doing. Right.

You know? Right. Yeah. Well, and I, magnet boards were my, you know, choice of tracking- Mm-hmm. Yeah, your cookie sheet before I had KnitCompanion.

Yeah, my cookie sheet, right, was, like, my, my poison, if you will, for tracking. Uh-huh. And my problem was always, especially as the charts got bigger format and taller- Uh-huh and more rows and more complicated, you know, you, you only have, like, a little bit of space. Once you've printed that stuff out on 8.5 by 11 paper and taped it back together, you only are moving it, like, what? Two centimeters for each row.

Yeah. Some ridiculous thing, right? Yeah. And my thing was always if I knock that, I have dogs, if my dog knocks it- Uh-huh or I fold it up and take it to knit night or whatever, like, the magnet- Yeah shifts a little bit or- Yeah I'm moving it and I get jostled while I'm moving it- Yeah and it gets off. Well- Or it's kinda stuck to your- Well- cookie sheet a little bit more and you're like, "Ugh.

Oh, did I move it two rows?" Yeah. "Did I move it one?" Did I move it two? "I don't even know." Wait, which row did I just finish? Yeah. And then you gotta take it all the way off and now I mean, it did help me learn how to read my knitting, I'll give you that.

Yeah. Because I was forever trying to figure it out. And it's interesting 'cause one of the pushbacks we get with KnitCompanion, is, "Well, I don't wanna have to do the work to go into set up and have it learn about the chart. I, I want it to not- Mm-hmm. "I don't wanna have to do that." And we actually do sell, we've actually now got a couple thousand patterns available as Casey Designs where our tech editor team has done that work for you.

Mm-hmm. But still, you know, fundamentally you wanna be able to use the app with any pattern. Mm-hmm. So those tools are really important 'cause they are appl- applicable to any pattern that's out there. Yeah.

The thing is, that couple of minutes, like, not one or two minutes that it took to crop this chart and have it understand what this chart was- Mm-hmm are, if you multiply all the amount of times you have to stop, put your knitting down, move the thing- Yeah not remember if you moved it right, maybe knit the same row twice, maybe skip a row and not even realize you skipped a row, um- Yeah. Just even one row. If you just mess up one row- Right or some stitch somewhere, then all of a sudden it's way more than those two minutes of set up. Like, you- That's right. Yeah.

Yep. Plus the frustration of figuring out that you made a mistake later. Yeah. There's also that. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, and that's just, it's frustrating to me when I- Yeah. I make mistakes all the time. I make mistakes whether I'm using KnitCompanion or not, but it sure is nice to be able to more easily kind of identify, I made the mistake. I was on the right row of the pattern.

Uh-huh. And oh look, I can more easily see where that mistake is. Yeah. Is, it's pretty helpful for narrowing down what maybe went wrong. Right.

So, yeah. We've got another question coming in. Is this now a good time for you, Sally, or were you just gonna- Sure. Okay. I'll, also, Felicia says hello.

Hello. Hello. So we've got a question that says, "Suppose you have a six row repeat and you need to do that six times." Oh, that's a- "How do I link a count to the one tap marker so that- Yeah the marker advances and then it advances the repeat counter every six rows?" Yeah. So I, so I picked, so when Brenda and I were working on this, I had to pick some patterns. She gave me a whole bunch of patterns, and I picked Coniferous Mitts because it had some of this in it.

So, I actually have something that's kind of pre-set up for today. I'm gonna just reset. This is the one tap marker again, but I'm just gonna reset it all the way back, to start knitting this piece again. And I'm gonna zoom in here. And we've got this yellow band around the bottom two rows of this.

And I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna start knitting, and as I work my way up, you can see that now I'm at the second row, and it's at the top of this yellow Let's actually zoom in even more. Okay. It's at the top of this yellow band, and up above the one tap marker, this blue one tap marker, I have something in yellow that says, "One of three." So this is the large mitts, and if you actually look at the instructions, you're supposed to repeat these first two rows three times before continuing up the rest of the chart, specifically for the large. So now that I'm at the top of this repeat section, if I tap on the one tap, it takes me back to this first row. I'm on my second of three repeats, and as I continue Oh, I have, we'll talk about what's going on down at the bottom in a little bit.

But, now I, I get up to the top and I go one more time. It takes me back to the bottom. I'm on three of three. And I'm gonna go up. So now we're at the end of three of three, and when I tap the one tap marker, it just automatically brings me out of that repeat and into the main part of the pattern.

And I can have as many of these on my charted or written instructions as I need to be able to do that repeat section, with those instructions as needed. Uh-huh. Sally, we weren't able to see the yellow band, or I wasn't able to see the yellow band during that. Oh, so let's- I'm not sure if- You know what? Let's change the color.

Let's do something fun and change its color. And maybe I can- 'Cause yellow's not always the best color. I'm wondering if it's down below. Okay. Let's make it, red.

So are you now able to see that red? I can't see, I can't see a Are you trying to do a row marker? I wonder if it's too zoomed in for us to see. I'm not sure. So I'm actually, I have it, it's tiny but small on my screen.

I know you can see it, Sally, but there. So- Okay. I see it now. Can you see that now? I think it was down- Yeah I think it was down below off the bottom.

There we go. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So that's that red outline.

Yep. We can see it now. Right? And then we have the red up above. I actually think that was really good feedback, Brenda, 'cause I actually think what's happening is the cast that we're doing out to YouTube is cutting off the bottom of the screen entirely.

Oh, that makes sense. So, yeah. Yep, it was all below what you were Yeah. It was all just below. Okay.

So I was, it was on my screen, but it wasn't making it through the cast. Yep, you can see it. Which is totally fine. Yeah. Okay.

So, here we have that red outline, and I'll just, you know, when you tap Oh, I have this other thing going on down at the bottom. I'll make sure we can see that when we get to that point. But, I can just tap through this, and you see it's, like, bouncing me between the first and second rows. Mm-hmm. And it's really interesting.

So when we look at, I'm gonna go into a detail here, so everyone's just gonna have to forgive me, my knitting detail. So there's this concept of what row of the physical chart are you on, and the big number at the top here in the one tap marker on the side is telling me I'm on row one of the chart. But there's a smaller number down below. This is the total rows I've knit on this particular piece, and because I've looped through this a few times, I've knit, I'm on my third row of knitting even though I'm still on the first row of the chart. Mm-hmm.

And as I advance my marker, as I advance my marker, you see that those work together based on this repeat, right? So now I'm on my second row of the chart, and I'm on my sixth total row of knitting. And then when I go up one more row, I'm on my third row of the chart and my seventh row of knitting. And it's fascinating to me. So when I read this pattern, Brenda, that you wrote.

Mm-hmm. You actually spent quite a long time for, let me see if I can find it. Note for sizes medium and large. Because you are making repeats of cable patterns around one and two, from now on, the numbering system of the cable chart will not match up with the body of knit round that you are working on. Mm-hmm.

And that's exactly what we're doing here. Mm-hmm. This is the row of the cable chart. Mm-hmm. And below it is actually the row of your knitting.

And that concept, if you're not a knitter, a crocheter, a beader, a weaver, someone who's done something where you have to do some repeats before continuing. Uh-huh. That concept becomes so critically important in so many things that you do and, like, let me kind of pull it up here. Mm-hmm. These reminders that you get at the bottom, I'll just make that a little bit bigger, but these reminders that we can get at the bottom for, like, doing increases and shaping and other things while we're working the chart.

Uh-huh. That, having that ability to distinguish between- The row of the chart and the row of the knitting- Mm-hmm becomes super critical- Yeah to being able to keep track as you're working through. Think of a sweater. You really have, have to keep track- Yeah of two things at once. And the reason that I put that note in there was because I have made patterns in the past.

You know, 'cause I know it's kind of common convention for people to not say that where, but they'll just say- Right you know, keep repeating the chart. And then i- it would confuse me, like Right I, I mean, I'm the one who made this pattern- Right and I was like, wait, what row, row am I on? Oh, I can't just look at the chart to figure out my row. 'Cause like you, I'm a very chart-oriented person. Exactly.

And then I would be like, "This doesn't match up with that." So now- Exactly I might, when I write, directions for things and there's a discrepancy between, I always put a note in there because it is very confusing. And that, that is one thing that I feel like, you know, is extra special. And we know that a knitter made Knit Companion- Yeah because you know- Yeah you know ke- how keeping track of that can really mess you up for your whole pattern. Yep. Yeah.

Yep. Well, and we needed, for Knit Companion, we needed to know the difference between the two, 'cause sometimes you wanna get a piece of information based on the row of the chart you're on. Uh-huh. And sometimes you wanna get a piece of information based on the total rows you've knit. So if you think about you're making a sweater, and you've got this cable motif that you're working all the way up the body of the sweater.

In this case, it's a mitt with a thumb gusset. Mm-hmm. Depending on the size you're making, the increases for the thumb gusset are gonna- Yeah happen a different number of times. They're gonna happen on different rows- Right because it, it changes based on the side. Mm-hmm.

That's fundamentally why a designer separates the- Yeah fabric pattern, right, written or charted- Right fabric pattern from the shaping instructions- Right. Um- and puts them- Yeah. Otherwise, the pattern- usually on two separate pages would be like pages and pages long. You'd have to write it all- Exactly separate for, for all the separate sizes, and yeah. Exactly.

Yeah. Right? So, so we knew we needed to be able to say, this always goes with row three of the chart regardless. Mm-hmm. It's always if you're on row three of the chart, this instruction is a thing.

Mm-hmm. Like, you're moving a marker in the pattern in this in row always, no matter what. Yeah. And then you have other instructions that are driven based on, you know, how far along you are- Mm-hmm in your knitting, how many total rows you've knit. Yeah.

So it's like this thing if you are a knitter, you are a crocheter, it's really basic, I guess. Mm-hmm. Like it's, if you've made a sweater y- or a, a, a mitt, you understand that concept. Mm-hmm. But it's something that if you don't knit or crochet, that you would just miss that entirely.

So. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's so helpful, and it's so helpful to have, to be able to toggle back and forth between the chart and the written instructions also, you know, for- Yeah for especially for those who are not super chart-oriented like we are and who wanna learn more about the charting- Yeah to be able to see both of those and see where you're at, and then you can make sense of, you know, if you just like to read the words, then you can look at the pictures at the same time, and that's just, you know- Right so helpful.

Yep. So helpful to know how to- And that's- Yeah. Yep. That's where we wanna put reminders that are based on the row of the chart you're on. Mm-hmm.

'Cause that row always has the same stitches. We call those, when we do our Casey designs, we call those guided charts because it gives you the written instructions- Okay in line with, the row of the chart you're on. Uh-huh. And that's not quite the same as say shaping the thumb gusset, which- Right varies, right, based on how far you've knit. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of charts and written instructions, so I do understand, so, so I know that there are people who struggle with charts, and there's usually a couple of things that kind of are challenging with charts. And even as someone who loves charts, these are things I don't love about charts.

And one of them is just if we look at this chart, in fact, let's just go back to, this guy here. I'm gonna turn the inverted marker off just so we can have a clear shot at this chart. But if we look at this chart here, you know, we have some number of purl stitches. In this case, it's only four. We have some number of purl stitches, then we have some number of knit stitches, and then we have a purl column.

And this is a fairly regular pattern, so you can theoretically read your knitting and make sure things are lined up. But wouldn't it be nice if, especially if you get off, to have the app be able to just tell you how many boxes there were before the next- Yeah "change or action stitch"? And so, we added these things called magic markers that once you've done the setup work so that the system understands the chart, you get to add these magic markers, and they do a whole bunch of different things for you. So let's just add our first magic marker and kind of just take a look at that. So I'm gonna go to my chart that's set up, and I'm gonna pick Edit, and I'm gonna pick Magic Markers on the side.

Now, I think we're cutting off the bottom of the screen, so you won't quite see all of the stuff that's happening down at the bottom. But I'm just gonna tap that plus at the bottom and pick Magic Markers, and I'm gonna pick a sample of a knit stitch. So here I just picked a knit stitch. And down at the bottom I'm gonna tap the wand, and it, lo and behold, like instantly finds all of those knit stitches for me. And now I can tell it to give me counts.

Ooh, that's no good. Yeah, one thing about finding, being able to highlight things in different colors like that in the chart is, I ha- you know, as a designer, I have started color coding my cable increases or, or- Mm-hmm or my cable left versus right versus how many in front, how many, you know, whether it's a knit or purl or whatever part of the cable. And but, you know, there's lots of patterns that don't do that. But for me when I'm coming- Yeah across that chart and I just, it's like all the orange ones mean this, all the yellow ma- ones mean that. Like, to be able to go in and color code all that stuff that's the same is so, so, so helpful.

Did you get- Yeah your screen back? Yeah, I did. Okay. And, so- So we now have And it just found all those knits, and this also is using computer vision, just like it did for being able to identify the chart in the first place. So it's using computer vision to locate all the matching knit stitches, and we can do it for the purl stitches, but let's actually do it for the cables here because it is nice that you do the color-coding.

So let's actually do this, and let's see. That is a left cross, two two left cross. So I have a yellow color. I like to use left lemon yellow. I don't know.

That works for my brain. I'm a little dyslexic, so lefts and rights are hard for me. Yeah, I do rights in red. So I can go ahead- Yeah, yeah. I get it.

And you do rights. I do. I have all my rights in red too, reds and oranges. So, so you can see the names that I have here. So I'm gonna tap the wand at the bottom, and one of the things that we notice when we look at this is it actually, the computer vision found all of my right crosses or all of my left crosses, but it also found the left cross purls 'cause the symbols are so similar.

Mm-hmm. So we actually, I talked a little bit earlier about you need to be able to have it easy to identify that the computer didn't get it right, and then make it easy to fix that. So, for magic markers, we actually And I still, I don't think you can see this. At the bottom, I can just say, "Hey, find a few less. You were a little bit You were a little overzealous there." Tap the wand again, and it now found only all of- the left crosses, not the left cross purls.

Mm-hmm. So we're able to give you those adjustments so that when you're smarter than the computer, you can control it. The So it's nice that you do the color-coding, but I'm gonna show you something that Companion does with these colors for any stitch. But it's especially nice when you have cables or, if you're learning brioche or you're working with some Japanese stitches that you are not familiar with the symbols 'cause this is the second thing. But along with counting the stitches, the other really big challenge people have with charts is they don't know what that symbol means, right?

Mm-hmm. They don't know how to do that symbol, and then they're We give them the key at the bottom, and they can see the key at the same time, but then they have to kind of crawl through some number of, cable symbols to find the match, and it just takes a lot of time. So one of the things that we give you the ability to do is you can just tap on the stitch, get the name of the stitch, this is a two two left cross, and get the steps- Mm-hmm that you need to do to be able to execute that particular stitch. That's so helpful. 'Cause sometimes all those- I mean, it- cable ch- all those little symbols can just start to look too much the same, and when you, you look at it in your chart, and then by the time you get down to the list of all that, you're like, "Wait." No.

"How many lines did that have, and did it have a Okay." Yeah. I know. And I'm doing a pattern right now. It's a really complex cabled sweater, and it's tiny. It's on, like, size one needles- with fingering weight yarn, and it's these tiny little cables, and it's gonna be beautiful, like Lord of the Rings elfin beautiful when it's done- Cool assuming I ever finish it and I actually get the cable crosses right.

Right? But it's got, it's got this make one regular and make one purl. Gotcha. And the only difference between the two is this tiny little bar at the top that basically, I need my old lady glasses, but even with my old lady glasses, like, that bar at the top might as well not be there. Mm-hmm.

Right? Like- Just blends in- So I did a whole row- with everything else as a make one purl, like, two nights ago, and it's in hot timeout right now 'cause I'm trying to decide if I wanna rip back that whole row and redo them, or will nobody notice that those are purls. So it is, it is really- Yeah nice to be able to have that pop up to just- Yeah even if you're, you know how to do a two two left cross, it's nice to get that to just be like, "Oh, yeah, that's what that one means," right? Yep. Yeah.

'Cause, you know, all the designers, they use slightly different symbols and things- Yeah like that. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and even, like, in, in my You know, depending on who I'm designing for, I have to use different symbols, so sometimes I get confused myself, even if it's a pattern- Yeah that I wrote. I'm like, "I have to look it up.

I don't know what this is." Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So did, did you want to talk a little bit more You've mentioned computer vision a couple of times.

Do you wanna talk a little bit- Yeah more about, like, technology and computer vision- Yeah versus Yeah. So it's really challenging out there right now. It's challenging for designers. It's challenging for app developers. There's this huge flood of, cruddy AI- Mm-hmm not correct patterns.

Yeah. There's this huge flood of cruddy apps in all domains, all specialty domains. I mean, knitting, yes, but, like, you know, there's maybe two a month that I see coming out just in the knitting space, but I was reading an article. The Apple App Store has, like, three times as many new apps in the past year as they've ever had added to the App Store. Wow.

And they're all vibe-coded apps. And, you know, that's I'm not gonna make a judgment whether that's good or bad. I, I actually don't think it's great 'cause I think part of what you can do within the chap is kind of what we've done here with the, the knit, crochet, bead, weaving niche. Mm-hmm. Is you have to really understand the problem, and you have to put in a lot of time to understand the problem.

And then you wanna be very picky about how you go about providing solutions to that problem. And that is something you're just not gonna get that level of detail and attention if you're vibe coding the app. So I'm gonna sound judgy, I guess. I can't not sound judgy. I just, I just don't, I don't think it's great.

I don't think it's great for the design world. I don't think it's great for the app world, and I don't think it's great for the end users 'cause they cannot tell It's almost impossible these days to tell whether you've got something that- is gonna make the thing that it's showing a picture of- Right 'cause you don't even know if that picture is a real picture. Right. So- Yeah so the, the tech world over the last, what, 12 to 18 months, has become this incredibly messy space. And as a person who's been in this space for 40 years, I find it pretty frustrating because there's a catch-all term, it's AI, artificial intelligence, that's come to mean this nonsense that we see going on over the last year.

And the problem I have with that is AI's actually this really big umbrella. So AI includes computer vision, which we've been using for a decade, right? It's not a new technology. It's actually been around since the '50s. Xerox started working on it forever ago, right?

So there's computer vision. We use computer vision. The voice technology, the voice recognition that you may use every day in KnitCompanion, in Siri, in, in, Hey Google, like that voice recognition, that is, underlying it is AI. Google Search models are neural nets, in them, and that is AI. So there's this big umbrella of AI.

And so I kind of It's unfortunate that everyone now needs to become educated about that, but the reality is you can't say all AI is bad, 'cause that's not actually- Mm-hmm the problem, right? Yeah. The, the problem is the generative AI that is hoovering up data to try to It's like this- Mm-hmm maw hoovering up data that it doesn't even have a right to hoover. Yeah. It's hoovering this data up, and then because it's generative Like we aren't, we don't generate anything.

We look at stuff and extract stuff, but we don't generate anything and have no interest in generating anything. But it is hoovering stuff up, trying to learn predictable patterns in- Mm-hmm all of that data, and then using those predictable patters- patterns to, quote-unquote, "create something new." Mm-hmm. Generate something new. And that is, I think, where we're getting just a ton of crap. Yep.

Right? I completely agree. Because it's not, it's not the And it's, it's, I don't, I don't think it's necessarily beneficial, right? Mm-hmm. To society.

There's things And, and, and what's even harder about this conversation is there's things you can do with generative, AI in specific fields, and it's not even generative, but the It's gonna get so technical. The depth of the model and the sophistication of the models to be able to identify stuff, is getting so good- Mm-hmm that it really does bring a benefit. There are certain applications in medicine where it can bring a benefit, but you cannot, we cannot have our doctors and our radiologists checking their brain at the door 'cause the computer is smarter than they are. That is never the case. Just like we saw in our example here with a left cross and a left cross purl, you have to be able to validate the results.

Mm-hmm. You have to have a human who's looking at it. And before we started, you have to be able to, as a human, come up with creative solutions. And everyone, I'm dangling this because we have a weird setup to be able to do this broadcast today, and I was getting an echo, and it was only on my side, but it was bothering me to have the echo. And so I came up with a creative solution, which is the echo's now in this headset, which is why my voice control doesn't work.

But, so but AI can never do that. Mm-hmm. It can never come up with a novel, unique solution to a problem it hasn't seen before. Mm-hmm. It can regurgitate a predictable response to a problem someone has already solved, and that solution's been fed into its training data, but it cannot create a novel response.

It cannot create the next new thing, right? Yeah. So that's my frustration. Yeah, I w- I wanted to Yeah. I'm very frustrated about this whole thing too, as somebody who has had their work taken by an AI company or, you know, used unlawfully.

You know, I, I am a little bit biased, but I did wanna take- Yeah a couple minutes just, to talk about what AI patterns look like, because, we have had lots of questions- Yeah you know, from people, like, "How do I know if it's AI?" And this is, this The hard part about this is that if you are a very seasoned knitter, very seasoned crocheter, you will be a lot better at detecting whether it's AI or not. But for those who are just starting out, maybe you're seeing some stuff on Pinterest and you're like, "Oh, that's so cute. I wanna make that," you might not even know at all that it's AI-generated, and it may- Mm-hmm you know, probably won't make sense when you try to work from the, from the instructions. So I have a couple of examples that I wanted to show everybody here. We're gonna be looking at a vest pattern, so that you guys can kinda see.

Here it is. You know, the first thing I wanna tell people, if you can't a- you know, if you're, if you're looking to buy a pattern and you don't, you can't actually see any of the written words, because the w- written words tend to be a giveaway, I feel like, the biggest, th- the mo- the best advice I can tell you is if it just looks like it's kinda ha- that, has that inner glow, you, you'll just start to Your eye will just start to get trained as to what looks AI. And unfortunately, like Sally had mentioned before, it looks like really good photography, but like a little too good. It just sorta has this sort of, uh- extra glow about it. The shapes always look like they're kind of shaded or rounded or touched up in some way.

And if you look at this, like, if you were able to zoom in and look at the stitches in the vest, that you can tell they're not actual real stitches. Sometimes they get the little Vs in knitting right, sort of, but a lotta times I notice, like in the ribbing, it looks like there's two and a half stitches that you can see that are knits right next to each other in the ribbing, so that doesn't really work. And then there's this weird thing right outside of her armhole, her right armhole, where there's just sort of, like, I don't know if they were tr- AI was trying to do some shaping or something, but there's something very weird going on there with the stitches. If it just, you know, just take a few minutes and actually look at it and see if it, if there's, you know, if it has increases where there should be increases or decreases. May- and maybe those, again, this is a lot harder to, for someone who doesn't have experience in knitting these things or crocheting these things.

They wouldn't necessarily notice. But- Yeah but if you look at her knitting needles even, she, she looks like she's gonna knit something, but there's really nothing on the knitting needles, which is a little bit weird. But also, the ends of her knitting needles, they should have that, you know, I, I, I'm not sure what it's called, but, like, the ball or the plug at the end to keep your stitches from sliding off the ends of the needles. There's nothing there. It's, like, a change in color.

Yeah. Like your stitches would just slide right off. Yeah. So you can just tell right away, oh, this is probably an AI pattern. And you know what?

It's, like, possible for someone to have an AI image on a, a pattern that a person made, but why would you do that? You would just photo- photograph the thing you made. And if somebody's using AI to show you what, what their piece should look like, I would not really trust- Yep that pattern anyway, right? Yeah. So I have the- You know- Oh, go ahead.

Uh- I was just gonna say, you know, one of the interesting things I've read about AI and AI adoption is it's generally o- one of the reasons it gets adopted is because it can, quote, unquote, do something that you as a person don't have the skill to do. Mm-hmm. So it can do image balancing, like if b- brightness and contrast and hue and that kind of stuff and, quote, unquote, do that for you to make a, quote, unquote, better looking image. Yeah. But if you know how to do that, if you know how to take a good picture of your finished object, you don't need AI to do that.

Mm-hmm. But you do need that skill, right? Yeah. You do need the skill to be able to do that work. Mm-hmm.

And that makes it a doubly pernicious thing because the people who don't have the skill probably cannot look at the end result from AI critically enough to say, "Oh, actually, that's not good." Right. Or, "Actually, that's got funky stitches and a weird needle and this strange inner glow." They look at it and go, "Wow, that looks good to me." Yeah, that looks good. Yeah. Right? Right.

So. They don't know. Yeah. Yeah. That is- And it makes it hard for the consumer because now the consumer, especially if they're new, but even if they're not new, they're getting this torrential flood of stuff that is ultimately just gonna take a lot of their time, money, cause frustration.

Yeah. And I kinda worry that, you know, we as crafters who want more people coming into crafting, more people learning how to love it- Mm-hmm more people wanting to do it forever and ever, that's what we all want to see and have happen- Yeah make our tent bigger, people who are coming into it are gonna hit this wall of crud- Yeah and get discouraged and think, "Oh, I didn't, I couldn't get it done 'cause I'm not good enough," or- Right. They're gonna think it's their own mistake and they, or I just don't understand how to read these patterns. But there's, like, literally- Yeah words in there that aren't real words and things that aren't real abbreviations. Yeah.

It- It's so frustrating. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

So we only have about five more minutes left, of our live event. Right. But did you wanna talk about, show us how the color work works out- Yeah, let's- with the chart? Yeah. Yeah, let's do that.

So I'm actually just gonna go over, to this, crochet zipper pouch. And we've got, both a grayscale and a color-based chart. So I'm in Knit and Penny here on I wanna make this, so I'm gonna go ahead and start a project. And I'm just gonna call it, pouch. And because we're a little low on time, I'm just gonna go straight to setup, and I am going to pick one of these charts, and it doesn't matter which one.

I'll pick the colored one, but, we can work with grayscale as well. And I'm just gonna kind of outline that guy and detect the chart, check the results, make sure that it's good. And I'm gonna, because we're a little short on time, I'm gonna go straight to edit. Now, this sample, was done in the, what the actual sample was knit in, which is the pink and green, but I can now use, magic markers, which we saw before, for identifying knits and runs of knit stitches. I can actually use them to detect color.

So let's make this a nice, bright yellow, and it changes all of my green stitches to yellow. And I can go ahead and do that again for the pink, and let's pick, like, a nice, dark purple, and it can change all of those to purple. So this next thing that I'm gonna do I actually call magic swatching, right? So down at the bottom, I think it's a little off the edge of the screen here, but down at the bottom, I'm gonna turn on show all, and it's gonna show me, both of those colors together. And now I can start playing.

Oh, I don't love that blue. What happens if I make it a green? Okay, so I like that green, but I don't like it with that yellow. What happens if I make that a red? And I can start changing the colors around to look at what does those colors, what do the colors look like, not just in a skein next to each other but in the actual motif.

And then of course, once I've got a- A color combination that I like, so let's do that. Okay, so once I've got a color combination that I like, I can get those counts, right? So now when I'm knitting, I have what I now call TV knitting. So to your example before, let me just bring this up so it's up at the top. To your example before, I now have actual TV knitting that I can use to keep track of where I am with voice controls and with those counts, so it's almost, like, mindless to put this color work together, in, in my pattern.

That is just so invaluable to me. Like, I, I, I did a color work book a while back, and this would have saved me so much time. I know. Not only just with the swatching and the colors, but the numbers in there, because who wants to count up a whole little bunch of little tiny boxes, and then you might- Yeah accidentally miscount. So- Yep having those numbers in there, so, so, so, so helpful.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. Well, Sally, I could literally talk to you for hours about all this kind of stuff- I know and technology. It's been so interesting.

We made this, we made this whole agenda. I think we only got through half of it. Yeah, I know. Oh, that's, I have so much more to talk about, but, I just wanna thank everybody for joining us. I especially wanna thank you, Sally, for being here and talking to us about this.

I also wanted to mention to those of you, who are interested in checking it out, we do have a link to the KnitCompanion website, and there are tons of tutorials on there, you guys. Like, like, if you're just interested in doing this or, you know, interested in checking into it, but you feel like a little bit of reservation 'cause you're not sure how, if you would like to use technology, just go look at the tutorials and see all the different things that you can do. It's very, very, very user friendly, and I'm saying that from somebody who's afraid of technology, you guys. So it's, it's pretty awesome. Sally, is there anything- Yep that you wanted to add, before we go?

I don't think so. Thank you for being such a great hostess, Brenda. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been really fun. Thank you everybody so much for joining us.

Bye, everyone. Bye.